Phenomenological Reviews

Book | Chapter

176799

James on bootstraps, evolution, and life

Thomas Nickles Gaye McCollum-Nickles

pp. 361-376

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century, the successes of blind, mechanistic, deterministic science severely challenged the traditional view that human beings possess moral worth deriving from our ability to act as free, responsible, creative agents. For many this freedom included the power to respond to a deeper, spiritual reality. No one experienced this problem more acutely than William James, a tough-minded scientist and tender-minded human being who had been an artist and who eloquently defended the right, indeed the urgency, of a broadly religious attitude toward the world. James wrestled with this problematic, in various guises, in many of his papers and books. Here we confine ourselves to neglected aspects of two of his papers, "The Will to Believe" and the lesser studied "Great Men and their Environments." The first was given as a lecture in 1896, but has antecedents in James's early writings.1 The second was a lecture given already in 1880. For brevity we shall refer to these papers as "Will to Believe" and "Great Men."

Publication details

Published in:

Babich Babette (2002) Hermeneutic philosophy of science, van Gogh's eyes, and God: essays in Honor of Patrick A. Heelan, S.J.. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 361-376

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-1767-0_31

Full citation:

Nickles Thomas, McCollum-Nickles Gaye (2002) „James on bootstraps, evolution, and life“, In: B. Babich (ed.), Hermeneutic philosophy of science, van Gogh's eyes, and God, Dordrecht, Springer, 361–376.