A Pluralistic Universe [Halls of Wisdom]

by William James

As these lectures are meant to be public, and so few, I have assumed all very special problems to be excluded, and some topic of general interest required. Fortunately, our age seems to be growing philosophical again—still in the ashes live the wonted fires. Oxford, long the seed-bed, for the english world, of the idealism inspired by Kant and Hegel, has recently become the nursery of a very different way of thinking. Even non-philosophers have begun to take an interest in a controversy over what is known as pluralism or humanism. It looks a little as if the ancient english empirism, so long put out of fashion here by nobler sounding germanic formulas, might be repluming itself and getting ready for a stronger flight than ever. It looks as if foundations were being sounded and examined afresh...

_____


[Halls of Wisdom]
 
From Buddha to Confucius to Plato and down the spiral of time to Kant, Nietzsche and Russell, the Halls of Wisdom are filled to overflowing, yet barely full. Explore the cavernous teachings of the masters, get lost in the art of wonder, and fall in love with wisdom.
The only thing you can lose are your chains.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Psychology, Classics, American

405 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1908

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, James was one of the leading thinkers of the late nineteenth century and is believed by many to be one of the most influential philosophers the United States has ever produced, while others have labelled him the "Father of American psychology". Along with Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey, he is considered to be one of the greatest figures associated with the philosophical school known as pragmatism, and is also cited as one of the founders of the functional psychology. He also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. James' work has influenced intellectuals such as Émile Durkheim, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty.

Born into a wealthy family, James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr and the brother of both the prominent novelist Henry James, and the diarist Alice James. James wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. Among his most influential books are Principles of Psychology, which was a groundbreaking text in the field of psychology, Essays in Radical Empiricism, an important text in philosophy, and The Varieties of Religious Experience, which investigated different forms of religious experience.
William James was born at the Astor House in New York City. He was the son of Henry James Sr., a noted and independently wealthy Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day. The intellectual brilliance of the James family milieu and the remarkable epistolary talents of several of its members have made them a subject of continuing interest to historians, biographers, and critics.

James interacted with a wide array of writers and scholars throughout his life, including his godfather Ralph Waldo Emerson, his godson William James Sidis, as well as Charles Sanders Peirce, Bertrand Russell, Josiah Royce, Ernst Mach, John Dewey, Macedonio Fernández, Walter Lippmann, Mark Twain, Horatio Alger, Jr., Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud.

William James received an eclectic trans-Atlantic education, developing fluency in both German and French. Education in the James household encouraged cosmopolitanism. The family made two trips to Europe while William James was still a child, setting a pattern that resulted in thirteen more European journeys during his life. His early artistic bent led to an apprenticeship in the studio of William Morris Hunt in Newport, Rhode Island, but he switched in 1861 to scientific studies at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University.

In his early adulthood, James suffered from a variety of physical ailments, including those of the eyes, back, stomach, and skin. He was also tone deaf. He was subject to a variety of psychological symptoms which were diagnosed at the time as neurasthenia, and which included periods of depression during which he contemplated suicide for months on end. Two younger brothers, Garth Wilkinson (Wilky) and Robertson (Bob), fought in the Civil War. The other three siblings (William, Henry, and Alice James) all suffered from periods of invalidism.

He took up medical studies at Harvard Medical School in 1864. He took a break in the spring of 1865 to join naturalist Louis Agassiz on a scientific expedition up the Amazon River, but aborted his trip after eight months, as he suffered bouts of severe seasickness and mild smallpox. His studies were interrupted once again due to illness in April 1867. He traveled to Germany in search of a cure and remained there until November 1868; at that time he was 26 years old. During this period, he

Reviews

[Warren Fournier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not that I know from experience, but I strongly advise a sober mind when reading this book, or you might just end up squatting in a corner of your garage sucking on your thumb with a third eye on your forehead and a short-circuit in your cortex.

This book, first published in 1909, is a series of lectures William James wrote and delivered for the Hibbert Lecture series, an annual event where non-sectarian guests speak on theology. The Hibbert Lectures are still going strong today. But outside of academic circles, I haven't heard too many people talk about this particular entry in the catalog of the great American philosopher and psychologist. Whatever the reason may be for its relative obscurity, I think this is one of his best books. It is fairly brief and to the point, summarizing much of his thought on God and Mind in clear yet elegant language. Let's dip in for a taste of what's in these lectures.

