WILLIAM JAMES. — Philosopher, psychologist, and educator, b. in New York on 11 Jan. 1842, d. at Chocorua (New Hampshire) on 26 Aug. 1910. Son of a Protestant theologian and nephew of the writer H. James, he studied first in Newport, New York, Paris, and London, then pursued sciences and medicine at Cambridge (Mass.) and Harvard University (1861–66); later he studied in Dresden and Berlin (1867–68) under the influence of Hegelian romanticism. From 1872 he taught physiology at Harvard University, later psychology and philosophy. He exerted a wide influence on European culture (he was a member of the academies of Berlin, Paris, and Rome) in a pragmatic and spiritualistic direction, especially at international congresses (e.g., the Congress of Psychology in Rome, 1905); in the final phase of his thought (1904–10) he adopted a metaphysical stance, known as radical empiricism and pluralism, alongside investigations into metapsychics (parapsychology).
James’s masterpiece is the work: *The Principles of Psychology* (2 vols., New York 1890; Italian trans., 3rd ed., Milan 1909; abridged ed., ed. G. Tarozzi, 1911). Other works include: *Psychology, Briefer Course* (New York 1892); *The Will to Believe* (ibid. 1897; Italian trans., Milan 1912); *Human Immortality* (Boston 1898; Italian trans. in vol. IV, 7, *Saggi pragmatisti*, ed. G. Papini, Lanciano 1919); *Talks to Teachers and to Students* (New York 1900; Italian trans., *Gli ideali della vita*, Turin 1904; 2nd ed., ibid. 1916); *The Varieties of Religious Experience* (New York 1902; Italian trans., Turin 1904); *Pragmatism* (New York 1907); *The Meaning of Truth* (ibid. 1909); *A Pluralistic Universe* (ibid. 1909); *Some Problems of Philosophy* (ibid. 1911); *Memories and Studies* (ibid. 1911); *Essays in Radical Empiricism* (ibid. 1912).
James’s pragmatism, though inspired by Peirce, emphasizes the “will to believe” rather than scientific critique. A consistent opponent of intellectualist and rationalist conceptions, he views the world as constituted by instincts and living wills that subordinate things as inferior energies and shape theories of objects in order to dominate them and cooperate in their teleology. The utilitarian and vitalistic value of science accentuates the significance of the will that believes in it, without which no truth is admitted or admissible. The biological exigencies of the individual, the expansion and development of his practical personality, his coexistence and connection with other living beings—especially his fellow humans (“group mind” or collective consciousness)—are therefore the fundamental values. Consciousness itself, to respect its nature, must be grounded not in its objective scientific appearances but in its conduct or practical behavior (behaviorism).
James’s psychology, in which he achieved historic results as an experimenter (studies of reflex acts, psycho-physical brain structures, sub-osseous phenomena, emotions), is decisively antimaterialistic. The physiological organism and the nervous system are regarded as instruments of existence and action, produced and coordinated, through natural pragmatism, by conscious activity itself. This activity is not to be reduced to an “initial ego,” as idealists claim, but resolved into a “stream of thought,” or flow of sensory-instinctive tendencies as elementary waves (psychic dust). The meeting of these waves determines consciousness and the search for objects as their occasional and probable causes; the nervous system intervenes in this meeting to transform sensations into reactions, thus dividing—though only in a pragmatic sense—consciousness into theoretical and practical moments. The continuity of personality is thereby entrusted to memory.
In his religious studies, James appeared animated by lively Christian beliefs but opposed to Catholicism, dogma, and even monotheism. Faith, for him, is a subjective act of the will to believe in what sustains and protects our life: subjective faith may be doubted, yet it constitutes a religious experience whose objective content appeals to a power greater than our own and demands our admiration and devotion. It allows various types of belief to coexist, provided they serve their purpose; yet it also permits the superiority of a personal God, akin to knowing and provident subjects. This personal God, however, is defined by an encounter between our belief in him and what he does for us: his personality is therefore finite, as is his creative and inspirational activity, so much so that he admits the autonomous evolution of parts of creation, the freedom of creatures, and the coexistence of evil; and, given the multiplicity of spirits, he does not exclude polytheism.
James’s metaphysics concludes in favor of the superiority of the pluralistic and monadological hypothesis, which recognizes the relatively independent existence of individual beings, in contrast to monism, which fuses them into one. He opposed the idea of a “universe” anchored in God and rejected the notion of a “multiverse,” insisting instead on the thesis of the “pluriverse,” or plurality of beings and their tendencies, relative to which the absolute is such only in itself and with regard to what depends on II. The reality of life lies in the truth of experience itself: the time in which its continuity unfolds corresponds to a perpetual flux, rooted in the freedom of the will. Time does not allow consciousness to be bound into a closed, “hard” or resistant soul toward objects; rather, it dissolves it into the very love of beings and things, while recommending belief in the immortality of one’s being, since its sensations and violations transcend the intellectual threshold of consciousness (cf. Myers) and the temporal limits that may be recognized in this life.
James’s work extended also to education, especially professional education, and to ethical progress. In the former field, his eloquent “talks to teachers and students” illustrated psychological methods and the ideals of life. He proposed, for the persuasion of disciples and the fulfillment of the educational mission, the “gospel of surrender,” the sacrifice of self to the understanding and elevation of present souls. In the social sphere, he championed the theories of “meliorism,” or the democratic pursuit of a salutary and religious reform of life, and the primacy of the moral problem as a practical form of struggle for good and the betterment of society.