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Summary: If it works, who cares what you believe.
Review: A very intelligent work. However, James fails to provide a sufficient foundation for his philosophy. This is so because he focuses on human actions and results to the exclusion of the beliefs that initiate such actions. However, it is necessary to examine the philosophical and theological foundations in order to understand where conflicts between beliefs, world views, etc., could occur in practice. James' thoughts do not help much in this regard.As such, I place him in the class of great thinkers, but not in the higher class of philosophers.
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Summary: Can James Reconcile Empiricism with Religion?
Review: Anyone who has read "The Metaphysical Club" and reawakened their interest in American thought will find this an excellent next book. James' ebulent personality and wit make this book an easy read.
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Summary: American Classic
Review: Depending on who you ask, american philosophy is an oxymoron. But the pragmatic schools of James, Pierce, and Dewey are truly a challenging and significant to philosophy as a whole. James has a very peculiar way of viewing experience, for a philosopher, and a sort of colossal respect for truth that rivals Kant's. This book approaches in a very systematic way the problems that we have dealing with truth and its inherent elusiveness. Both Empiricist and Rationalist philosophical attitudes run aground when dealing with reality; certain aspects of both are better at dealing with particular facets of experince. That is, some of the "work" better than other in certain situations. (As James notes, Hegel or Kant have done little to advance any scientific knowledge-- but a wholly empirical philosophy can give offer us no end to strive towards that we will find humanly compelling) James makes the middle road between the two, and offers the philosphically radical suggestion that the closest to any "Truth" as a big T we are going to get is going to be through our examination of how particular notions of truth produce for us better explanations of experience. In fact (as James later elaborates) the best philosophy we can find is one that will be able to unstiffen the mind an be able to deal with various different truths. Plural. If you can't see from this outlook, James's notion of philosophy is profoundly democratic. His philosophy is one of the best attempts I've ever encountered to form some sort of coherent system that accomodates mutually exclusive forms of truth. And such a system, also, is American Democracy. The reviewers below fall into an error on this account by saying James apologizes for scoundrels. He does not; in fact, he was thoroughly anti-imperialist and in case we havn't noticed Nazism and Stalinism are systems built on Monistic systems of Truth. Look it up. Read the book, it's a classic, maybe the classic, of American Philosophy. A fitting testament to james' enduring genius
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Summary: Essential to Understanding Contemporary Philosophies
Review: I rate this work 5 stars because of its immense influence on today's common ways of thinking and its importance in understanding the rise of science and capitalism in America. James challenges philosophers of all ilks to give us a net value to their systems; that is, how do they affect human life or make the world we know better or worse for us? James insists that no philosophy finally matters unless it impacts life in concrete terms. To lock down his philosophy he fashions a new model of truth, stating that whatever is beneficial is true. There are huge problems here, e.g., the rise of the subjective. James doesn't specify to whom truth should be beneficial (humanity in general? Subjective selves?), so his theory leads to strange quandaries. It would be "true" for a sound-minded criminal on trial to plead insanity, and it would also be "true" for the prosecutor to charge guilt and sanity. Obviously, confusing "useful" and "true" is a category obfuscation. As well, morality would suffer on this view. If lying is useful then regarding lies as truths is fully permissible by James's line of thought. Nevertheless, the book is important to read because so much of today's world is run in terms of the useful rather than the ideal or intrinsically good. That is why art is marginalized, morality compromised, and capital generating systems glorified. We need James's Pragmatism to understand ourselves today.
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Summary: Un(der)-Appreciated, Modern and Nuanced
Review: In a certain view the history of western philosophy can be viewed as the search for truth(s) and systems of thought and action derivable from those truths. This pursuit for "First Principles" has brought us to the trenches of WW1 and the giant socio-economic experiements of Stalinist Russia, Maoist China and the Khmer Rouge's Cambodia. As Keynes pointed out philsophical writings have more power than we know. The failure to establish these systems led, in the late 19th century, to the emergence of more contingent and nihlistic systems, e.g. Wittgenstein. Or the inter-war French philsophical conclusions that everything is absurd. James would reply well it exists so it can't be absurd and your failure to deal with that shows a lack of faith and courage. (the book to read is Barzun's 'From Dawn to Decadence - not just highly recommended but Six Stars on the failures of Western culture to rise to the challenges of the 20th century). Now with all that background as setup, and picking up what some of the other reviewers have to say, James offers an entirely different approach not based on absolutes but rather on the process of building truth. He's an excellent writer though his depth of thought is often disguised by the simplicity and 'downhominess' of his expression. What he constructs, in language reminiscant of Hemingway or Hogan on Golf, is a systematic view on achieving "Truth" based on what we can know, the relationships built up from earlier conclusions and testing those. It seems that his late 19th century American slang disguises some of this all too well. If one substitutes implications and consequences for his use of phrases like 'how does it pay out' the material moves forward in time and interpretation. What James appears to have acheived, to me, is the first serious consideration of a constructed and dynamic philsophical system that evolves based on both external facts and it's own workings yet also carries the burdens and benefits of insisting on strong rules for construction and truth testing. He applies this system to many of the major and daily conundrums we face in our lives while also tackling many of the major paradoxes, at least implicitly, of modern philosphy. To close the loop if James subtle and nuanced philsophy had been more widely understood we might not have avoided the disasters of various absolutist systems. But we would be in a better position to deal with the post catasrophe consequences and achieve a more balanced, courageous and forward-looking approach to things. In fact one could argue that what James does is put a systematic approach in place, based on methods and processes, and an admission that this is a pluralistic not monlithic universe where Truth is contingent. If you like he has adapted the scientific method, or engineering analysis, to philosophy and done so in such a way that a lot of groundwork is laid for the rest of us.
