William James' Pragmatism

An exploration of Jamesian Pragmatism

AI William James peeking into your soul whilst on a coffee date… He reminds you that you can subscribe to support my work for the price of the cappuccino in your hand.

William James begins his popular lectures on pragmatism by asserting that “the history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments” (The Present Dilemma in Philosophy). The great debates in each epoch of philosophy have sprung from the intensification of the temperamental antagonisms between what James calls the tender and tough minded. The philosophical atmosphere in each epoch is shaped by the polar positions each temperament occupies with regards to a variety of questions, viz., is the world one or many? Ideal or material? Free or determined? Should our approach to the world be intellectualistic or sensationalistic, religious or irreligious, dogmatic or skeptical, etc. In philosophy, the point of departure for each polar response arises when the individuals’ temperament acquires the philosophical form of rationalism or empiricism. The implications of this philosophical positioning usually[1] ripples into the subsequent positions for the aforementioned questions: