Moreover, Oliver argues, Jamesian transcendence is relevant to current questions in cognitive science and the emerging ecological, computer, and cyber worlds." "Jamesian transcendence, according to Oliver, seeks to reconcile individual growth with social responsibility. In this age of impersonal information, it invites us all to embrace our own enthusiasms, or "delights," as the surest sources of personal happiness, mutual regard, and depth of experience."--BOOK JACKET.

Ultimately, Young William James Thinking reveals how James provided a humane vision well suited to our pluralist age.

William James (1842-1910) is a canonical figure of American pragmatism. Trained as a medical doctor, James was more engaged by psychology and philosophy and wrote a foundational text, Pragmatism, for this characteristically American way of thinking. Distilling the main currents of James's thought, William J. Gavin focuses on "latent" and "manifest" ideas in James to disclose the notion of "will to believe," which courses through his work. For students who may be approaching James for the first time and for specialists who may not know James as deeply as they wish, Gavin provides a clear path to understanding James's philosophy even as he embraces James's complications and hesitations.

William James (1842-1910) was one of the most original and influential American thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a professor at Harvard University he published many works that had a wide-ranging impact on both psychology and philosophy. His Principles of Psychology was the most important English-language work on the mind since Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. His Varieties of Religious Experience practically inaugurated the field of psychology of religion, and it also remains a major inspiration for philosophy of religion. Perhaps most importantly, James publicized the movement of pragmatism and supplied much of its powerful momentum. This book covers the primary topics for which James is still closely studied: the nature of experience; the functions of the mind; the criteria for knowledge; the definition of "truth"; the ethical life; and the religious life. His notable terms, still resonating in their respective fields, are all here, from the "stream of consciousness" and "pure experience" to the "will to believe," the "cash-value of truth," and the distinction between the religiously "healthy soul" and the "sick soul." This volume’s eighteen selections receive the bulk of the attention and citation from scholars, provide excellent coverage of core topics, and have a broad appeal across many academic disciplines. This well-organized compilation of James’s important writings offers an exciting and fascinating tour for both the casual reader and the dedicated student interested in philosophy, psychology, religious studies, American studies, or any related field.

The focus in this book is on the philosophy of William James as it relates to his conceptions of "pure" and ordinary experience, the respective natures of self and world, the interrelations of experience, self, and world, the awareness of a common world by two or more selves, and the extent to which and means by which those selves can gain access to one another's personal consciousness. The book provides explications and critical interpretations of these themes in James's philosophy and, when appropriate, makes substantive suggestions for their clarification and improvement. It defends the thesis that these themes offer a promising basis for building a credible philosophy of mind and its relations to the world, including its relations to other minds in the world. It considers at length two recent objections to empiricism as an epistemological program and defends empiricism in general and James's brand of empiricism in particular (what he called radical empiricism) against these objections. Finally, it argues the need for and sketches some outlines for a greatly expanded, enriched, and multi-dimensional radical materialism and shows why and how the development of such a materialistic metaphysics can be integrated with James's philosophy of radical empiricism.

Classic text examines habit, consciousness, self, discrimination, the sense of time, memory, perception, imagination, reasoning, instincts, volition, much more. This edition omits the outdated first nine chapters.

This anthology of readings in contemporary Western philosophy focuses on 19th-century philosophers who represent a variety of responses to the issue of their day: whether or not there was a knowable, nonhuman rational order upon which thinking persons could willfully choose to act. The selections are readable and accessible, yet remain faithful to the original works. Accompanying the text are drawings, diagrams, photographs, and a timeline; all of which allow the reader to really study the major philosophical thinkers of the 19th-century: Bentham, Wollstonecraft, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Comte, Feuerbach, Mill, Kierkegaard, Marx, Peirce, James, and Nietzche. For anyone interested in owning a collection of works from the greatest philosophical thinkers in the 19th-century.

