Jan 29, 2020 07:01 PM
(This post was last modified: Jan 29, 2020 07:27 PM by C C.)
https://aeon.co/ideas/how-william-james-...e-possible
EXCERPT (Temma Ehrenfeld): . . . The debate about free will is clear on one point: we experience ourselves as choosing. This might be an illusion, but not one that we can function without. [...] William James also had been overcome when young, and felt doomed. For almost three years after receiving his medical degree, he stayed home suffering digestive trouble, poor eyesight, back pain, hallucinations, panic attacks and depression. He was unable to exercise or believe in his own will.
[...] For him, as for me, the self, or ‘will’, had to be asserted against the weight of uncertainty about our future ability to function. For decades to this day ... I and my symptoms fluctuated ... But as I read James, I just needed to keep trying things and, most of all, be brave. From him I learned that the truth is elusive – but taking action is mandatory.
[...] Just do it. Now it’s a Nike slogan, popular because it’s so useful. James chose to believe love would be a cure. He would credit Alice for his stability during what became an extraordinarily productive life. Although always fighting a volatile disposition and bad eyesight, he was joyful, an eccentric dresser, great conversationalist, and a spontaneous teacher. He created moments for play. Ebullience can be annoying to other people – killjoys who consider it shallow. James thought it was anything but...
His life teaches us to stick with the big project – even if we miss our deadlines. In 1878, James signed a contract to write a psychology textbook in two years. The Principles of Psychology, a massive compendium, didn’t appear until 1890. [...] As he finished this tome, he wrote to [his wife] Alice: ‘It does give me some comfort to think that I don’t live wholly in projects, aspirations and phrases, but now and then have something done to show for all the fuss.’ If you feel like a dreamer, James is on your side.
It helped that Alice had faith, both in her husband and the Almighty. James, who at various points attended church, understood that faith can be psychologically healthy, and argued in his essay ‘The Will to Believe’ (1896) that we can talk ourselves into it. But he doesn’t seem ever to have believed. This too inspired me, an atheist: I admire and seek out the devout, and attend services of all kinds. It’s become common now, picking up religious practices as a form of self-care. James invites us to be open to the mysterious, from God to psychic phenomena. We act on ‘insufficient evidence’ in all areas of life, he said.
The let’s-try-it ethos of his free-will formula became a core idea. James belonged to a small group in Cambridge, Massachusetts who developed pragmatism as a uniquely American school. Facing a fractured society after the horrors of the Civil War, the pragmatists told Americans to ditch their certainties, accept constant change, experiment and understand that we judge ‘truth’ by results. Did the idea prove helpful in some consistent way?
Experimentation doesn’t have to mean that we abandon the hope of lasting moral principles, as the post-Civil War pragmatists seemed to urge. But imagine you were a Northerner interested in protecting the Union before the Civil War. Would you have been an abolitionist? How often do we accept a wrong because the cost of fighting it is too high, and the zealots on both sides are hard to trust? James was proud of his two younger brothers who became officers for black regiments while still teenagers. He was also ashamed that he himself didn’t fight. But he didn’t enlist. Biographers blame his father; he blamed himself.
His dilemma has stayed with me. One of my friends, a black evangelical Christian, believes that abortion is today’s slavery, the great wrong the majority can’t see. I don’t agree but I can’t just call her a zealot. I’m a feminist and I listen, hard.
[...] James would have us listen to hone our own arguments, knowing that conflict can speed progress. In an era fascinated with Charles Darwin, James touted the value of competition. ‘Rivalry lies at the very basis of our being, all social improvement being largely due to it … The spectacle of effort is what awakens and sustains our own effort,’ he wrote in 1899. In my own life, I tend to be ashamed when I am competitive or envious – I like James’s idea that it’s normal.
