"One moment in the world's salvation": Anarchism and the radicalization of William James

Journal of American History

Volumn 83, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 70-99

  Coon, Deborah J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0039818876     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2945475     Document Type: Article

References (148)

1. William James, Pragmatism, ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), 20-21.
2. The essays, published in 1907, were originally delivered in 1906 as a series of public lectures at the Lowell Institute in Boston. William James, Pragmatism, Ibid., 17-18.
3. Alexander Keyssar, Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts (Cambridge, Eng., 1986), 210-49, esp. 225;
4. see also William O. Reichert, "The Melancholy Political Thought of Morrison I. Swift," New England Quarterly, 49 (Dec. 1976), 542-58. The New England Industrial Delegation that Swift led to Washington was different from Jacob Coxey's army of the unemployed.
5. For James's reaction to the 1894 conviction of Alfred Dreyfus and its aftermath, see Deborah J. Coon, "Courtship with Anarchy: The Socio-political Foundations of William James's Pragmatism" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1988), 171-88.
6. On James and anti-imperialism, see also George Cotkin, William James, Public Philosopher (Baltimore, 1990), 123-51.
7. Other, briefer treatments of James's anti-imperialism are Frank Lentricchia, "On the Ideologies of Poetic Modernism, 1890-1913: The Example of William James," in Reconstructing American Literary History, ed. Sacvan Bercovitch (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 220-49;
8. Gerald E. Myers, William James: His Life and Thought (New Haven, 1986), 435-45;
9. Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James: As Revealed in Unpublished Correspondence and Notes, together with His Published Writings (2 vols., Boston, 1935), II, 304-16. William James to William Dean Howells, Nov. 16, 1900, William Dean Howells Papers (Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.).
10. William James to [Carl] Stumpf, Aug. 6, 1901, in Perry, Thought and Character of William James, II, 199-200.
11. David A. Hollinger argued that James was deeply concerned to reassert the importance of religious commitment (though not of any orthodox sort) in a scientistic age: David A. Hollinger, In the American Province: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ideas (Bloomington, 1985), 3-22.
12. See also Bennett Ramsey, Submitting to Freedom: The Religious Vision of William James (New York, 1993);
13. Paul Croce, Science and Religion in the Era of William James, vol. I: Eclipse of Certainty, 1820-1880 (Chapel Hill, 1995).
14. While the present essay does not discuss James's views toward scientism, I concur that scientism was one of the world-shaping forces that James began to view as imperialistic in the 1890s: see, for example, Deborah J. Coon, "Testing the Limits of Sense and Science: American Experimental Psychologists Combat Spiritualism, 1880-1920," American Psychologist, 47 (Feb. 1992), 143-51;
15. Deborah J. Coon, "Standardizing the Subject: Experimental Psychologists, Introspection, and the Quest for a Technoscientific Ideal," Technology and Culture, 34 (Oct. 1993), 757-83.
16. For characterizations of James as essentially apolitical, see Daniel W. Bjork, The Compromised Scientist: William James in the Development of American Psychology (New York, 1983);
17. Howard Feinstein, Becoming William James (Ithaca, 1984);
18. Brace Kuklick, The Rise of American Philosophy, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1860-1930 (New Haven, 1977).
19. James to Wincenty Lutoslawski, Jan. 1, 1904, in Perry, Thought and Character of William James, II, 216.
20. James Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought, 1870-1920 (New York, 1986);
21. Lentricchia, "On the Ideologies of Poetic Modernism";
22. Frank Lentricchia, Ariel and the Police: Michel Foucault, William James, Wallace Stevens (Madison, 1988);
23. James Livingston, Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution, 1830-1940 (Chapel Hill, 1994).
24. Cornel West emphasizes James's individualism but places it squarely within a tradition of nonradical bourgeois individualism: see Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Madison, 1989).
25. William James, "Notes for Metaphysical Seminary, 1903-4," in Perry, Thought and Character of William James, II, 383.
26. John L. Thomas, Alternative America: Henry George, Edward Bellamy, Henry Demarest Lloyd, and the Adversary Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 35.
27. For a discussion of leading Progressives' views, see Robert Morse Crunden, Ministers of Reform: The Progressives' Achievement in American Civilization, 1889-1920 (New York, 1982).
28. William James, A Pluralistic Universe, ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 81.
29. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, Mass., 1985).
30. Critics pointed out that true democracy had not yet been accomplished even within United States borders: see Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building (Minneapolis, 1980), 307-32.
