The Nature of True Virtue: Theology, Psychology, and Politics in the Writings of Henry James, Sr., Henry James, Jr., and William James (review)

Though cumbersomely titled, James Duban's The Nature of True Virtue is a pithy comparison of the religious and social thought of the elder William James with that of his two sons. Duban demonstrates the extent to which the philosophical theology of Jonathan Edwards influenced the Jameses, creating a sword that divided the family intellectually. Yet Duban is careful to show that the differences among the men of the James family were not clearly divided between wholesale supporters and wholesale detractors of the Edwardsian philosophy. Nor were they a simple matter of sons versus the father. Rather, all three men appropriated some aspects of Edwards while rejecting others, and the result was not only sons moving away from and clinging to aspects of their intellectual inheritance, but also brothers divided between themselves.

According to Duban, Henry Sr. saw Edwards's philosophy mainly as a call for a theological socialism, William viewed it as an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to remove self-interest from considerations of virtue, and Henry Jr. regarded it as an explication of the value of aesthetic disinterestedness over cheap moralism. Though I have no problems with Duban's informed characterization of the two Henrys, I nonetheless am inclined to make some small notes about William, not so much as a critique, but rather as a way of better filling out the philosophical picture. First, however, I will briefly present more of Duban's ultimately helpful, although at times slightly dry, discussion of Edwardsian philosophy and its legacy in the James family.

As the title of Duban's book implies, Edwards' philosophy—dealt with explicitly in the first two chapters—is a pervasive presence throughout the entire work. Among the topics that Duban takes up is Henry Sr.'s opposition to a theology that emphasizes God's anger toward the sinner. The presence of such anger involves "erroneously presuming God's personal, rather than universal, regard for man" (110). And to presume such means that it becomes each man for himself in the scramble to elude God's wrath—which is precisely the kind of individualistic thinking that Henry Sr. would loathe to have promulgated. For Henry Sr., humans fall individually, and are redeemed only as whole. But as Duban shows us via the writing of William James, the truth is that humans fall as a whole, and are redeemed only individually.

Theology, psychology, and politics are treated by Duban in that order of importance, as are the figures of Henry Sr., Henry Jr., and William. Those interested in philosophy and concerned about the seeming lack of material of interest—there is only one chapter that really focuses on William—should note two things. First, the distinction between psychology and philosophy is hardly clear-cut with William, and thus when Duban takes up the topic of William's interest in interest as an ineluctable part of human psychology, he is also talking about William's principles of philosophy as well. Second, those familiar with William's famous decision at the outset of The Varieties of Religious Experience to focus on considerations of personal experience rather than theological or ecclesiastical dictates should remember that William derived this view in large part as a reaction against his father, whose espoused beliefs, as Duban shows, lead potentially to undesirable theological and ethical dictates. It is thus helpful for a student of William James to read Duban's discussion of Henry Sr.'s Edwardsian socialist theology. It shows clearly how William, contra his father, develops "a system of pragmatism and radical empiricism" that, among other things, emphasizes "the highly personal dimension of cognitive reality, and the absolutely vital nature of interest in psychology, religion...