No professor's lectures can save us : William James's pragmatism, radical empiricism, and pluralism / John J. Stuhr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stuhr, John J., author.

Series:

Oxford Academic

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

James, William, 1842-1910.

James, William.

Pragmatism--Theory of belief .

Pragmatism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 295 pages)

Edition:

First Edition

Other Title:

William James's pragmatism, radical empiricism, and pluralism

Place of Publication:

New York, NY Oxford University Press 2023.

Summary:

The book draws critically on the full range of the writings of William James-his psychology, theory of belief and truth, radical empiricism, pluralism, and accounts of religion, ethics, politics, and society-to develop a powerful case for an original pragmatic worldview and temperament resonant with James's philosophy. In a manner that avoids the "vicious intellectualism" James criticized, the book engages more than a century of scholarship on James, and places him in conversation with both his contemporaries and more recent writers. The author moves both with James and at times against James to address and illuminate central issues about the nature of the self, freedom, morality, community, truth, reality, and possibility. The chapters take up James's views on faith and freedom; habit, attention, and flourishing; inclusive and ethical lives; democratic politics; the temperament of pragmatism; a radically empirical ontology of relations; and a pluralistic and unfinished universe. The focus throughout is practical, aiming to show the differences in concrete lives that it makes to take up a broadly Jamesian pragmatic, radically empirical, and pluralistic personal perspective across the fallible and "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 pretend to provide, by itself, salvation. Instead, it effectively develops insights in the writings of William James that continue to constitute invaluable resources for new problems, new possibilities, and new forms of personal and social life.

Contents:

Contents: Acknowledgments - Abbreviations of the Works of William James - Introduction: Seven Introductions - 1. Possibilities, Faith, and Action: Redeeming the Wild Universe Through The Will to Believe - 2. Avoiding Old-Fogeyism: Plasticity, Habits of Genius, and Acts of Greatness - 3. More Inclusive Ideals: Ethical Lives After Old-Fashioned Moral Philosophy - 4. The Political Philosopher and the Political Life - 5. The Temperament of Pragmatism - 6. Everything Here Is Plastic: Radical Empiricism and Worlds of Relations - 7. Pluralism Unconcluded - Works Cited - Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-19-766464-4

0-19-766466-0

0-19-766465-2

OCLC:

1348491744