31. William James to Frederic William Henry Myers, Jan. 1, 1896, in Perry, Thought and Character of William James, II, 305.
32. William James to William M. Salter, [Feb. 13], 1896, Thought and Character of William James, ibid., 306.
33. Salter was an independent scholar-philosopher, a leader in the Chicago branch of the Society for Ethical Culture, and a friend and in-law of William James (their wives were sisters). The term "les intellectuels" was popularized during the Dreyfus affair after the Dreyfusards published their "Manifeste des Intellectuels" of 1898. On the emergence of intellectuals as a class within American society during this period, see Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism in America, 1889-1963: The Intellectual as a Social Type (New York, 1965).
34. William James to Salter, Feb. 10, [1896], James Papers (Houghton Library). One is tempted to speculate that if he had lived long enough, James would have opposed World War I and John Dewey's support of it. Because James died in 1910, however, it was left to Randolph Bourne to criticize Dewey in the Jamesean mode. Bourne felt that, by supporting the war, "Dewey and his followers . . . [were] forsaking the creative tension between ideals and existing conditions that he [Bourne] saw as the critical dynamic in pragmatism." It may well have been the pacifist, anti-institutional flavor of James's writings that Bourne had found most appealing about pragmatism, while Dewey's more social-democratic variant was too sympathetic to large-scale institutions and state intervention for Bourne's taste. See Casey Nelson Blake, Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Lewis Mumford (Chapel Hill, 1990), esp. 158.
35. William James to Salter, Feb. 10, [1896], Jan. 5, 1898, James Papers. James's spelling of "Philippines" was erratic; I have tried to maintain the peculiarities of his spelling.
36. James wrote to friends about attending the protest at Faneuil Hall: see, for example, William James to François Pillon, June 15, 1898, James Papers. On anti-imperialism in the 1890s, see, for example, Robert L. Beisner, Twelve against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900 (New York, 1968);
37. E. Berkeley Tompkins, Anti-Imperialism in the United States: The Great Debate, 1890-1920 (Philadelphia, 1970);
38. Richard E. Welch Jr., Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine-American War, 1899-1902 (Chapel Hill, 1979).
39. William James, scrapbook, "A collection of newspaper clippings relating to the Philippine question, 1899-1903" (microfilm), film W 11316 (Houghton Library, Harvard University). In the list of James's books donated to the Harvard College Library in 1923, there is a subcategory of books on the psychology of war. For the doctor's cautioning James, see William James to James Mark Baldwin, Oct. 16, 1899, James Papers.
40. William James to Henry James Jr., Feb. 20, 1899, in Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley, eds., The Correspondence of William James (4 vols., Charlottesville, 1992-1995), III, 50.
41. William James to Henry W. Rankin, Feb. 22, 1899, James Papers.
42. Ibid.
43. William James, "The Philippine Tangle," in William James, Essays, Comments, and Reviews, ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 154-58.
44. It was originally published as a letter to the editor, Boston Evening Transcript, March 1, 1899.
45. Boston Evening Transcript, Ibid., 154.
46. Boston Evening Transcript, Ibid., 155.
47. Boston Evening Transcript, Ibid., 155, 156-57.
48. Boston Evening Transcript, Ibid., 158.
49. Boston Evening Transcript, Ibid., 157.
50. William James, "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings," in William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals, ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, Mass., 1983). 132-49.
51. On dating the essay, see William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals, ibid., 243-44.
52. James, "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings," 149.
53. William James, "Preface," Talks to Teachers on Psychology, 4-5.
54. William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology, Ibid., 4.
55. William James to Henry James Jr., Feb. 20, 1899, in Skrupskelis and Berkeley, eds., Correspondence of William James, III, 50; William James to Henry Sidgwick, April 30, 1899, James Papers.
56. William James to Sarah Wyman Whitman, June 7, 1899, in Henry James, ed., The Letters of William James (2 vols., Boston, 1920), II, 90. In the letter, this passage is actually juxtaposed with discussions of the Dreyfus affair and democracy.
57. William James to Howells, Nov. 16, 1900, Howells Papers.
58. For a fuller discussion of varieties of anarchism in the late-nineteenth-century United States and of James's interest in some of them, see Coon, "Courtship with Anarchy."
