William James: Empiricism and Pragmatism

Thought in the Act

by David Lapoujade, Thomas Lamarre (Translator)

Originally published in French in 1997 and appearing here in English for the first time, David Lapoujade's William Empiricism and Pragmatism is both an accessible and rigorous introduction to James's thought and a pioneering rereading of it. Examining pragmatism's fundamental questions through a Deleuzian framework, Lapoujade outlines how James's pragmatism and radical empiricism encompass the study of experience and the making of reality, and he reopens the speculative side of pragmatist thought and the role of experience in it. The book includes an extensive afterword by translator Thomas Lamarre, who illustrates how James's interventions are becoming increasingly central to the contemporary debates about materialist ontology, affect, and epistemology that strive to bridge the gaps among science studies, media studies, and religious studies.

Genres: Philosophy

168 pages, Hardcover

First published February 8, 2007

About the author

David Lapoujade is a French philosopher and a professor at the Université Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne. In addition to editing the posthumous collections of Deleuze's writings, Desert Islands and Two Regimes of Madness (both published in English by Semiotext(e)), he has written on pragmatism and the work of William James.

Reviews

[Molsa Roja(s) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my goodness, this is such a FANTASTIC book. James' philosophy might not be as difficult to read as others such as Hegel or Heidegger, but it is nonetheless quite something. Having read before his Essays on radical empiricism and the Pluriverse, I had the feeling I hadn't quite grasped it yet -indeed that was a correct feeling, for I must admit a substantial difference now that I've read Lapoujade's account on James. I think James' account of reality and truth is tremendously interesting, full of concepts that are truly meaningful, and overall indicating a praxis -pragmatism- that I absolutely adore, for it's a belief of mine that truth as an absolute doesn't matter as much as what we make with it, how it affects us, where it leads us. And so, here we have an enlarged, living and changing world much appealing to poetry and to praxis, an enchanted place to be. Moreover, one can't deny the influence his thought had over Deleuze, so it's interesting in that matter too.