Biography
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11. Introducing 'Pragmatism' and the Gifford Lectures
Lecturing often, the decade ended with William working too hard for his physical and emotional constitution. His own concern for his health and finances led him initially to turn down an invitation to give the prestigious Gifford Lectures in Natural Religion at the University of Edinburgh, suggesting instead his colleague, friend, and philosophical nemesis Josiah Royce.[17] However, the university persisted and made arrangements for two series of lectures beginning in 1899.
The years 1898 through 1899 demonstrated to be pivotal, beginning with the development of a chronic heart ailment that would ultimately be fatal. Nonetheless, William traveled to California where he gave a series of lectures at the Universities of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles. Notably, it was during this series that William gave a lecture, published immediately thereafter as "Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results," in which he first used the term 'pragmatism' to denote a theory of truth wherein the "meaning" of a concept is marked by "some particular consequence, in our future practical experience, whether active or passive; the point lying rather in the fact that the experience must be particular, than in the fact that it must be active."[18] This consequentialist take on truth and meaning, William believed, was simply a restatement of Charles Peirce's own principle of practicalism concerning the meaning of our beliefs. This important concept would later be fleshed out in William's famous 1907 lectures entitled Pragmatism, but the relevant "principle" is instrumental throughout much of his writings before and after 1898.
By 1899, he was off again to Europe working on his Gifford lectures, due to be given starting in January 1900. The task was daunting, and because of his health the lectures had to be postponed until 1901, but the result was another impressive and definitive work. A psychological sociology of religious insights and practices, The Varieties of Religious Experience has proved virtually as influential as his landmark Principles. Beginning with a psychological development of religious experience – dividing human religious appreciation between the "healthy-minded" and "sick souls" – and after a survey of religious phenomenologies from "conversion" to "mysticism," William concludes that
the only thing that [religious experience] testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.... It need not be infinite, it need not be solitary. It might conceivably even be only a larger and more godlike self.[19]
Exorcising the spiritual demons that long possessed him, William's conclusions carefully leave room for the gods of both his grandfather and father while opening "spiritual" space for the "godlike" aspects of human association, personal transcendence, and his own "willful" and "pragmatic" view of religious belief.
[17] Royce gave the lectures in 1899, later published under the title The World and the Individual.
[18] See McDermott JJ (ed). 1977. The writings of William James: a comprehensive edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p 349.
[19] See ibid, pp 785-786.
Source: Talisse RB, Hester DM. 2004. Lives in transition: experiencing James. In On James, chap 1. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing. pp. 14-15. [Adapted by permission of the authors.]
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