Book Alert / William James -- In the Maelstrom of American Modernism
William James -- In the Maelstrom of American Modernism
by Robert D. Richardson, Houghton Mifflin ’07, $30, 622 pages, ISBN
#0618433252. Index, principal sources, source notes, glossary,
chronology, two groupings of b&w glossy images.
Henry James, Sr., the father of William James, may well be spinning
in his grave at being dismissed thus by his son’s biographer: "Henry
James, Sr. was the author of a long procession of unwanted and unread
books, published at his own expense." But then, Henry, it’s not all
about you -- face it, you raised your namesake, Henry, and his brother
to outshine you and they did that in spades.
Nearly 100 years since William’s death, author Robert D. Richardson
is able to claim the mining of "a vast number of unpublished letters,
journals, and family records" to shed new light on one of the 19th
century’s most brilliant scholars and a pillar of Harvard University
for decades. In sum, he concludes "We have three main reasons to
remember Willliam James":
For becoming "a major force in developing the modern concept of
consciousness, at the same time that Freud was developing the modern
concept of the unconscious. James was interested in how the mind works;
he believed mental states are always related to bodily states and that
the connections between them could be shown empirically."
For pioneering in the philosophical movement of pragmatism,
"which is the belief that truth is something that happens to an idea,
that the that the truth of something is the sum of all its actual
results."
For his argument in Varieties of Religious Experience
that "religious authority resides not in books, bibles, buildings,
inherited creeds, or historical prophets, not in authoritative figures
-- whether parish ministers, popes, or saints -- but in the actual
religious experiences of individuals." Of more contemporary relevancy
is this that this philosophy was a major inspiration for Bill Wilson in
the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous.
William had a close and productive relationship with his brother,
Henry the younger, who was to the world of literary fiction what
William was to the world of philosophy. The author is well schooled in
the world of 19th century New England thinkers, having written well
received biographies of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.