Author : William James
Publisher : Courier Corporation
Page : 372 pages
File Size : 35,47 MB
Release : 2012-03-07
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0486120953
Classic text examines habit, consciousness, self, discrimination, the sense of time, memory, perception, imagination, reasoning, instincts, volition, much more. This edition omits the outdated first nine chapters.
Author : William James
Publisher : Library of America
Page : 1410 pages
File Size : 42,91 MB
Release : 1988-02-01
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780940450387
Philosopher and psychologist William James was the best known and most influential American thinker of his time. The five books and nineteen essays collected in this Library of America volume represent all his major work from 1902 until his death in 1910. Most were originally written as lectures addressed to general audiences as well as philosophers and were received with great enthusiasm. His writing is clear, energetic, and unpretentious, and is marked by the devotion to literary excellence he shared with his brother, Henry James. In these works William James champions the value of individual experience with an eloquence and enthusiasm that has placed him alongside Emerson and Whitman as a classic exponent of American democratic culture. In The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) James explores “the very inner citadel of human life” by focusing on intensely religious individuals of different cultures and eras. With insight, compassion, and open-mindedness, he examines and assesses their beliefs, seeking to measure religion’s value by its contributions to individual human lives. In Pragmatism (1907) James suggests that the conflicting metaphysical positions of “tender-minded” rationalism and “tough-minded” empiricism be judged by examining their actual consequences. Philosophy, James argues, should free itself from unexamined principles and closed systems and confront reality with complete openness. In A Pluralistic Universe (1909) James rejects the concept of the absolute and calls on philosophers to respond to “the real concrete sensible flux of life.” Through his discussion of Kant, Hegel, Henri Bergson, and religion, James explores a universe viewed not as an abstract “block” but as a rich “manyness-in-oneness,” full of independent yet connected events. The Meaning of Truth (1909) is a polemical collection of essays asserting that ideas are made true not by inherent qualities but by events. James delights in intellectual combat, stating his positions with vigor while remaining open to opposing ideas. Some Problems of Philosophy (1910) was intended by James to serve both as a historical overview of metaphysics and as a systematic statement of his philosophical beliefs. Though unfinished at his death, it fully demonstrates the psychological insight and literary vividness James brought to philosophy. Among the essays included are the anti-imperialist “Address on the Philippine Question,” “On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake,” a candid personal account of the 1906 California disaster, and “The Moral Equivalent of War,” a call for the redirection of martial energies to peaceful ends, as well as essays on Emerson, the role of university in intellectual life, and psychic research. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Author : William James
Publisher : Read Books Ltd
Page : 25 pages
File Size : 38,99 MB
Release : 2015-12-22
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1473365376
From one of nineteenth-century America’s leading philosophical thinkers, William James, this fascinating short essay is an engaging read exploring the reasons for war, and methods and resources to prevent conflict. The Moral Equivalent of War was written as part of an initiative to stir interest in international peace among US residents. First published in 1910, the Executive Committee of the Association for International Conciliation used this treatise to encourage civilians to support the movement promoting international peace. In this short essay, William James discusses the reasons for war in general and explores the various ways in which we can prevent it.
Author : Matthew Crippen
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 214 pages
File Size : 32,67 MB
Release : 2020-10-06
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 023154880X
Pragmatism—a pluralistic philosophy with kinships to phenomenology, Gestalt psychology, and embodied cognitive science—is resurging across disciplines. It has growing relevance to literary studies, the arts, and religious scholarship, along with branches of political theory, not to mention our understanding of science. But philosophies and sciences of mind have lagged behind this pragmatic turn, for the most part retaining a central-nervous-system orientation, which pragmatists reject as too narrow. Matthew Crippen, a philosopher of mind, and Jay Schulkin, a behavioral neuroscientist, offer an innovative interdisciplinary theory of mind. They argue that pragmatism in combination with phenomenology is not only able to give an unusually persuasive rendering of how we think, feel, experience, and act in the world but also provides the account most consistent with current evidence from cognitive science and neurobiology. Crippen and Schulkin contend that cognition, emotion, and perception are incomplete without action, and in action they fuse together. Not only are we embodied subjects whose thoughts, emotions, and capacities comprise one integrated system; we are living ecologies inseparable from our surroundings, our cultures, and our world. Ranging from social coordination to the role of gut bacteria and visceral organs in mental activity, and touching upon fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and plant cognition, Crippen and Schulkin stress the role of aesthetics, emotions, interests, and moods in the ongoing enactment of experience. Synthesizing philosophy, neurobiology, psychology, and the history of science, Mind Ecologies offers a broad and deep exploration of evidence for the embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended nature of mind.
Author : William James
Publisher :
Page : 1212 pages
File Size : 37,59 MB
Release : 1992
Category : Psychology
ISBN :
Selection of writings by philosopher, psychologist, and champion of religious pluralism William James, including "The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy," "Psychology: Briefer Course," and ten other essays.
