Understanding James, Understanding Modernism: (Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism)

Psychologist, philosopher, teacher, writer—William James stood closer than any other thinker to the center of the confluence of intellectual and artistic forces that defined the culture of modernism. The outstanding feature of this volume lies in its intent to investigate James’s influence on both American and International Modernism. It provides, on the one hand, a multifaceted introduction to students of history, philosophy, and culture, and on the other, a compendium of some of the most up-to-date thinking on this central figure. James’s first book, Principles of Psychology (1890) immediately established James as the leading psychologist of his time, at a moment in history when psychology seemed to offer the promise of finding some definitive answers to eternal philosophical conundra. James’s innovations would register a clear effect on much modernist art, most evidently in the stylistic prose experiments of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and their imitators. James’s tentative skepticism concerning the concept of consciousness as such, and the post-Cartesian ego that was its foundation, also anticipates the questioning of the subject that would be the theme of much modern, and indeed postmodern thought. The contributors to this volume explore James’s most essential texts as well as his influence on contemporary writers, artists, and thinkers. The final section is a glossary of James’s key terms, with entries written by leading experts.

Table of Contents:
Series Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction: Unstiffening All Our Theories: William James and the Culture of Modernism David H. Evans, Dalhousie University, Canada Part 1: Conceptualizing James 1 The Character of Consciousness Owen Flanagan and Heather Wallace, Duke University, USA 2 Redeeming the Wild Universe: William James’s Will to Believe John J. Stuhr, Emory University, USA 3 The Psychology of Religion: William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience Michael Bacon, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK 4 The Human Contribution: James and Modernity in Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth Alan Malachowski, Stellenbosch University, South Africa 5 “Ever Not Quite!”: William James’s A Pluralistic Universe Barry Allen, McMaster University, Canada 6 James’s Radical Empiricism James Campbell, University of Toledo, USA Part 2: James and Modernist Culture 7 James and Bergson: Fighting the Beast Intellectualism with Metaphors Rosa Slegers, Babson College, USA 8 William James, Henry James and the Turn Toward Modernism Jill Kress Karn, Villanova University, USA 9 “Never Reject Anything. Nothing Has Been Proved”: William James and Gertrude Stein on Time and Language David H. Evans, Dalhousie University, Canada 10 The Varieties of Robert Frost’s Religious Experience Mark Richardson, Doshisha University, Japan 11 Notes Toward the Specious Present: James and Stevens Kristen Case, University of Maine at Farmington, USA 12 Modernist Figures and James’s Pluralistic Universe Patricia Rae, Queen's University, Canada 13 William James’s Stream of Consciousness and the River of the Unconscious in Joyce and Proust Gian Balsamo, Stanford University, USA 14 “That skilful but slow-moving arranger”: Habit in James and Proust Lisi Schoenbach, University of Tennessee, USA 15 William James and Italian Pragmatism Giovanni Maddalena, University of Molise, Italy, and Michela Bella, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Italy 16 James’s Pluralism and the Problems of Modern Political and Social Thought Robert Danisch, University of Waterloo, Canada Part 3: Glossary 17 James on Chance and Indeterminacy Kyle Bromhall, University of Guelph, Canada 18 James on Habit Lisi Schoenbach, University of Tennessee, USA 19 James on Morality David Rondel, University of Nevada, USA 20 James on Philosophical Temperaments Tom Donaldson 21 James on Pluralism Susan Dieleman, University of Saskatchewan, Canada 22 James on Pragmatism Colin Koopman, University of Oregon, USA 23 James on Psychical Phenomena Ermine Algaier IV, Harvard University, USA 24 James on Pure Experience Joel Krueger, University of Exeter, UK 25 James on Radical Empiricism Loren Goldman, University of Pennslyvania, USA 26 James on the Reinstatement of the Vague Rosa Slegers, Babson College, USA 27 James on Religious Experience Michael Bacon, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK 28 James on the Stream of Thought Alexis Dianda, The New School, USA 29 James on Time and the Specious Present David H. Evans, Dalhousie University, Canada 30 James on the Will to Believe Mark Richardson, Doshisha University, Japan Notes on Contributors Index

About the Author :
David H. Evans is Associate Professor of English at Dalhousie University, Canada. He is the author of William Faulkner, William James, and the American Pragmatic Tradition (2008) and co-editor of America and Violence, a special issue of the Canadian Review of American Studies (2008).

Review :
Understanding James, Understanding Modernism collects into a single volume an impressive set of essays by both well-established and emerging experts guiding us through James's entire philosophy, viewed through the prism of literary and cultural modernism. Many of James's well-known ideas—including pragmatism, pluralism, philosophical temperaments, radical empiricism, stream of thought, and the will to believe—are illuminated in strikingly novel ways in this context. It turns out that modernism, emphasizing temporality, change, and the 'flux' of reality in contrast to fixity, abstraction, and unchanging essences, captures much of what is central to James's basic pragmatist, pluralist, and empiricist approach. The book offers an astonishing breadth and coverage, a plurality of perspectives on his thought that James himself would have admired. With impressive scholarship, these lucid and probing essays trace William James's protean work from book to book and remind us of what an original modern thinker he was. They offer a fresh and convincing account of his intersections with boldly innovative modern writers, beginning with his own brother Henry. This volume is an insightful and accessible entry into William James’s thought, creating new perspectives inside a mapping of the essential ideas. It shows precisely how James translated experience into modernity, negotiating between the claims of science and opening pluralistic worlds in thought and practice. The strength of the collection is the way it addresses the entire range of James’s works and offers a wealth of multiple relations between James, modernism and literature. Evans (English, Dalhousie Univ., Canada) has assembled an impressive collection of original essays examining the varied contributions of philosopher, psychologist, and religious thinker William James (1842–1910) to the project of modernism. James's reflections on the nature of consciousness, religious experience, time, and meaning profoundly affected a range of artists, writers, and social and philosophical theorists—including his brother Henry James, W. E. B. Du Bois, Gertrude Stein, Robert Frost, and Henri Bergson. Essays on Marcel Proust, Frost, Stein, and Wallace Stevens demonstrate how significantly James's thought shaped and unshaped modernist culture. Emphasis is on James's relation to modernist endeavors in the US, the UK, France, and Italy. Students of the history of ideas will particularly value part 3, "A Glossary," which includes essays on 14 terms and concepts key to James's thinking, including habit, morality, pluralism, pragmatism, pure experience, and stream of thought. This volume offers an accessible map of James's relation to modernist aesthetics and intellectual projects and thus provides a rich base for further inquiries into modernism, aesthetics, philosophy, and religion. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. If the other volumes [in the series] are anywhere near as good as this one, they are a bargain … Reading through the volume with its very high and consistent standards of cogency and clarity made me see the work as a really important—and lively—re-assessment of modernism itself, and a book I can no longer do without. Understanding James, Understanding Modernism is a robust defense of pragmatism, pluralism, and religious experience, and the entire volume is merrily complicit in what Evans calls ‘the defenestration of metaphysics that would become the central philosophical project of the twentieth century.’