Ignas K. Skrupskelis – författare

Essays in Philosophy brings together twenty-one essays, reviews, and occasional pieces published by James between 1876 and 1910. They range in subject from a concern with the teaching of philosophy and appraisals of philosophers to analyses of important problems.Several of the essays, like "The Sentiment of Rationality" and "The Knowing of Things Together," are of particular significance in the development of the views of James's later works. All of them, as John McDermott says in his Introduction, are in a style that is "engaging and personal...witty, acerbic, compassionate, and polemical." Whether he is writing an article for the Nation of a definition of "Experience" for Baldwin's Dictionary or "The Mad Absolute" for the Journal of Philosophy, James is always unmistakably himself, and always readable.

A pioneer in early studies of the human mind and founder of that peculiarly American philosophy called Pragmatism, William James remains America's most widely read philosopher. Generations of students have been drawn to his lucid presentations of philosophical problems. His works, now being made available for the first time in a definitive edition, have a permanent place in American letters and a continuing influence in philosophy and psychology.The essays gathered in the posthumously published Essays in Radical Empiricism formulate ideas that had brewed in James's mind for thirty years as he sought a way out of the philosophical dilemmas generated by the new psychology of the late nineteenth century. They constitute the explanatory core of his doctrine of radical empiricism, a doctrine that charts his course between the absolute idealism he could not accept and, at the other extreme, the law of associationism, which reduces knowledge to sheer contiguity of ideas. In his introduction John J. McDermott describes the historical background and the genesis of James's theory and considers the objections raised by its opponents.

The Will to Believe addresses several of the most important and perplexing problems of philosophy. In ten lucid essays James deals with such subjects as causality and free will, the definition of the good life and the Good itself, the importance of the individual in society, and the intellectual claims of scientific method. Linking all these essays, most of which were delivered as lectures to popular audiences, is James's deep belief that philosophy does not operate in a vacuum but is influenced by our passional and volitional natures.As Edward H. Madden points out in his substantial introduction, these essays, written over a span of seventeen years, represent not so much a fixed system of ideas as a patient searching, an organic development of James's thought in response to his own criticism and that of others.This is the sixth volume to be published in The Works of William James, an authoritative edition sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies.

This volume contains 309 letters which start when William James was 14 years old and conclude when he was 35. The letters range from his relations with family and friends to his courtship of Alice Howe.

Consisting of 400 letters with an additional 400 calendared, this volume offers an account of William James' correspondence for the years 1885-89. During this period, he completed most of the work on his book, ""The Principles of Psychology"" and became more directly involved with psychical research.

The eighth volume of William James's correspondence, covering the period 1895 to June 1899. During this period, James struggles against various temptations, never completely successfully, to devote all of his attention to philosophy, the first and great love of his life.

The ninth volume of William James's correspondence, covering the period July 1899 to 1901. It covers the period of James's great collapse, of his years of exile in Europe in search of health, and of the beginning of his withdrawal fron full time teaching at Harvard.

Consisting of some 572 letters, with another 460 calendared, this tenth volume in a projected series of twelve offers a complete accounting of William James's known correspondence-with family, friends, and colleagues-from the beginning of 1902 through March 1905. For James these were hopeful years of recovery. The end of the depressing cure at Nauheim, the successful conclusion of the arduous Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh, the reaching maturity and independence of his two eldest children, and the gradual withdrawal from teaching responsibilities at Harvard allowed him to hope that he would at long last present his philosophical message to the world in the shape of a treatise on metaphysics. Philosophy was in a state of unrest, with old alliances breaking up and new ones forming, and was ripe for a more fruitful reformulation of its traditional questions. Intellectualism, philosophical and scientific, was waning, making room for the emergence of an empiricism congenial to humane values. As reflected in the letters of this period, James comes to recognize that Dewey and the Chicago school were his allies and that the Frenchman Henri Bergson was moving in the same direction. Consequently, Bergson is the major new correspondent of the present volume, and, because he emerges during this period as James's leading supporter, Ferdinand Schiller is another dominant correspondent. Often boisterous and irreverent, Schiller saw himself as a general about to overwhelm an aged and sleepy, but still dangerous, enemy. James, in the meantime, had to call upon all of his diplomatic skills to keep on good terms with the people Schiller irritated, while remaining Schiller's friend and defender. Scholars will find much material in this volume that will help them judge whether the common view of pragmatism as a capricious subjectivism largely reflected a widespread lack of respect for Schiller. While continuing his involvement with anti-imperialism, James takes a more critical stance toward existing social conditions during this period, proclaiming his admiration for the small and insisting on the connection between great size and social evil. In 1904 he tours the American 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 the region than he would have otherwise. Along with Bergson and Schiller, prominent intellectuals represented in this volume include Theodore Flournoy, Wincenty Lutoslawski, Carl Stumpf, Hugo Munsterberg, Josiah Royce, Charles Sanders Peirce, Oliver Lodge, John Dewey, George Herbert Palmer, Charles William Eliot, James Mark Baldwin, and Edwin Godkin.