The bases, limits, and values of pluralism: An engagement with William James

Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society

Volumn 149, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 159-198

  Flathman, Richard E ^a  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 34248040636     PISSN: 0003049X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Conference Proceeding    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (20)

1. "The One and the Many," 269-70.
2. In The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition, ed. John J. McDermott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, 1977). Hereafter McD. plus title and page number. Because of its ready availability, where possible I cite and quote from that edition.
3. "Not unfortunately the universe is wild, - game-flavored as a hawk's wing.. .. This is pluralism, somewhat rhapsodically expressed." McD., 135. The quotation is from the chapter entitled "Radical Empiricism" and is in the collection The Will to Believe. I have consulted this work in William James: Pragmatism and Other Writings, edited and with an introduction by Giles Gunn (New York: Penguin Books, 2000). Hereafter Gunn plus page number and where possible the book or essay in which the passage occurs.
4. Gerald E. Myers labels this doctrine "nativist." See his William James: His Life and Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), chap. 4. Hereafter Myers.
5. William James, The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. (New York: Dover, 1950). First published 1890. Hereafter PP plus volume and page number.
6. In Bruce Kuklick, ed., William James: Writings 1902-1910 (Library of America, 1987). Hereafter Kuklick plus page number and the book, article, or paper in which the passage appears.
7. For these terms of art see esp. "A Word More about Truth" (1907, in Kuklick, 897-908 and "Novelty and the Infinite," esp. 1070).
8. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983).
9. This feature of pluralism, and especially its value, is potently defended and promoted by William E. Connolly. See his books Identity\Differcnce: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991)
10. and The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
11. See the speeches and papers on this topic in Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1912).
12. for West's, see The American Evasion of Philosophy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989).
13. See his Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). As his title indicates, Taylor addresses James's religious thinking and argues that James inadequately appreciated the institutionalized, integrating, and identity-creating and -sustaining qualities of much religious experience. As regards his personal religious outlook and preferences, this is correct about James. (Of the organized faiths with which he was most familiar, James thought of himself as "protestant" in religious orientation.) And Taylor is correct that VRE (deliberately) gave little attention to dogmas, creeds, and ecclesiological structures and arrangements. But this is by no means to say that he was unaware of them and of their influences. It would be closer to the truth to say that he was intensely aware of them and thought that they diminished the intensity and vivacity that religious experience as he valued it can sometimes have.
14. This paragraph generalizes over the arguments of The Will to Believe and various related essays. Several students and critics of James have argued (complained) that James distorts Clifford's position and that his own arguments are both confused and confusing. For a balanced assessment, see David A. Hollinger, "James, Clifford, and the scientific conscience," in Putnam, op. cit., 69-83.I do not enter into this controversy here.
15. For these distinctions, see McD., 611 ("The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life").
16. Ruth Anna Putnam, "Some of life's ideals," 284 in Putnam; McD., 623.
17. McD., 644-45 ("On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings"). Note that the restriction is against being "forward" in pronouncing on "the meaninglessness" of the lives of others. It does not entirely forbid even judgments of this kind, and it neither can nor does forbid other kinds of judgments of the thinking and acting of other persons.
18. McD., 631 ("On a Certain Blindness. .. ").
19. McD., 739, from "Appendix" to Some Problems of Philosophy, in Kuklick, 1096-97.
20. From "The Importance of Individuals," in The Will to Believe: Human Mortality and other essays on popular philosophy, 261.