Un universo pluralistico

William James

A Pluralistic Universe. Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy, Green and Co., Longmans, New York


A Pluralistic Universe - William James

pagine 256

11,10 euro

1909, ed. italiana 1973, 2000

Marietti, Torino


In May 1908 William James, a gifted and popular lecturer, delivered a series of eight Hibbert lectures at Manchester College, Oxford, on "The Present Situation in Philosophy." These were published a year later as A Pluralistic Universe.

During the preceding decade James, as he struggled with deep conflicts within his own philosophic development, had become increasingly preoccupied with epistemological and metaphysical issues. He saw serious inadequacies in the forms of absolute and monistic idealism dominant in England and the United States, and he used the lectures to attack the specific form that "vicious intellectualism" had taken.

In A Pluralistic Universe James captures a new philosophic vision, at once intimate and realistic. He shares with his readers a view of the universe that is fresh, active, and novel. The message conveyed is as relevant today as it was in his time.

 

Indice

LECTURE I

THE TYPES OF PHILOSOPHIC THINKING 1

Our age is growing philosophical again, 3. Change of tone since 1860, 4.
Empiricism and Rationalism defined, 7. The process of Philosophizing:
Philosophers choose some part of the world to interpret the whole by, 8.
They seek to make it seem less strange, 11. Their temperamental
differences, 12. Their systems must be reasoned out, 13. Their tendency
to over-technicality, 15. Excess of this in Germany, 17. The type of
vision is the important thing in a philosopher, 20. Primitive thought,
21. Spiritualism and Materialism: Spiritualism shows two types, 23.
Theism and Pantheism, 24. Theism makes a duality of Man and God, and
leaves Man an outsider, 25. Pantheism identifies Man with God, 29. The
contemporary tendency is towards Pantheism, 30. Legitimacy of our demand
to be essential in the Universe, 33. Pluralism versus Monism: The 'each-
form' and the 'all-form' of representing the world, 34. Professor Jacks
quoted, 35. Absolute Idealism characterized, 36. Peculiarities of the
finite consciousness which the Absolute cannot share, 38. The finite
still remains outside of absolute reality, 40.

LECTURE II

MONISTIC IDEALISM 41

Recapitulation, 43. Radical Pluralism is to be the thesis of these
lectures, 44. Most philosophers contemn it, 45. Foreignness to us of
Bradley's Absolute, 46. Spinoza and 'quatenus,'47. Difficulty of
sympathizing with the Absolute, 48. Idealistic attempt to interpret it,
50. Professor Jones quoted, 52. Absolutist refutations of Pluralism, 54.
Criticism of Lotze's proof of Monism by the analysis of what interaction
involves, 55. Vicious intellectualism defined, 60. Royce's alternative:
either the complete disunion or the absolute union of things, 61.
Bradley's dialectic difficulties with relations, 69. Inefficiency of the
Absolute as a rationalizing remedy, 71. Tendency of Rationalists to fly
to extremes, 74. The question of 'external' relations, 79. Transition to
Hegel, 91.

LECTURE III

HEGEL AND HIS METHOD 83

Hegel's influence. 85. The type of his vision is impressionistic, 87.
The 'dialectic' element in reality, 88. Pluralism involves possible
conflicts among things, 90. Hegel explains conflicts by the mutual
contradictoriness of concepts, 91. Criticism of his attempt to transcend
ordinary logic, 92. Examples of the 'dialectic' constitution of things,
95. The rationalistic ideal: propositions self-securing by means of
double negation, 101. Sublimity of the conception, 104. Criticism of
Hegel's account: it involves vicious intellectualism, 105. Hegel is a
seer rather than a reasoner, 107. 'The Absolute' and 'God' are two
different notions, 110. Utility of the Absolute in conferring mental
peace, 114. But this is counterbalanced by the peculiar paradoxes which
it introduces into philosophy, 116. Leibnitz and Lotze on the 'fall'
involved in the creation of the finite, 119. Joachim on the fall of
truth into error, 121. The world of the absolutist cannot be perfect,
123. Pluralistic conclusions, 125.