You can't talk about Mind without the ghost of Hegel looking over your shoulder, and so James devotes an entire lecture to using Hegel as a springboard for his own philosophy. He manages to sum up my feelings about Hegel much more eloquently (and hilariously) than I ever could. He says that Hegel was a rare genius who had a unique and powerful vision of the Absolute as essentially one great brain that knows itself, but that Hegel is so hard to understand because he used a faulty system of dialectic to pretend to come to logical conclusions--and also because his writing kind of sucked.

James even admitted he had to be high on nitrous to understand Hegel. I guess you young students out there can try using that excuse next time your parents are banging on your door because they smell reefer wafting from your bedroom. "I'm working on Hegelian transcendentalism, mother!"

Well, no matter how he managed it, James distills the passion of Hegel and comes to his own endlessly captivating conclusions about the Absolute. He finds that what Hegelians tend to miss is the logical fallacies inherent in their philosophy of a perfect and infinite Absolute. How can the Absolute be perfect since it is compromised of so many imperfect things? Rather, James cautions us to not conflate the Absolute with God.

I don't know about you, but I certainly always associated the Absolute with God. James says to quit doing that. In fact, he doubts the existence of the Absolute! But he does feel that GOD (as many religions understand God) DOES exist and that a finite God even solves the unsolvable metaphysical and logical puzzles put up by the problem of evil in the universe.

For Hegel, the Absolute exists within no environment because it is infinite. How did he come to this conclusion? Well, he noticed that everything has a dialectic, or something external that negates it. In practical politics, an example might be a democracy--the very idea of a free democracy is always on the verge of negation. You can't even "protect" it, because to do things like censure opponents to the standing administration is to no longer have a democracy. But this even applies to language and concepts. If you expect the unexpected, then it is no longer unexpected. If you say "no more," you've already said more. To define a limit is to have gone beyond it. Pride comes before the fall. For every "on", there must be an "off". In other words, every thesis has its antithesis--that is, until we get to the Absolute. There is nothing external to the Absolute to negate it. So everything we can know in the universe is not as it seems because they are all thoughts or ideas of this ultimate Mind that works through dialectics. We as individuals are not really individual, because we are not PART of the Whole--we ARE the Whole. Therefore, nothing is distinct or independent. Thing "A" can influence thing "B" only because they are not as separate as we might at first perceive. Everything is part of one great whole. This is called "monistic" idealism.

James denies monistic philosophy in favor of a "pluralistic" one. The universe may be a Mind as Hegel says, but is comprised of distinct things alive with consciousness. He argues for the consciousness of plants, for example, and believes they can even make sound, which was serendipitous because my wife just showed me a recent article about how plants make sounds when injured or to attract insects. It certainly makes me have second thoughts about mowing the lawn! And the consciousness of plants are part of a network of consciousness, just as the eye and the ear may have no awareness of each other's processes, but together are part of a more broad system of relations that we call the self. A collection of selves is another form of consciousness. The Earth, with its complex ecosystem and self-sustaining cycles, is a mind with its own consciousness. So is the solar system, and so on. All of these consciousnesses (or as he calls them, "eaches") are constituent to something much larger than ourselves. Logically, it is possible to believe in superhuman beings without there needing to be an Absolute at all. But if the Absolute DOES exist, then it is only the wider cosmic environment of which God is the most ideal portion. This is more in line with what most religions say about God. The Christian God, for example, seems to exist in its own environment but on a superhuman level, and relates to humans in a way more intimate than the Absolute.

Now, he admits that this twist on Hegel was not entirely his own. He dedicates a whole lecture to talking about a German philosopher named Fechner, who I never heard of, but who was a big influence on these ideas. Thanks, Billy J for giving me yet another author for my TBR! He also gives a shout out to French philosopher Henri Bergson, which is ironic, because he is the next philosopher on my queue to check out!

I still think Hegel was on to something with his dialectic. Everything DOES seem to have a negation. The same holds true for how the mind works--for every packet of norepinephrine released from a neuron, we have GABA inhibition somewhere else. For every D2 receptor that dopamine activated, there is another receptor that turns off. The brain is a complex network of "on" and "off", zeroes and ones. These digital communication patterns occur across nerves in the body. But are there not similar communications in the motherboard of a computer? Or in nature? For every tree that falls, new trees can grow as they take advantage of the sunlight once shaded by the canopy of the old tree. Zeroes and ones.

