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William James (1842–1910) was born to a wealthy family in New York City on January 11, 1842. His father, Henry James Sr., who was educated at Princeton Theological Seminary but rebelled against “Old Princeton” Calvinism, wrote prolifically regarding ethical and religious matters. Influenced by the mystic writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, Henry Sr. sought to develop a humanistic theology that was more personally suitable to his own soul, as expressed in his Substance and Shadow: Or, Morality and Religion in Their Relation to Life (1863); Society the Redeemed Form of Man, and the Earnest of God’s Omnipotence in Human Nature (1879); and other works. The influence of his father’s unorthodox theology is evident in James’s reconsideration of consciousness and spirituality.

James was reared in both New York and Europe and educated privately. At the age of eighteen he revealed an interest in art and studied with artist William Morris Hunt, but James ended this career pursuit abruptly and entered Harvard University in 1861 to study medicine. James began teaching physiology at Harvard in 1872 and eventually became professor of philosophy. His Harvard lectures were a synthesis of philosophy, physiology, and psychology. James was a considerable influence on Harvard students such as Spanish philosopher and poet George Santayana and American writer Gertrude Stein. In 1878 he married Alice Howe Gibbens, with whom he had five children (one of whom died in infancy) raised in an environment of free thought and tolerance.

James is regarded as both an eminent American philosopher and psychologist. His two-volume treatise The Principles of Psychology, published in 1890, was a pioneering work that influenced the development of nearly all the foremost psychological theories of the subsequent seventy years and became a foundational text. Early statements of his ideas of the nature of freedom are evident in noteworthy chapters explaining the “stream of thought,” “consciousness of self,” “the emotions,” and the “will.” His 1897 publication of The Will to Believe expanded on conceptions of freedom differentiating between “hard” and “soft” determinism. Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals (1899) contributed to the development of educational psychology.

James accepted an invitation to deliver the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion at the University of Edinburgh in 1901 and 1902. The publication of his twenty talks appeared as The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), which contributed to the psychology of religion by distinguishing “experience” and “philosophy” (defending the former against the latter) through a humanistic and scientific methodology. These lectures, along with the publication of Pragmatism (1907), which articulated James’s experimentalism and redefinition of the correspondence theory of truth, helped place his name among the most renowned American philosophers of the period. A Pluralistic Universe (1909) was the publication of his Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy. The relevance of his “philosophic attitude” was published posthumously as Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912). James died of heart failure at his family’s summer home in Chocorua, New Hampshire, on August 26, 1910.

Bibliography:

Allen, Gay Wilson. William James: A Biography. New York: Viking, 1967.
Barzun, Jacques. A Stroll with William James. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Bjork, Daniel W. The Compromised Scientist: William James in the Development of American Psychology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.
Brennan, Bernard P. The Ethics of William James. New York: Bookman, 1961.
Dooley, Patrick K. Pragmatism as Humanism: The Philosophy of William James. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1974.
Feinstein, Howard M. Becoming William James. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984.
James, Henry, III, ed. The Letters of William James. 2 vols. Boston: Atlantic Monthly, 1920.
Levinson, Henry Samuel. The Religious Investigations of William James. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981.
Moore, Edward C. William James. New York: Washington Square, 1965.
Otto, Max C. William James, the Man and the Thinker. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1942.
Perry, Ralph Barton. The Thought and Character of William James. 2 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1935.
Simon, Linda. Genuine Reality: A Life of William James. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1998.
Wild, John. The Radical Empiricism of William James. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969.

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