LECTURE IV

CONCERNING FECHNER 131

Superhuman consciousness does not necessarily imply an absolute
mind, 134. Thinness of contemporary absolutism, 135. The
tone of Fechner's empiricist pantheism contrasted with that of the
rationalistic sort, 144. Fechner's life, 145. His vision, the 'daylight
view,' 150. His way of reasoning by analogy, 151. The whole universe
animated, 152. His monistic formula is unessential, 153. The
Earth-Soul, 156. Its differences from our souls, 160. The earth as
an angel, 164. The Plant-Soul, 165. The logic used by Fechner,
168. His theory of immortality, 170. The 'thickness' of his imagination,
173. Inferiority of the ordinary transcendentalist pantheism,
to his vision, 174.

LECTURE V

THE COMPOUNDING OF CONSCIOUSNESS 179
The assumption that states of mind may compound themselves, 181. This
assumption is held in common by naturalistic psychology, by
transcendental idealism, and by Fechner, 184. Criticism of it by the
present writer in a former book, 188. Physical combinations, so-called,
cannot be invoked as analogous, 194. Nevertheless, combination must be
postulated among the parts of the Universe, 197. The logical objections
to admitting it, 198. Rationalistic treatment of the question brings us
to an _impasse_, 208. A radical breach with intellectualism is required,
212. Transition to Bergson's philosophy, 214. Abusive use of concepts,
219.

LECTURE VI

BERGSON AND HIS CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 223

Professor Bergson's personality, 225. Achilles and the tortoise, 228.
Not a sophism, 229. We make motion unintelligible when we treat it by
static concepts, 233. Conceptual treatment is nevertheless of immense
practical use, 235. The traditional rationalism gives an essentially
static universe, 237. Intolerableness of the intellectualist view, 240.
No rationalist account is possible of action, change, or immediate life,
244. The function of concepts is practical rather than theoretical, 247.
Bergson remands us to intuition or sensational experience for the
understanding of how life makes itself go, 252. What Bergson means by
this, 255. Manyness in oneness must be admitted, 256. What really exists
is not things made, but things in the making, 263. Bergson's
originality, 264. Impotence of intellectualist logic to define a
universe where change is continuous, 267. Livingly, things _are_ their
own others, so that there is a sense in which Hegel's logic is true,
270.

LECTURE VII

THE CONTINUITY OF EXPERIENCE 275

Green's critique of Sensationalism, 278. Relations are as immediately
felt as terms are, 280. The union of things is given in the immediate
flux, not in any conceptual reason that overcomes the flux's aboriginal
incoherence, 282. The minima of experience as vehicles of continuity,
284. Fallacy of the objections to self-compounding, 286. The concrete
units of experience are 'their own others,' 287. Reality is confluent
from next to next, 290. Intellectualism must be sincerely renounced,
291. The Absolute is only an hypothesis, 292. Fechner's God is not the
Absolute, 298. The Absolute solves no intellectualist difficulty, 296.
Does superhuman consciousness probably exist? 298.

LECTURE VIII

CONCLUSIONS 301

Specifically religious experiences occur, 303. Their nature, 304.
They corroborate the notion of a larger life of which we are a part,
308. This life must be finite if we are to escape the paradoxes of
monism, 310. God as a finite being, 311. Empiricism is a better
ally than rationalism, of religion, 313. Empirical proofs of larger
mind may open the door to superstitions, 315. But this objection
should not be deemed fatal, 316. Our beliefs form parts of reality,
317. In pluralistic empiricism our relation to God remains least
foreign, 318. The word 'rationality' had better be replaced by the
word 'intimacy,' 319. Monism and pluralism distinguished and
defined, 321. Pluralism involves indeterminism, 324. All men use
the 'faith-ladder' in reaching their decision, 328. Conclusion, 330.

NOTES

APPENDICES

A. THE THING AND ITS RELATIONS

B. THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY

C. ON THE NOTION OF REALITY AS CHANGING

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