But James makes some compelling arguments for his own philosophy, and comes up with some mind-blowing conclusions. His thoughts on what happens to us after our bodies die is particularly beautiful and makes sense. At the risk of spoiling the good stuff, I'll wrap up with a comment on the writing itself. This is certainly not easy reading, and modern audiences may find some of his archaic language and odd spelling (like "tho" for "though") to be a bit disorienting, but this book is more accessible than most, especially if you are moderately familiar with the subject matter. What I love about James is that he is a no-nonsense philosopher. He scoffs at "the 'difficulty' that habitually accompanies profundity." Yeah, I'm looking at you James Joyce! Stream of consciousness, my ass!

Anyway, I do highly recommend this book for those struggling with faith and theological questions, as well as anyone interested in metaphysics. It is refreshing to read a work of well-reasoned philosophy that doesn't build an entire system around a assumption of God and doesn't purposefully take God out of the equation either. The words of William James are truly beautiful and inspiring, and I wish I could go back in time and attend these lectures in person. This book may not have pried open my third eye, but it sure gave me a lot to unpack.

SCORE: 5 pragmatists out of 5

WORD OF THE DAY: Theodicy

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

William James's Pluralistic Universe

William James is best-known for his development of the American philosophy of pragmatism and for his pioneering work in psychology. But in addition to pragmatism, which he described as a method and as a theory of truth, James expounded a broad philosophical doctrine which he called radical empiricism (pluralism). Radical pluralism, as James explained it, constituted a metaphysical position -- one describing the nature of reality -- rather than a method. In his book, "Pragmatism", James maintained that his commitment to radical empiricism was separate from his commitment to pragmatism; but in the Preface to his book, "The Meaning of Truth", James maintained that the success of the pragmatic account of truth was vital to making radical empiricism prevail.

James's fullest development of the theory of radical empiricism was in his book "A Pluralistic Universe" published in 1908. This book consists of the text of eight lectures James delivered in that year at London and at Harvard. In common with James's other works, "A Pluralistic Universe" attacks the monistic idealism derived from Hegel and followed by many of James's contemporaries in England and the United States, such as his colleague, Josiah Royce. But James goes much further than he had in his earlier writings. He offers a critique of logic, conceptual thinking and what he describes as "intellectualism" in philosophy. He urges a return to immediate experience as the basis for philosophical thinking. He develops a philosophy which is pluralistic and contingent -- which leaves room for chance, surprise, and moral action -- and which is essentially idealistic. The driving force behind the philosophy is spiritual, as James argues for panpsychism, pantheism, a finite god (or gods) and the possibility of growth.

James gives two philosophers a great deal of attention in developing his position. The first is the German thinker Gustav Fechner (Lecture IV in "A Pluralistic Universe"), who developed a theory of earth-soul holding that everything in the universe was alive with mind. Fechner's work became the basis of James's pansychism and of his theory of compounding consciousness -- that mind could grow from one thing to another and that there was an interrelationship between the human mind and the mind of a finite god. The second major influence on "A Pluralistic Universe" was the French philosopher Henri Bergson (Chapter VI). From Bergson, James described his critique of intellectualism and conceptual thinking. James argued that concepts were useful in understanding reality for limited purposes, (here James seems to be downplaying his own pragmatism) but that they ultimately distorted reality. Reality was a flow, a stream, in which one moment glided imperceptibly into the next and arose from a past moment. In this view of perception and reality, James rejected the atomistic, sensationalist view of experience of the British empiricists, describing this view as conceptualist in its own right. His view of consciousness was similar to that of another German philosopher, Edmund Husserl, who admired James greatly.

James best sets out the goal and the heart of his teaching in his opening lecture, "The Types of Philosophic Thinking." In this chapter, he stresses the importance of vision in philosophy -- the presentation of a convincing and inspiring view of life -- and downplays the importance of the arguments that are brought to bear in support of the vision. He also limits carefully the scope of his discussion. James at the outset rejects philosophies of materialism or scientism in favor of a philosophy that teaches that "the intimate and human must surround and underlie the brutal." He describes this teaching as the "spiritual" way of thinking.

James next distinguishes between a theistic conception of spiritualism which posits God as a creator separate from the universe and a pantheistic version, which argues that God is immanent as "the indwelling divine rather than the external creator, and of human life as part and parcel of that deep reality." James rejects the theistic position and opts instead for a pantheistic view of spirituality. It is important to see these self-imposed limitations on James's thought and to see as well how close James was to the absolute idealism of his day even when he criticized it severely. Hegel and Royce have, in spite of the criticisms he leveled at them, a large role in James's thought.

