William James in Focus: Willing to Believe

Preface

Preface William James is arguably America’s foremost philosopher—or at least one of them. But the one thesis for which he became most “infamous” was his espousal of “the will to believe”: Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such circumstances, “Do not decide, but leave the question open,” is itself a passional decision—just like deciding yes or no—and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth. Many thought that this kind of psychological subjectivism had no place in the cold logical circles of philosophy, where one sought objectivity and, ultimately, certainty. A strategy was undertaken to engage in some sort of “damage control,” that is, to allow sentimental concerns in “soft” areas like morality, interpersonal relationships, and religion, but not in the “hard” areas dominated by the sciences. The present study argues for the opposite of this position. It suggests that the will to believe should not be relegated to specific domains; rather, it should be employed wherever choices between options are “forced, living, and momentous.” It also argues that the will to believe is not a onetime affair but must be continually reaffirmed in life. Going further, the will to believe has presuppositions—metaphysical presuppositions . It can function only in an unfinished universe—“wild,” James would say, “game flavored as a hawk’s wing.” It requires affirming the type of universe described by James in Essays in Radical Empiricism and A Pluralistic Universe—one where we are called on to be participants. xii Preface James urges us to respond to this invitation, to rise to the occasion, to draw on energies heretofore latent. He urges us to act heroically. Heroes are usually described in terms of their exhibition of courage, and courage is often described in terms of an individual’s ability to face death and dying. If this is so, if James’s texts call on us to act heroically, to exercise the will to believe in the face of death, we might say that what James is about in these and other texts is showing us how to face death. But the issue is a complicated one because this image does not appear instantly on the stage. Differently stated, James’s texts have both a “latent” and a “manifest” image. Manifestly, they offer us detailed descriptions of the self, nature , and the interactions required from both. These descriptions are themselves radical and innovative; the self is described as a process, consciousness as a stream, nature as a “concatenated” flux, receiving its final touches from our hands. But James’s descriptions eventually disclose the impossibility of any complete description. His texts turn out to be “directive” rather than “descriptive” in nature, pointing beyond themselves back into experience. His texts are partial and unfinished interpretations rather than neutral observations. The latent image they present holds that no complete description is possible and, further, even if offered, would be rejected. The latent content does indeed call on us to bear a heavy burden, to give up the security of certainty, to act heroically by embracing the finitude of our remarks . In this sense, his texts offer a way of dealing with death, that is, finitude, difficult and demanding as that may be. ...