THE DIVIDED SELF OF WILLIAM JAMES This book offers a powerful new interpretation of the philosophy of William James. It focuses on the multiple directions in which James's philosophy moves and the inevitable tensions that arise as a result. The first part of the book explores a range of James's doctrines in which he refuses to privilege any particular perspective, be it that of the scientist, moral agent, artist, or mystic. The second part of the book turns to those doctrines where James favors the perspective of mystical experience. Richard Gale then attempts to reconcile the relativistic tendencies with James's account of mystical experience. An appendix considers the distorted picture of James's philosophy that has been passed down to us through the interpretations of his work by John Dewey. Such is the range of James's philosophy that this stimulating new approach will find readers among those interested in the history of modern philosophy, especially pragmatism, as well as in the history of ideas, religion, and American studies. Richard M. Gale is a professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. THE DIVIDED SELF OF WILLIAM JAMES RICHARD M. GALE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www. Cambridge. org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521642699 © Richard M. Gale 1999 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1999 This digitally printed version 2007 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Gale, Richard M. (date) The divided self of William James / Richard M. Gale. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-521-64269-8 1. James, William, 1842-1910. I. Title. B945.J24G35 1999 191-dc21 98-30477 CIP ISBN 978-0-521-64269-9 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-03778-5 paperback for Mari Mori mother-in-law extraordinaire Contents Acknowledgments page ix Introduction 1 The Promethean Pragmatist 1 The Ethics of Prometheanism 25 2 The Willfulness of Belief 50 3 The Freedom of Belief 72 4 The Will to Believe 93 5 The Ethics of Truth 117 6 The Semantics of "Truth" 150 7 Ontological Relativism: William James Meets Poo-bah 186 The Anti-Promethean Mystic 8 The Self 219 9 The I-Thou Quest for Intimacy and Religious Mysticism 246 10 The Humpty-Dumpty Intuition and Panpsychism 273 11 Attempts at a One-World Interpretation of James 303 Appendix John Dewey's Naturalization of William James 335 Bibliography of Works Cited 353 Index 359