59. See also Paul Avrich, Anarchist Portraits (Princeton, 1988);
60. Ronald Creagh, L'Anarchisme aux Etats-Unis (Anarchism in the United States) (2 vols., Paris, 1986);
61. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., s.v. "Anarchism" (written by Peter Kropotkin);
62. William O. Reichert, Partisans of Freedom: A Study in American Anarchism (Bowling Green, 1976).
63. For a contemporary account that distinguished the "true anarchism" of Leo Tolstoy and Peter Kropotkin from the revolutionism of the Haymarket anarchists, see Gen. Francis A. Walker, "The Difference between the True Anarchist and the Chicago Bomb-Throwers," Boston Evening Transcript, Oct. 25, 1887, p. 5. Walker was president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Transcript article is a condensation of a talk he had given.
64. Details of Salter's public activities in behalf of the Haymarket anarchists and of his correspondence with James can be found in Coon, "Courtship with Anarchy," 56-70.
65. See Coon, "Courtship with Anarchy," 36-45;
66. Alfred Habegger, The Father: A Life of Henry James Sr. (New York, 1994);
67. Dwight W. Hoover, Henry James Sr. and the Religion of Community (Grand Rapids, 1969);
68. R. W. B. Lewis, The Jameses: A Family Narrative (New York, 1991);
69. Frederic Harold Young, The Philosophy of Henry James Sr. (New York, 1951).
70. A partial list of James's books is kept in the Houghton Library. James's unmarked copies of Morrison I. Swift, Imperialism and Liberty (Los Angeles, 1899)
71. Morrison I. Swift, Marriage and Race Death: The Foundations of an Intelligent System of Marriage (New York, 1906) are now also housed in the Houghton Library.
72. James's copies of Ernest Howard Crosby's and Rudyard Kipling's poems are found in William James, scrapbook, "A collection of newspaper clippings relating to the Philippine question, 1899-1903," film W 11316 (Houghton Library).
73. The scrapbook may have been kept by William, Alice, and their children; it contains a few different handwritings in the margins. Ernest Howard Crosby, Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable (Boston, 1899).
74. See Perry E. Gianakos, "Ernest Howard Crosby: A Forgotten Tolstoyan Antimilitarist and Anti-imperialist," in Peace Movements in America, ed. Charles Chatfield (New York, 1973), 1-19.
75. William James to Ernest Howard Crosby, Oct. 23, 1901, in William James: Selected Unpublished Correspondence, 1885-1910, ed. Frederick J. Down Scott (Columbus, 1986), 266.
76. William James to Crosby, Oct. 23, 1901, in William James: Selected Unpublished Correspondence, ed. Scott, 266.
77. Henry B. Brewster, The Theories of Anarchy and of Law: A Midnight Debate (London, 1887). It is not clear when William first read it, but the annotations in it were almost certainly made during or after 1898;
78. James twice wrote "pragm" in the margin, and he had not used that term until his lectures at the University of California in that year. On Brewster, see Henry C. Brewster, "Henry James and the Gallo-American," Botteghe Oscure, 19 (1957), 170-94;
79. Martin Halpern,"Henry B. Brewster (1850-1908): An Introduction," American Quarterly, 14 (Fall 1962), 464-82;
80. Martin Halpern, "The Life and Writings of Henry B. Brewster" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1959).
81. Brewster, Theories of Anarchy and of Law, 126.
82. Brewster, Theories of Anarchy and of Law, 109-10. In James's characteristic NB, the stem of the B completes the N.
83. Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory;
84. William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York, 1897), 256.
85. William James to Howells, Nov. 16, 1900, Howells Papers; William James to Pauline Goldmark, Jan. 30, 1903, James Papers. James, in an earlier letter (now lost), had admired Goldmark's "socialistic work" with the National Consumers League. William James to Goldmark, Jan. 22, 1908, William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy 1897, 256. ibid.
86. James, Pragmatism, 67.
87. William James, Memories and Studies (New York, 1911), 95-96.
88. James's praise of H. G. Wells's Fabian socialism is well acknowledged in the James literature. His description of Thomas Davidson's version of individualism is found in James, Memories and Studies, 89.
89. William James to Whitman, June 7, 1899, in Henry James, ed., Letters of William James, II, 90.
90. Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York, 1982).
91. William James to Elizabeth G. Evans, Feb. 15, 1901, box M84 (microfilm, reel 6), Elizabeth Glendower Evans Papers (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass.). James used the phrase "the Absolute" as a shorthand for Absolute Truth, Beauty, Good, God-all abstract, eternal standards.
92. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 285.
93. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, Ibid., 286-87.
94. On social Darwinism, see Peter J. Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea (Berkeley, 1984);
95. Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought (Boston, 1955).
96. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 298.
97. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 292.
98. For James's discussion of Tolstoyan nonresistance, see James, Varieties of Religious Experience, ibid., 126-31, 153-56.
