William James

Born – January 11, 1842 – New York City
Died – August 26, 1910
School – Pragmatism
Main Interests –
Pragmatism, Psychology, Philosophy of Religion,
Epistemology, Meaning

William James is frequently looked upon as the most representative of American philosophers. The philosophical movement that he developed and promoted is also often considered to be the most original contribution that United States has made in philosophy.

He, the eldest of five children, was born in New York City on Jan 11, 1842. Henry James, the novelist, was his younger brother by some fifteen months. William was slow in finding his vocation. He studied painting with William M. Hunt in Newport, Rhode Island, attended the scientific school and then the medical school at Harvard, accompanied the Agassiz expedition to Brazil,, and pursued the study of psychology in Germany. This uncertainty about a profession was also attended by a severe mental depression and something of a spiritual crisis. His deliverance seems to have come mainly from two sources: first, his reading of the French philosopher Charles Renouvier on free will, and then in 1872, his appointment to the post of instructor in physiology at Harvard. He welcomed the latter as “a perfect god-send to me just now, an external motive to work – dealing with men instead of my own mind, and a diversion from those introspective studies which had bred a sort of philosophical hypochondria.”

James spent almost his entire academic career at Harvard. He was appointed instructor in physiology for the spring 1873 term, instructor in anatomy and physiology in 1873, assistant professor of psychology in 1876, assistant professor of philosophy in 1881, full professor in 1885, endowed chair in psychology in 1889, return to philosophy in 1897, and emeritus professor of philosophy in 1907.

James studied medicine, physiology, and biology, and began to teach in those subjects, but was drawn to the scientific study of the human mind at a time when psychology was constituting itself as a science. James's acquaintance with the work of figures like Hermann Helmholtz in Germany and Pierre Janet in France facilitated his introduction of courses in scientific psychology at Harvard University. He taught his first experimental psychology course at Harvard in the 1875-1876 academic year

In 1875 James began teaching psychology and set up the first laboratory in America in experimental psychology. Three years later he married a Boston school teacher, Alice Gibbens, and at the same time contracted to produce a textbook in psychology by 1880. But the work grew ever larger as he wrote it, and it was not until 1890 that it was completed and published as the two volumes – Principles of Psychology. The book was an immediate success and established James as the leading psychologist of his day. Yet, ironically, his own interest in the subject was on the wane.

James had always been interested in problems of philosophy and religion. And after the publication of his “Psychology” he devoted himself mainly to these subjects. In addition to his teaching at Harvard, where he became professor of philosophy, he was in great demand as lecturer and became a popular speaker from coast to coast. The first volume of his lectures appeared in 1897 under the title “The will to believe and Other  Essays in Popular Philosophy”. 

In a lecture at Berkeley, California, in 1898  on philosophical concepts and practical results, James had revived what he called “Peirce’s Principle” of twenty years before. This marked the start of his philosophy of Pragmatism. In the course of his lectures he claimed to find the pragmatic method at work among many philosophers, including Socrates, Aristotle, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. 

Although James, with typical generosity, gave major credit for the formulation of the Pragmatic school of philosophy, to others, there is no doubt that it is to him that Pragmatism owes its fame as a movement in philosophy. The works on Pragmatism were written in vigorous and popular style that James called “deliberate anti-technicality”.