WJ may never have delivered a commencement speech, but plenty of addresses have been delivered in his name. Here’s one. www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/1/...

Though the ultimate state of the universe may be its vital and psychical extinction, there is nothing in physics to interfere with the hypothesis that the penultimate state might be the millennium…

What a lovely end-of-semester gift from a student in Philosophy of Happiness. Volume II includes the transcendent 1910 letter to Henry Adams I sent them off with: “ I am so happy I can stand it no longer!”

Remember when old December's darkness is everywhere about you, that the world is really in every minutest point as full of life as in the most joyous morning you ever lived through; that the sun is whanging down, and the waves dancing, and the gulls skimming down at the mouth of the Amazon…

Good for Sebastian Castillo, for tackling difficult books— particularly Spinoza's Ethics— with a little help from his book club friends (NYT Magazine, Nov.23). But I resist the insinuation that philosophy must be difficult, If it is to offer "genuine consolation" or "salvation"…

“You can get up. William James reminds us of the real difficulty of that first step…But… your mind will follow your body…” —Megan Craig & Ed Casey, Thinking in Transit: Explorations of Life in Motion (Columbia University Press, 2025)

As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one's education) is the art of skipping, so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

Congratulations to newly-elected executive board officers Alexis Dianda (Xavier) and John Snarey (Emory)! And thanks to all who’ve offered to serve.

What an awful trade that of professor is--paid to talk, talk, talk! I have seen artists growing pale and sick whilst I talked to them without being able to stop. And I loved them for not being able to love me any better...

Autumn 2025 Newsletter President’s Message from Dr. Phil Oliver Autumnal season’s greetings, fellow friends of William James. I first began to think of WJ in casually-friendly terms back in the Fall of my first year of grad school at Vanderbilt in the ’80s… wjsociety.org/news/

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens out the widest vistas. It 'bakes no bread,' as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage…

Bertrand Russell was famously critical of American philosophers like William James and their radical theories of truth. But Russell’s attack rests on a caricature, argues philosopher John Kaag… iai.tv/articles/rus... www.facebook.com/share/p/1JRH...

Kaag on Russell on James www.facebook.com/share/p/1JRH...

Excellent Lyceum address from Megan Craig, on staying human(e) and present in the face of mortality. #mtsu #AppliedPhilosophyLyceum

James, alongside Bergson, recognized the value of non-intellectual sense, urging us to reanimate our capacity for greater intimacy and sensible contact with the world… James encouraged us to access “our earliest, most instinctive, least developed, kind of consciousness.” Megan Craig

Megan Craig (Stony Brook University) is MTSU's upcoming Applied Philosophy Lyceum speaker... RELATION AND RUPTURE AT THE END OF LIFE Friday, September 26, 2025 • 5 p.m. College of Education, Room 164 philoshap2.blogspot.com/2025/09/a-co...

Psychedelics Blew His Mind. He Wants Other Philosophers to Open Theirs. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/b...

Few of us are tender-foot Bostonians pure and simple, and few are typical Rocky Mountain toughs, in philosophy. Most of us have a hankering for the good things on both sides of the line. Facts are good, of course—give us lots of facts. Principles are good—give us plenty of principles.

The antagonism between intensely tough and tender temperaments has formed in all ages a part of the philosophic atmosphere of the time. It forms a part of the philosophic atmosphere today. The tough think of the tender as sentimentalists and soft-heads.

Tender-minded and tough-minded people, characterized as I have written them down, do both exist. Each of you probably knows some well-marked example of each type, and you know what each example thinks of the example on the other side of the line. They have a low opinion of each other.

I hope summer has glided away as happily for you as it has for us. Now it begins to fade towards the horizon over which so many summers have slipped, and our household is on the point of "breaking up" just when the season invites one most imperiously to stay. Dang all schools and colleges, say I.

My dear Howison,—How you have misunderstood the application of my word "trivial" as being discriminatively applied to your pluralistic idealism! Quite the reverse—if there be a philosophy that I believe in, it's that.

