The Thought and Character of William James (Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy)

Rating:
Summary: The Original, Definitive Text on William James
Review: Perry's text is the original, definitive expression of William James' philosophy, outside of the writings of James -- a founder father of the philosophical genre of pragmatism, contemporary American social thought and modern psychology -- himself. Despite the multitude of books written on and about James and his ideas since, no serious student of William James should be without or ignore this one. It is the Genesis-text, as it were, of Jamesean studies.

Perry organizes and effectively analyzes the whole array of James' diverse writings (including reprints of some tremendous and now otherwise difficult to find selections), enabling any reader to obtain a comprehensive and detailed understanding of James' philosophy. At the same time, Perry infects his analysis with a solid and enduring illustration of James's personality, without ever becoming either trite or merely philosophical biography.

Perry's own skills as a writer are evident in such passages as the following, which is a most memorable description of the breadth and depth of Jame's character: "[James] called himself empiricist, pluralist, pragmatist, individualist, but whenever he did so he began at once to hanker after the fleshpots of rationalism, monism, intellectualism, socialist. He liked body in his philosophizing, and he hated to leave out anything that had either flavor or nutritive value. He was much more afraid of thinness than he was of inconsistency."

In one or two places, the serious James scholar might have a difference of opinion with Perry's analysis, whether historical or philosophical, but all philosophy texts are susceptible to such criticism, and Perry's is less susceptible than most. Indeed, it will be by treating Perry's text as a sound starting place that the inexperienced or unfamiliar reader might become such an adept analyst and capable of interpreting James' life, character and thought so well.

Rating:
Summary: The Original, Definitive Text on William James
Review: Perry's text is the original, definitive expression of William James' philosophy, outside of the writings of James -- a founder father of the philosophical genre of pragmatism, contemporary American social thought and modern psychology -- himself. Despite the multitude of books written on and about James and his ideas since, no serious student of William James should be without or ignore this one. It is the Genesis-text, as it were, of Jamesean studies.

Perry organizes and effectively analyzes the whole array of James' diverse writings (including reprints of some tremendous and now otherwise difficult to find selections), enabling any reader to obtain a comprehensive and detailed understanding of James' philosophy. At the same time, Perry infects his analysis with a solid and enduring illustration of James's personality, without ever becoming either trite or merely philosophical biography.

Perry's own skills as a writer are evident in such passages as the following, which is a most memorable description of the breadth and depth of Jame's character: "[James] called himself empiricist, pluralist, pragmatist, individualist, but whenever he did so he began at once to hanker after the fleshpots of rationalism, monism, intellectualism, socialist. He liked body in his philosophizing, and he hated to leave out anything that had either flavor or nutritive value. He was much more afraid of thinness than he was of inconsistency."

In one or two places, the serious James scholar might have a difference of opinion with Perry's analysis, whether historical or philosophical, but all philosophy texts are susceptible to such criticism, and Perry's is less susceptible than most. Indeed, it will be by treating Perry's text as a sound starting place that the inexperienced or unfamiliar reader might become such an adept analyst and capable of interpreting James' life, character and thought so well.

Rating:
Summary: A humanistic look at a human-in-full!
Review: William James was as incongruent as his philosophy; and I don't mean this sardonically. He was a lover both of art and science; both of the unity of the whole and the plurality of parts; both of the rationalistic and the sentimental parts of life. It is always suprising to me not that he could be all these things, but how well he balanced them all. Whenever one trait would come to the forefront, James almost instinctively checked it with an equal and opposite impulse.

This book gives us a front-row seat to watch James's balancing act up close! By my estimates, a little over half of this book's text is letters either from or to James (by frinecs such as Perice, Holmes, Dewey, Bergson, and his brother Henry). The author does a good job weaving these letters together with biographical infromation; with this mixture, he does two things. He puts James's life in the context of his philosophy (philosophies?) and puts his philosophy(-ies)in the context of his life. The best part, to me, was the author's ability to discouse on each book James wrote integrating its philosophy with the events of James's world at the time.

As with most biographies, this one does have a tendency (too much so in my opiinion) to psychologize in ways that, to me, seem stretching. The last two chapters, for instance, on James's "Morbid Traits" and his "Benign Traits" are like a psychological summary of James, often identifying traits James posessed as ones that are hinted at in his works (particularly the Varieties of Religous Experience). While sections like these can be interesting, they can also (as these two are) become overkill. I read the rest of the book (which psychologizes but keeps it to a minimum) and skimmed these two chapters.

Otherwise, this s a great biography. Not so intellectual as to be inaccessable to general readers, but not to watered down that we don't both learn new things about James and the philosophic landscape on every page. To put it strangely, to me, James is like a great jazz ballad - the more you come into contact with its intricacies, the more you grow to cherish it. And, I suppose that James is like jazz - emphasizing the individuality of the parts rather than a pre-determined whole. And like a good jazz tune, James's philosophy was never finished - always open ended.

So go read the book already.