William James eBooks

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William James was born at the Astor House, New York City's most fashionable and luxurious hotel, on January 11, 1842, into a wealthy family of Scottish and Irish ancestry. He was the eldest son of Henry James, Sr., an eccentric dilettante who had studied at Princeton Theological Seminary and went on to produce a sizable body of writings on religious topics. Influenced by the teachings of the mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, Henry senior (who was also a great friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson) fused old-style Calvinism and newer humanistic beliefs into a private blend of theology that suked his own soul. At the center of this vision was a democratization of religious impulses ('Well, I take it, God is in one person quite as much as another') that he passed on to his son.

Young William and his four siblings--who included Henry James, the future expatriate novelist--grew up in this learned atmosphere of tolerance and freethinking. Moreover, the father treated his offspring to a transatlantic, broadly educational childhood: William attended a number of experimental schools and was tutored in England, France, Switzerland, and Germany. At the age of eighteen, he decided to pursue a career in painting and studied for a year with the artist William Morris Hunt at Newport, Rhode Island--long enough to realize that he possessed little real talent.

In 1861, the year the Civil War broke out, William James entered Harvard with the intention of becoming a scientist. After three years as an undergraduate, he enrolled in Harvard Medical School; in March 1865, however, he interrupted his studies to embark on a field trip to Brazil with biologist Louis Agassiz in order to observe the flora and fauna of South America. Returning to Cambridge in March 1866, James at once resumed his medical studies, until a back ailment and depression forced him to take another sabbatical. This time he traveled to Europe, where he 'took the cure' at the baths of Teplitz and studied experimental physiology in Dresden, Berlin, and Heidelberg. Finally, in the spring of 1869 he received his M.D. degree from Harvard. Yet he continued to suffer an emotional and mental crisis that prefigures the existentialist dread described by present-day philosophers: A sense of moral impotence constantly tormented him, as did thoughts of suicide.

Two stabilizing events of the 1870s contributed greatly to his recovery. In 1872 James accepted a teaching position at Harvard; this proved a godsend, and he remained there for the next thirty-five years. His first appointment was to an instructorship in physiology, but from the outset he refused to treat physiology, psychology, and philosophy as distinct and separate disciplines. Instead, his lectures reflected a synthesis of insights from each of the fields and exerted considerable influence over such students as Gertrude Stein and George Santayana. Then, in 1878, James married Alice Howe Gibbens and set up a home that in many ways replicated the one he had grown up in: The couple had four sons and one daughter whom they raised in an environment of total intellectual freedom.

During the weeks following his marriage, James began work on The Principles of Psychology. Published in 1890, the two-volume treatise anticipated most of the major psychological movements of the succeeding seventy years and quickly became a basic text.

In addition, he carried on an extensive exchange of letters with European colleagues; his correspondence, which was later edited by his brother Henry and issued posthumously, stands as a guide to the era.

The Varieties of Religious Experience

The Varieties of Religious Experience is certainly the most notable of all books in the field of the psychology of religion and probably destined to be the most influential [one] written on religion in the twentieth century' said Walter Houston Clark in Psychology Today. The book was an immediate bestseller upon its publication in June 1902. Reflecting the pluralistic views of psychologist-turned-philosopher William James, it posits that individual religious experiences, rather than the tenets of organized religions, form the backbone of religious life. James's discussion of conversion, repentance, mysticism, and hopes of reward and fears of punishment in the hereafter--as well as his observations on the religious experiences of such diverse thinkers as Voltaire, Whitman, Emerson, Luther, Tolstoy, and others--all support his thesis.

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