Synopses & Reviews
Consisting of some 572 letters, with another 460 calendared, thistenth volume in a projected series of twelve offers a complete accounting of WilliamJames's known correspondence -- with family, friends, and colleagues -- from thebeginning of 1902 through March 1905.
For Jamesthese were hopeful years of recovery. The end of the depressing cure at Nauheim, thesuccessful conclusion of the arduous Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh, the reachingmaturity and independence of his two eldest children, and the gradual withdrawalfrom teaching responsibilities at Harvard allowed him to hope that he would at longlast present his philosophical message to the world in the shape of a treatise onmetaphysics.
Philosophy was in a state of unrest, with old alliances breaking up and new ones forming, and was ripe for a morefruitful reformulation of its traditional questions. Intellectualism, philosophicaland scientific, was waning, making room for the emergence of an empiricism congenialto humane values. As reflected in the letters of this period, James comes torecognize that Dewey and the Chicago school were his allies and that the FrenchmanHenri Bergson was moving in the same direction. Consequently, Bergson is the majornew correspondent of the present volume, and, because he emerges during this periodas James's leading supporter, Ferdinand Schiller is another dominantcorrespondent.
Often boisterous and irreverent, Schiller saw himself as a general about to overwhelm an aged and sleepy, but stilldangerous, enemy. James, in the meantime, had to call upon all of his diplomaticskills to keep on good terms with the people Schiller irritated, while remainingSchiller's friend and defender. Scholars will find much material in this volume thatwill help them judge whether the common view of pragmatism as a capricioussubjectivism largely reflected a widespread lack of respect forSchiller.
While continuing his involvement withanti-imperialism, James takes a more critical stance toward existing socialconditions during this period, proclaiming his admiration for the small andinsisting on the connection between great size and social evil. In 1904 he tours theAmerican South. There are hints that he was acting as a scout for his brother Henry, which perhaps caused William James to see more of the meanness and shabbiness of theregion than he would have otherwise.
Along withBergson and Schiller, prominent intellectuals represented in this volume includeTh odore Flournoy, Wincenty Lutoslawski, Carl Stumpf, Hugo M nsterberg, JosiahRoyce, Charles Sanders Peirce, Oliver Lodge, John Dewey, George Herbert Palmer, Charles William Eliot, James Mark Baldwin, and Edwin Godkin.