In the final lecture of "A Pluralistic Universe" James resumes themes he had raised earlier in "The Varieties of Religious Experience." He argues that accounts of individual religious experience suggest a way of approaching reality broader and more profound than anything that "paganism, naturalism, and legalism pin their faith on and tie their trust to." James argues that "the drift of all the evidence we have seems to me to sweep us very strongly towards the belief in some form of superhuman life with which we may, unknown to ourselves, be co-conscious. We may be in the universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all." James distinguishes his position from absolute idealism by working from the bottom up -- from individual, plural consciousness rather than from the top down -- from an abstract, intellectually conceived absolute. He advocates a philosophy of meliorism and activity in which individual persons work to bring the good to pass.

This book, James's last sustained work in philosophy, moves towards its own unique form of idealism and establishes James as a thinker in a large manner. The book seems to me to rest uneasily with his pragmatism at many places. "A Pluralistic Universe" is a provocative and moving work by a major American thinker.

Robin Friedman

[mohab samir · Rating 5 out of 5]

تحوى براجماتية جيمس قدراً كبيراً من الاتزان الفلسفى ، والأساسى فيها هو تحييد العواطف فى النقاش الفلسفى- من خلال الكشف عنها - والتأكيد على ثانوية الافكار الميتافيزيقية فى الحياة العملية فمهما اختلفت رؤانا حولها فلا داعى للخلاف الشخصى بين الرائين ولا أهمية لذلك فى مجال أعمالنا اليومية ، الا انه لم ينكر الأهمية النفسية للإعتقاد فى هذه الرؤى الكونية الطابع وحيث ان هذا الإعتقاد هو إرادة فى الاساس (تغلب عليها العاطفة) ، وإرادة عامة لدى كافة البشر .
ويعدل جيمس الكثير من المفاهيم الفلسفية بتوسيعها او حصرها وبتعميقها أو إظهار ما بها من سطحية فى الفهم العام . ولا يتخلى عن أداة النقد حتى فى أكثر المواضيع غموضاً . فنجده رغم هجومه ��لشديد على الفكر المثالى الا انه يعترف ببساطة بكون كل فلسفة مثالية الطابع . ورغم نقده الحاد للميتافيزيقا الا انه لا ينكر الضرورة العميقة للنقاش الميتافيزيقى فى اى تصور كونى او اى نهج فلسفى .
يعرض جيمس للبراجماتية كمرحلة أولى للفكر الفلسفى الذى يهدف للوصول الى مرحلة أعلى وهى التجريبية الراديكالية - كما هى الحال عند الاشتراكية التى تطمح فى الوصول الى المرحلة الشيوعية الأرقى - فى مقابل كافة الاتجاهات الفلسفية الاخرى ، بحيث يقع على طرفها النقيض افكار المثالية المطلقة . ما جعله يأخذ على عاتقه مهمة هدم اتجاهات المثالية المطلقة من هيجل وحتى رويس . وعلى النقيض من رويس الذى حاول ربط البراجماتية بالمثالية المطلقة والتدليل على عدم تعارضهما فإن جيمس يعرض لهما ككونهما على طرفى نقيض ، او بمعنى اخر اكثر دقة اذا كان رويس حاول جعل المثالية المطلقة هى القاعدة والاساس الذى يشمل فى جوفه الفكر البراجماتى فإن جيمس حاول أن يجعل من البراجماتية القاعدة الاساسية التى تسمح بوجود المثالية المطلقة .
اعتمد جيمس فى بحثه على فكرتين اساسيتين اولهما هو إرادة الإعتقاد اى كون الاعتقاد وسيلة للتعبير عن طبيعة إرادة صاحبه ، وثانيهما هو القول بالتعددية كأساس للوجود فى مقابل مقولة الوحدة كأساس . فالتعدد ظاهر فى كل وحدة ولا تقوم وحدة بلا اجزاء ولا يظهر الوعى بالوحدة قبل الوعى بالتعدد كما لا يأتى التنظيم والتصنيف وما يعطى تصور الوحدة قبل الشعور بالفوضى . وبالتالى لا تتكون فكرة الوحدة المطلقة للوجود - والتى لا ينفى جيمس احتماليتها - فى اى وقت الا بشكل حدسى غير تام ، اى كمجرد نبوءة ذات مقدمات غير كافية لا يوجدها فى وقت ما الا مريدها .
كان التعرض للنقاشات الجدلية المختصرة الخاصة بالمفاهيم المرتبطة بالمواضيع الاساسية لديه والنقد المتراكم للاتجاهات المثالية والتجريبية فى هذه المفاهيم شديد الكثافة وعظيم المتعة والتأثير وهو بلا شك يعيد تشكيل المنظومة الفلسفية المترسبة فى عقل القارئ مهما كانت . وكان من امتع هذه النقاشات النفسية منها والعلمية كما تلك المتعلقة بطبيعة المنطق ومنطقية الوجود .
اعتقد ان افكار جيمس كانت ضرورية لإعادة النظر فى الاتجاهات والمواضيع الفلسفية السابقة والمعاصرة له وتوجيه الفلسفة قبلة أفكار ما بعد الحداثة ، كما كانت أفكار معاصره نيتشه وإن كانا على طرفى نقيض .