99. James's description of "voluntarily adopted poverty" as the "moral equivalent of war" is found James, Varieties of Religious Experience, ibid., 292.
100. For example, see Cotkin, William James, Public Philosopher;
101. George M. Fredrickson, The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union (New York, 1965).
102. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 268, 271.
103. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, Ibid., 268.
104. William James to Edgar B. Van Winkle, March 1, 1858, in Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James: Briefer Version (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), 52.
105. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 113.
106. William James, "Address on the Philippine Question," in James, Essays, Comments, and Reviews, ed. Burkhardt, Bowers, and Skrupskelis, 81-86.
107. William James, Essays, Comments, and Reviews, Ibid., 85-86.
108. William James to Josephine Lowell, Dec. 6, 1903, James Papers.
109. William James, notebook, "Possibility," n.d., James Papers.
110. William James, notebook, "Possibility," Ibid.
111. William James to Baldwin, [Jan.? 1899], in Perry, Thought and Character of William James, II, 243.
112. A different letter of March 1899 reads nearly identically: William James to Rev. F. G. Montague Powell, March 12, 1899, James Papers. William James, "Quelques Considérations sur la méthode subjective," in William James, Essays in Philosophy, ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 23-31; anonymous translation, 331-38.
113. William James, notebook, "Possibility," James Papers.
114. James, "Notes for Metaphysical Seminary," 383.
115. William James, "The Sentiment of Rationality," in James, Essays in Philosophy, ed. Burkhirdt, Bowers, and Skrupskelis, 32-64.
116. William James, "Remarks on Spencer's Definition of Mind as Correspondence," Essays in Philosophy, ibid., 7-22.
117. William James to Mary E. Raymond, March 2, 1899, Mary E. Raymond Papers (Special Collections, Miller Library, Colby College, Waterville, Me.).
118. See Coon, "Courtship with Anarchy," 191-96;
119. Coon, "Standardizing the Subject";
120. James, Memories and Studies, 346-47.
121. William James to Henry Lee Higginson, Sept. 18, 1900, James Papers.
122. William James to Goldmark, Feb. 24, 1904, James Papers.
123. See James, Pragmatism, esp. 104-19.
124. James, Pragmatism, Ibid., 30.
125. James, Pragmatism, Ibid., 64.
126. James, Pragmatism, Ibid., 123.
127. James, Pragmatism, Ibid., 78.
128. James, Pragmatism, Ibid., 72.
129. James, Pragmatism, Ibid., 67.
130. James, A Pluralistic Universe, 146; a similar view is expressed on 115.
131. Friedrich Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy, trans. Frank Thilly (Boston, 1895), 317. Passage marked in James's copy, Houghton Library.
132. James, Pragmatism, 137.
133. William James to Elizabeth G. Evans, Dec. 11, 1906, James Papers. The letter as published in Perry, Thought and Character of William James, II, 473-74, differs from the original and does not contain these quotations.
134. Morrison I. Swift, Human Submission (Philadelphia, 1905), 13.
135. Morrison I. Swift, Human Submission Ibid., 78.
136. James, Pragmatism, 20-21.
137. The skeptical reader might ask, "Why wasn't James himself an activist?" It appears that he decided (through rationalization, perhaps, but also fully rooted in physiological and psychological theories of his day) that different people were constitutionally equipped for different spheres of activity. James saw himself as falling into a constitutionally delicate group that was best suited for intellectual life, so his activism took the form of lecturing, writing, and encouraging others in their own forms of activism. William James to Lutoslawski, Dec. 1, 1900, May 13, 1900, Wincenty Lutoslawski Papers (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.). See also Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory, 161-62, for a similar argument concerning James's activism.
138. William James to Goldmark, Jan. 30, 1903, James Papers. William James to Lutoslawski, May 31, 1899, Lutoslawski Papers. William James to Lutoslawski, Jan. 1, 1904, in Perry, Thought and Character of William James, II, 216.
139. Arnold van Couthen Piccardt Huizinga, The American Philosophy Pragmatism Critically Considered in Relation to Present-day Theology (Boston, 1911), 3.
140. Other examples can be found in Coon, "Courtship with Anarchy."
141. James, Pragmatism, 40.
142. James, Pragmatism, Ibid., 139.
143. James, Pragmatism, Ibid., 123, 137.
144. James, Pragmatism, Ibid., 137.
145. James, Pragmatism, 70.
146. James, "Notes for Metaphysical Seminary," 383.
147. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 287.
148. James, Memories and Studies, 286.