This is exciting (if you're a Jamesian): William James Society board member and (with his Pragmatism Cybrary) master archivist of American Philosophy John Shook has recovered the earliest society publications… jposopher.blogspot.com/2025/08/in-b...

I have no doubt whatever that most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. We all have reservoirs of life to draw upon, of which we do not dream. The practical problem is "how to get at them." Most never do.

The rationalist finally will be of dogmatic temper in his affirmations, while the empiricist may be more sceptical and open to discussion. I will write these traits down in two columns… 'tender-minded' and 'tough-minded' respectively.

James also thinks inquiry needs to be conducted in a scientific fashion, but especially in philosophical inquiry, he doesn't think this should be done using jargon, in a technical fashion. James's outlook here is evolutionary… amphilos.blogspot.com/2025/07/an-i...

Rationalism is more religious than empiricism when the individual empiricist prides himself on being hard-headed. In that case the rationalist will usually also be in favor of what is called free-will, and the empiricist will be a fatalist—I use the terms most popularly current.

Rationalism usually considers itself more religious than empiricism, but there is much to say about this claim, so I merely mention it. It is a true claim when the individual rationalist is what is called a person of feeling.

Rationalism is always monistic. It starts from wholes and universals, and makes much of the unity of things. Empiricism starts from the parts, and makes of the whole a collection-is not averse therefore to calling itself pluralistic.

Empiricists, in contrast to Rationalists, are not uncommonly materialistic rather than idealistic; and their optimism is apt to be decidedly conditional and tremulous.

A philosophy of zest from Professor West youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Historically we find the terms 'intellectualism' and 'sensationalism' used as synonyms of 'rationalism' and 'empiricism.' Well, nature seems to combine most frequently with intellectualism an idealistic and optimistic tendency.

On this day in 1860, a debate on the merits of the theory of evolution took place at Oxford University… www.garrisonkeillor.com/radio/the-wr...

Every sort of permutation and combination is possible in human nature; and if I now proceed to define more fully what I have in mind when I speak of rationalists and empiricists, by adding to each of those titles some secondary qualifying characteristics, that is to a certain extent arbitrary.

We find it extraordinarily convenient to express a certain contrast in our various ways of taking the universe, by talking of the 'empiricist' and of the 'rationalist' temper. These terms make the contrast more simple and massive than are usually those of whom the terms are predicated.

No one can live an hour without both facts and principles, so it is a difference rather of emphasis; yet it breeds antipathies of the most pungent character between those who lay the emphasis differently…

Think. Empathize. Stay human. www.threads.com/@apaphilosop...

Now the particular difference of temperament that I have in mind in making these remarks is one that has counted in literature, art, government and manners as well as in philosophy.

The Mount, Edith Wharton’s “cottage”

The WILLIAM JAMES SOCIETY (WJS), in conjunction with William James Studies, will be offering its annual WJS YOUNG SCHOLAR PRIZE to the young scholar (within 5 years of the Ph.D.) who submits an essay that best explores the thought of James in psychology, philosophy, or other disciplines...

The one thing that has COUNTED so far in philosophy is that you should see things, see them straight in your own peculiar way, and be dissatisfied with any opposite way of seeing them. There is no reason to suppose that this strong temperamental vision is from now onward to count no longer…

We hardly know our own preferences in abstract matters; some of us are easily talked out of them, and end by following the fashion or taking up with the beliefs of the most impressive philosopher in our neighborhood, whoever he may be.

New reviews of philosophy books, new and revised entries at online philosophy resources, and new episodes of philosophy podcasts...

The WILLIAM JAMES SOCIETY (WJS), in conjunction with William James Studies, will be offering its annual WJS YOUNG SCHOLAR PRIZE to the young scholar (within 5 years of the Ph.D.) who submits an essay that best explores the thought of James in psychology, philosophy, or other disciplines...