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Summary: An American philosophy
Review: It has been said that Pragmatism is the only philosophical school America has given the world. James is its great popularizer along perhaps with Dewey. Pragmatism in James is a ' theory of truth' which cancels common - sense correspondance theory of truth, and says that truth is the ' cash - value' of a proposition. The results of an idea or proposition in the marketplace are according to James ' its truth'. This sounds odd and in fact is certainly not what we ordinarily mean when we speak about the truth. It does make a certain sense however in trying to order the decisions of our life, and may help us in judging those beliefs we wish to hold on to.
My own sense is that this theory is pretty thin stuff, and the greater James is in the psychology of the ' Varieties of Religious Experience'
Again it seems to me that Pragmatism adds a certain element to the conception of Truth we should have, but it misses out on other crucial dimensions. There after all are truths which are painful, and truths which we do not want to know, and truths which it does not help us to know, and truths which we must grudgingly admit, and truths which do not promise to help us at all but may hurt us very much.
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Summary: Brilliant! Buy it! Read it! Live it! Think it!
Review: The superlatives trip off my tongue when I think about this book. In it Harvard psychologist and philosopher Willaim James propounds the substance (not much) and import (massive!) of his philosophical method: pragmatism. He got this method from his lifelong friend Charles Sanders Peirce and it boils down, quite simply, to doing nothing which doesn't make a difference in terms of outcomes; what works is what matters. Not that this simplicity boils over into simplisticness. James is an astute operator and is aware of what criticism shall come his way. Thus, in this series of lectures he addresses all the realist, essentialist and foundationalist philosophers with their abstract, universal and idealistic arguments and demonstrates that it is the pragmatist who takes our obligations seriously. The pragmatist is guided by the experience of the senses and the working body of truth each person carries with them and these are no small trifles. The pragmatist is not one who is free to make anything up (contrast the external realist who can say anything and claim what they like since its beyond verification / falsification). So read this classic piece of American philosophical writing and be entertained, educated and edified all in one go. It has changed my approach to life. PoSTmodERnFoOL
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Summary: Great Book at a Great Bargain
Review: This series of popular lectures James gave in 1909 presents a very approachable introduction to James' thoughts about pragmatism. Though I am no fan of his philosophical views, I enjoy reading James, and this, especially the first couple lectures, is an enjoyable and short discussion of his ideas. The lecture format forces him to present his views in very digestible sections. James, however, is the master of the understatement; what he says is clear enough, but you may want a secondary source to see the real implications of his views. Kudos to Dover for a great selection for their thrift series!
Rating:
Summary: Great Book at a Great Bargain
Review: This series of popular lectures James gave in 1909 presents a very approachable introduction to James' thoughts about pragmatism. Though I am no fan of his philosophical views, I enjoy reading James, and this, especially the first couple lectures, is an enjoyable and short discussion of his ideas. The lecture format forces him to present his views in very digestible sections. James, however, is the master of the understatement; what he says is clear enough, but you may want a secondary source to see the real implications of his views. Kudos to Dover for a great selection for their thrift series!
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Summary: For Spinoza Fans.
Review: What follows is an example of the greatness of this book: From Introduction by Bruce Kuklick to William James' Pragmatism. James went on to apply the pragmatic method to the epistemological problem of truth. He would seek the meaning of 'true' by examining how the idea functioned in our lives. A belief was true, he said, if in the long run it worked for all of us, and guided us expeditiously through our semihospitable world. James was anxious to uncover what true beliefs amounted to in human life, what their "Cash Value" was, what consequences they led to. A belief was not a mental entity which somehow mysteriously corresponded to an external reality if the belief were true. Beliefs were ways of acting with reference to a precarious environment, and to say they were true was to say they guided us satisfactorily in this environment. In this sense the pragmatic theory of truth applied Darwinian ideas in philosophy; it made survival the test of intellectual as well as biological fitness. If what was true was what worked, then scientific truths were just those beliefs found to be workable. And we could investigate religion's claim to truth in the same manner. The enduring quality of religious beliefs throughout recorded history and in all cultures gave indirect support for the view that such beliefs worked. James also argued directly that such beliefs were satisfying; they enabled us to lead fuller, richer lives and were more viable than their alternatives. Religious beliefs were expedient in human existence, just as scientific beliefs were.
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