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this for a political seminar class a while ago and just recently dipped into it again. Here's my take:

Though I don't subscribe to the total relativism of radical empiricism, I still firmly believe that a pluralistic outlook on life can best enable intellectual freedom and personal development. The only way to break from the status quo and change is by embracing difference. Focusing first on studying the differences in things will eventually result in a broader, more thorough sense of unity than a monistic approach to learning (which stresses similarities above all). This really amounts to being drawn to the unfamiliar, the unknown, and finding its working order through common connections, thus bringing it into your sphere of knowledge. A pluralistic approach to education does far more to expand one's horizons than a monistic appoach, the latter being too centralized and not permitting the mind to stray far from a generalized mean. This pluralistic approach to learning is the true meaning of a liberal education. We need James' pluralistic empiricism more than ever now in our age of television news pundits and mass media.

[Naeem · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best critiques of Hegel's dialectical method. About as clear as philosophical writing gets. Only one that compares as a writer is Collingwood.

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

James’ powerful criticisms of rationalism support something like his pluralism but not his panpsychism. The latter is, moreover, irrelevant to action.

[քամի · Rating 2 out of 5]

մտածում եմ, որ էդքան էլ վատը չէր, բայց ինձ փիլիսոփայելն ու հէնց փիլիսոփաներին կարդալն աւելի ա դուր գալիս, քան վերլուծութիւններն։

[Eric Herod · Rating 2 out of 5]

Proper understanding of the thought of William James is incomplete without undertaking "Essays in Radical Empiricism" and "Pluralistic Universe". The former presents a structure for James' philosophy, the latter presents the conclusions he draws from his 'pure experience' philosophy. These conclusions, given in the final lecture of the book, are unexpected and utterly disappointing. While James goes off the deep end in his chapter on Fechner and in his concluding chapter, there are bright moments. My favorite section of the book is James treatment of analytic philosophy with his critique of Xeno's paradox. The low rating I give this book stems mainly from the final chapter, which finds James destroying (in my opinion) everything which he built up in "Essays" and the preceding chapters of "Pluralistic".

[Mrekhy ET · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب فلسفة صعب، لا أنصح به للمبتدئين، ويفضل من يقرأه أن يكون له إطلاع على المثالية في العموم وفلسفة هيجل في الخصوص، ويكون مهتم بالبحث أو بالقراءة عن المواضيع التي تناقش المطلق، الواحدية والتعددية، وصراع الحواس ام العقل.

[Gregory Klug · Rating 4 out of 5]

A challenging book with many insights, as is to be expected with James, but the main thesis of which I ultimately found unconvincing: that monistic pantheism is inferior to pluralistic pantheism, i.e. that the sense of oneness of which mystics and certain philosophers speak does not necessarily exist. Monism might be true, he says, but for all we know it isn't. Famous advocates of monism from Plato, who despised "manyness," to Hegel rely on dubious arguments to gain their points, which James details. Practical faith in God, meanwhile, is faith in a limited being-the God of Isaiah and David, who had feelings, concerns, and performed actions in time, etc.-not the abstractly conceived Unmoved Mover of Aquinas and others.

Some chapters take up issues that were of concern to intellectuals at the time, but not relevant, in my view, to modern readers. Hegel, for example, was a big deal in the 19th century. Wrestling with the nitty-gritty of his system, however, is kind of a tangent for me and perhaps others today.