Recently, I received a new diagnosis. It has taken 30 years for scientists to track symptoms such as mine to an immune disorder. [...] After all these years, I’m grateful for the scientific progress in my time and its animating philosophy, which James helped to establish... (MORE - details)
EXCERPT (Temma Ehrenfeld): . . . The debate about free will is clear on one point: we experience ourselves as choosing. This might be an illusion, but not one that we can function without. [...] William James also had been overcome when young, and felt doomed. For almost three years after receiving his medical degree, he stayed home suffering digestive trouble, poor eyesight, back pain, hallucinations, panic attacks and depression. He was unable to exercise or believe in his own will.
[...] For him, as for me, the self, or ‘will’, had to be asserted against the weight of uncertainty about our future ability to function. For decades to this day ... I and my symptoms fluctuated ... But as I read James, I just needed to keep trying things and, most of all, be brave. From him I learned that the truth is elusive – but taking action is mandatory.
[...] Just do it. Now it’s a Nike slogan, popular because it’s so useful. James chose to believe love would be a cure. He would credit Alice for his stability during what became an extraordinarily productive life. Although always fighting a volatile disposition and bad eyesight, he was joyful, an eccentric dresser, great conversationalist, and a spontaneous teacher. He created moments for play. Ebullience can be annoying to other people – killjoys who consider it shallow. James thought it was anything but...
His life teaches us to stick with the big project – even if we miss our deadlines. In 1878, James signed a contract to write a psychology textbook in two years. The Principles of Psychology, a massive compendium, didn’t appear until 1890. [...] As he finished this tome, he wrote to [his wife] Alice: ‘It does give me some comfort to think that I don’t live wholly in projects, aspirations and phrases, but now and then have something done to show for all the fuss.’ If you feel like a dreamer, James is on your side.
It helped that Alice had faith, both in her husband and the Almighty. James, who at various points attended church, understood that faith can be psychologically healthy, and argued in his essay ‘The Will to Believe’ (1896) that we can talk ourselves into it. But he doesn’t seem ever to have believed. This too inspired me, an atheist: I admire and seek out the devout, and attend services of all kinds. It’s become common now, picking up religious practices as a form of self-care. James invites us to be open to the mysterious, from God to psychic phenomena. We act on ‘insufficient evidence’ in all areas of life, he said.
The let’s-try-it ethos of his free-will formula became a core idea. James belonged to a small group in Cambridge, Massachusetts who developed pragmatism as a uniquely American school. Facing a fractured society after the horrors of the Civil War, the pragmatists told Americans to ditch their certainties, accept constant change, experiment and understand that we judge ‘truth’ by results. Did the idea prove helpful in some consistent way?
Experimentation doesn’t have to mean that we abandon the hope of lasting moral principles, as the post-Civil War pragmatists seemed to urge. But imagine you were a Northerner interested in protecting the Union before the Civil War. Would you have been an abolitionist? How often do we accept a wrong because the cost of fighting it is too high, and the zealots on both sides are hard to trust? James was proud of his two younger brothers who became officers for black regiments while still teenagers. He was also ashamed that he himself didn’t fight. But he didn’t enlist. Biographers blame his father; he blamed himself.
His dilemma has stayed with me. One of my friends, a black evangelical Christian, believes that abortion is today’s slavery, the great wrong the majority can’t see. I don’t agree but I can’t just call her a zealot. I’m a feminist and I listen, hard.
[...] James would have us listen to hone our own arguments, knowing that conflict can speed progress. In an era fascinated with Charles Darwin, James touted the value of competition. ‘Rivalry lies at the very basis of our being, all social improvement being largely due to it … The spectacle of effort is what awakens and sustains our own effort,’ he wrote in 1899. In my own life, I tend to be ashamed when I am competitive or envious – I like James’s idea that it’s normal.
Recently, I received a new diagnosis. It has taken 30 years for scientists to track symptoms such as mine to an immune disorder. [...] After all these years, I’m grateful for the scientific progress in my time and its animating philosophy, which James helped to establish... (MORE - details)