Structure and Content in “The Will to Believe”

This paper argues that sustained attention to the highlighted structure of William James’s “The Will to Believe” yields surprising insights into the essay. “Highlighted structure” includes James’s announcements of his intentions, his section breaks, and, especially, patterns of repetition and contrast within the work. Particular attention is paid to a criticism to which James frequently returns, viz. that evidentialists are driven by their passions to adopt evidentialism. I argue that James does not take this to constitute an objection to evidentialism as such. This is because James construes evidentialism more charitably than has been recognized. Evidentialism, as James understands it, claims, not that our willing nature should play no role in our believings, but instead that the cognitive role of our willing nature should be minimized. Consequently, I argue that the thesis of James’s famous essay has generally been misidentified and mischaracterized.