I was unconvinced by the main thesis, despite James' brilliance, mainly because Robert Lanza's recent book on Biocentricism presents powerful scientific evidence, corroborated by eastern (and western) mysticism, in favor of it.

[Molsa Roja(s) · Rating 5 out of 5]

La segona obra de William James publicada per Cactus, en aquest cas un recull de vuit conferències que abarquen tota la conceptualització humana sobre la divinitat i la substància, crítica intensa tant del teisme dualista - un Déu creador separat d'allò que ha creat, causa racional - com del racionalisme, crítica també del monisme immanent de Spinoza, per arribar finalment a un monisme pluralista. James parla de la necessitat d'abolir del pensament aquestes doctrines que ens subordinen a substàncies que no podem conèixer i que, de facto, no formen part de la nostra realitat; en el seu pluralisme, el paper diví cau en una forma-cada i no en una forma-tot, una forma-cada que comparteix amb la resta d'ents de l'univers; el pluralisme no és senzill, però és una espiritualitat mitjançant la qual el món esdevé un espai més acollidor, un espai del qual participem plenament, de canvi continu i no d'eternitat.

[Mohammed Khattab · Rating 4 out of 5]

"
نجد الحياه بطريقه ما تجمع بين الضدين في لحظه واحده، و يمثل ذلك الجانب المتناقض للصوره العامه والواضحه لحضارتنا البشريه ، نسعى لتحقيق السلام بالحروب والسلاح ، ونحقق الحريه بالقوانين والدساتير ، نحاول أن نحصل على الشخصيه البسيطه و التلقائية او الشخصيه السويه بالتنشئه والتدريب المعقد لتنمية القوة البدنيه و المحافظه على الصحه ، نتسامح مع السلوك الفوضوي و الثوري لتقليل مخاطره ،نصل إلى اليقين عن طريق الشك الجذري، نتحكم في الطبيعه بالاستسلام لها و طاعتها..
هل تكره عدوك ؟ حسن سامحه حتى تهدأ النار التي في صدرك..
بإختصار عليك أن تموت كي تحيا!
"
🌿🍂

[Igor Capelari · Rating 2 out of 5]

Por mais que eu goste do James, o livro não foi realmente muito esclarecedor. As conclusões positivas de James parecem ser mais importantes para a teologia do que para qualquer outra área, e nesse sentido é muito perceptivel a influência desse livro em Whitehead. Sobre o resto, provavelmente os ensaios sobre o empirismo radical serão melhores.

[Gary Jaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last essays and lectures that William James wrote and gave. Insights into his frustration with traditional concepts of logic and analysis as well as his declaration that monistic thinking can not encompass and explain the world we live in.

[Islam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice book

[Roxanna López · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.4 stars.

Some really interesting bits but OMG (!) the writing. Meh.

[Andrew Simmons · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are ways to write about plurality, incompleteness, and dialectic that can actually be complete. The problem here is that I spent the vast amount of time wondering what James's point actually was. At one point he decries monism for intellectualism and rationalism, but then will speak of the rationalists as breaking up reality into fragments. This leads to confusing instances in which he says the fragmentation of things prevents the realization of the wholeness, but the whole requires parts and thus would require the breaking of things into parts in order to constitute a wholeness...This becomes a factor when speaking of Bergson and movement in which he comments how rationalism has split movement into a near infinite number of intervals (e.g. Zeno), which becomes contradictory as experienced movement is witnessed without specific intervals. The problem with this is that movements would be absorbed back into movement, meaning all particular movements would be indistinguishable from movement, creating a monism. His plunge into the irrational further begins what can be considered the self defeating nature of this text, as the remainder of the text can be considered a monism of the irrational. But don't worry, at least there is still the plurality of what ever pragmatically works for you and other subjects....despite no real indication of how "you" would be, or how perspective really differentiates something as a part of the pluralistic universe. One can see from this work why Deleuze, being influenced by William James, will just speak of "plurality = monism."

[Sara-Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

x2

[Kara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read, but definitely a tough one to dig through.

[Meram Mohey · Rating 5 out of 5]

"‏تتمثل الرذيلة الشائعة للعقل الإنساني وآفته الكبرى في رؤيته كل شئ إما مقبولا أو مرفوضا، أبيض أو أسود، لا يستطيع العقل التفرقة بين الألوان المتعددة والدرجات والدرجات المتوسطة بينها .."