I should say first of all that the only emotions I propose expressly to consider here are those that have a distinct bodily expression. That there are feelings of pleasure and displeasure, of interest and excitement, bound up with mental operations, but having no obvious bodily expression for their consequence, would, I suppose, be held true by most readers. Certain arrangements of sounds, of lines, of colours are agreeable, and others the reverse, without the degree of the feeling being sufficient to quicken the pulse or breathing, or to prompt to movements of either the body or the face. Certain sequences of ideas charm us as much as others tire us. It is a real intellectual delight to get a problem solved, and a real intellectual torment to have to leave it unfinished. The first set of examples, the sounds, lines, and colours, are either bodily sensations, or the images of such. The second set seem to depend on processes in the ideational centres exclusively. Taken together, they appear to prove that there are pleasures and pains inherent in certain forms of nerve-action as such, wherever that action occur. The case of these feelings we will at present leave entirely aside, and confine our attention to the more complicated cases in which a wave of bodily disturbance of some kind accompanies the perception of the interesting sights or sounds, or the passage of the exciting train of ideas. Surprise, curiosity, rapture, fear, anger, lust, greed, and the like, become then the names of the mental states with which the person is possessed. The bodily disturbances are said to be the "manifestation" of these several emotions, their "expression" or "natural language;" and these emotions themselves, being so strongly characterized both from within and without, may be called the standard emotions. --William James

William James (1842–1910) is widely regarded as the founding figure of modern psychology and one of the most important philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Renowned for his philosophical theory of pragmatism and memorable turns of phrase, such as ‘stream of consciousness’ and the ‘will to believe’, he made enormous contributions to a rich array of philosophical subjects, from the emotions and free will to religion, ethics, and the meaning of life. The Jamesian Mind covers the major aspects of James’s thought, from his early influences to his legacy, with over forty chapters by an outstanding roster of international contributors. It is organized into seven parts: Intellectual Biography Psychology, Mind, and Self Ethics, Religion, and Politics Method, Truth, and Knowledge Philosophical Encounters Legacy. In these sections fundamental topics are examined, including James’s conceptions of philosophical and scientific inquiry, habit, self, free will and determinism, pragmatism, truth, and pluralism. Considerable attention is also devoted to James in relation to the intellectual traditions of empiricism and Romanticism as well as to such other philosophical schools as utilitarianism, British idealism, Logical Empiricism, and existentialism. James’s thought is also situated in an interdisciplinary context, including modernism, sociology, and politics, showcasing his legacy in psychology and ethics. An indispensable resource for anyone studying and researching James’s philosophy, The Jamesian Mind will also interest those in related disciplines such as psychology, religion, and sociology.

In No Professor's Lectures Can Save Us, John J. Stuhr utilizes the thought of American philosopher and psychologist William James to develop an original world view that addresses both enduring philosophical problems and contemporary cultural issues. Drawing on and illuminating the entirety of James's work, Stuhr explores James's psychology, his account of religious experience and his "will to believe" thesis, his pragmatism, his radical empiricism, his pluralism, and his writing on politics, democracy, and imperialism. Throughout, Stuhr engages the wide-ranging scholarship on James's philosophy and explores connections between James and the work of Bergson, Deleuze, Dewey, Peirce, Rorty, and Whitehead, as well as intellectual movements including contemporary democratic theory, positive psychology, and philosophical naturalism. After establishing the need to approach James's writings as intimately interwoven, Stuhr turns to each of James's major texts, including The Will to Believe, Principles of Psychology, Varieties of Religious Experience, Pragmatism, The Meaning of Truth, and Essays in Radical Empiricism. His focus throughout is practical, showing the concrete differences it makes in one's life should one take up a broadly Jamesian perspective across the "ever not quite" endeavors of our finite lives. "From this unsparing practical ordeal," James noted, "no professor's lectures and no array of books can save us." In this spirit, this book does not by itself, promise salvation. Instead, it is a master class not only in the philosophy of William James but in a new philosophy through James's thought.