Author : Amy Kittelstrom
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 465 pages
File Size : 32,95 MB
Release : 2016-04-05
Category : History
ISBN : 0143108131
A history of religion’s role in the American liberal tradition through the eyes of seven transformative thinkers Today we associate liberal thought and politics with secularism. When we argue over whether the nation’s founders meant to keep religion out of politics, the godless side is said to be liberal. But the role of religion in American politics has always been far less simplistic than today’s debates would suggest. In The Religion of Democracy, historian Amy Kittelstrom shows how religion and democracy have worked together as universal ideals in American culture—and as guides to moral action and to the social practice of treating one another as equals who deserve to be free. The first people in the world to call themselves “liberals” were New England Christians in the early republic. Inspired by their religious belief in a God-given freedom of conscience, these Americans enthusiastically embraced the democratic values of equality and liberty, giving shape to the liberal tradition that would remain central to our politics and our way of life. The Religion of Democracy re-creates the liberal conversation from the eighteenth century to the twentieth by tracing the lived connections among seven transformative thinkers through what they read and wrote, where they went, whom they knew, and how they expressed their opinions—from John Adams to William James to Jane Addams; from Boston to Chicago to Berkeley. Sweeping and ambitious, The Religion of Democracy is a lively narrative of quintessentially American ideas as they were forged, debated, and remade across our history.
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 516 pages
File Size : 34,44 MB
Release : 2003
Category : English literature
ISBN :
Author : Elizabeth L. Throesch
Publisher : Anthem Press
Page : 325 pages
File Size : 13,97 MB
Release : 2017-01-02
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1783086254
‘Before Einstein’ brings together previous scholarship in the field of nineteenth-century literature and science and greatly expands upon it, offering the first book-length study of not only the scientific and cultural context of the spatial fourth dimension, but also the literary value of four-dimensional theory. In addition to providing close critical analysis of Charles Howard Hinton’s Scientific Romances (1884–1896), ‘Before Einstein’ examines the work of H. G. Wells, Henry James and William James through the lens of four-dimensional theory. The primary value of Hinton’s work has always been its literary and philosophical content and influence, rather than its scientific authority. It is certain that significant late nineteenth-century writers and thinkers such as H. G. Wells, William James, Olive Schreiner, Karl Pearson and W. E. B. Du Bois read Hinton. Others, including Henry James, Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford, were familiar with his ideas. Hinton’s fourth dimension appealed to scientists, spiritualists and artists, and – particularly at the end of the nineteenth century – the interests of these different groups often overlapped. Truly interdisciplinary in scope, ‘Before Einstein’ breaks new ground by offering an extensive analysis of four-dimensional theory's place in the shared history of Modernism.
Author : Russell B. Goodman
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 38,26 MB
Release : 2015-07-03
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0191060127
Russell B. Goodman tells the story of the development of philosophy in America from the mid-18th century to the late 19th century. The key figures in this story, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, the writers of The Federalist, and the romantics (or 'transcendentalists') Emerson and Thoreau, were not professors but men of the world, whose deep formative influence on American thought brought philosophy together with religion, politics, and literature. Goodman considers their work in relation to the philosophers and other thinkers they found important: the deism of John Toland and Matthew Tindal, the moral sense theories of Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and David Hume, the political and religious philosophy of John Locke, the romanticism of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant. Goodman discusses Edwards's condemnation and Franklin's acceptance of deism, argues that Jefferson was an Epicurean in his metaphysical views and a Christian, Stoic, and Epicurean in his moral outlook, traces Emerson's debts to writers from Madame de Staël to William Ellery Channing, and considers Thoreau's orientation to the universe through sitting and walking. The morality of American slavery is a major theme in American Philosophy before Pragmatism, introduced not to excuse or condemn, but to study how five formidably intelligent people thought about the question when it was—as it no longer is for us—open. Edwards, Franklin and Jefferson owned slaves, though Franklin and Jefferson played important roles in disturbing the uneasy American moral equilibrium that included slavery, even as they approved an American constitution that included it. Emerson and Thoreau were prominent public opponents of slavery in the eighteen forties and fifties. The book contains an Interlude on the concept of a republic and concludes with an Epilogue documenting some continuities in American philosophy, particularly between Emerson and the pragmatists.
Author : John Muir
Publisher : Library of America
Page : 946 pages
File Size : 30,33 MB
Release : 1997-04-22
Category : Nature
ISBN : 1598533428
Known as the "Father of the National Parks," John Muir wrote about the American West with unmatched passion and eloquence—as seen in this stunning, one-volume collection In a lifetime of exploration, writing, and passionate political activism, John Muir became America's most eloquent spokesman for the mystery and majesty of the wilderness. A crucial figure in the creation of our national parks system and a far-seeing prophet of environmental awareness who founded the Sierra Club in 1892, he was also a master of natural description who evoked with unique power and intimacy the untrammeled landscapes of the American West. Nature Writings collects Muir's most significant and best-loved works in a single volume, including: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (1913), My First Summer in the Sierra (1911), The Mountains of California (1894) and Stickeen (1909). Rounding out the volume is a rich selection of essays—including "Yosemite Glaciers," "God's First Temples," "Snow-Storm on Mount Shasta," "The American Forests," and "Save the Redwoods"—that highlight various aspects of his career: his exploration of the Grand Canyon and of what became Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks, his successful crusades to preserve the wilderness, his early walking tour to Florida, and the Alaska journey of 1879. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
