William James: Getting Here from There

Thinking about "A Will to Believe": Where it comes from, what is good for
Notes for a conversation in English 271
Bryn Mawr College
14 April 2009

A starting place

And another

"James's first unthinking reaction to the [San Francisco] earthquake, he tells us, was one of 'glee,' 'admiration,' 'delight,' and 'welcome' ... It was for James a moment of contact with elemental reality" ... William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism, Robert D. Richardson, 2006

Some language clarifications

How it comes into existence (in James, in others)

need to become conscious of "the pit of insecurity beneath the surface of life"

David Hume: "I could think of no other way of pushing my fortune in the world, but that of a scholar and philosopher. I was infinitely happy in this course of life for some months; till at last, about the beginning of September, 1729, all my ardour seemed in a moment to be extinguished, and I could no longer raise my mind to that pitch, which formerly gave me such excessive pleasure ...  It is a weakness rather than a lowness of spirits which troubles me, and there seems to be as great a difference betwixt my distemper and common vapours, as betwixt vapours and madness. I have noticed in the writings of the French mystics, and in those of our fanatics here, that when they give a history of the situation of their souls, they mention a coldness and desertion of the spirit, which frequently returns and some of them, at the beginning, have been tormented with it many years. As this kind of devotion depends entirely on the force of passion, and consequently of the animal spirits, I have often thought that their case and mine were pretty parallel, and that their rapturous admirations might discompose the fabric of the nerves and brain, as much as profound reflections, and that warmth or enthusiasm which is inseparable from them.

Albert Camus: "a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end"

Richard Rorty: "history and anthropology are enough to show that there are no unwobbling pivots"

Deconstruction (see also Chance: its meaning and significance)

need a way of being in which uncertainty/finitude is seen and felt as an affordance rather than as a problem/threat to security

William James: "After the first of January, my callow skin being somewhat fledged, I may perhaps return to metaphysical study and skepticism without danger to my powers of action.  For the present then remember: care little for speculation ... recollect that only when habits of order are formed can we advance to really interesting fields of action ... Not in maxims, not in Anschauuggen, but in accumulated acts of thought lies salvation.

Hitherto when, when I have felt like taking a free initiative, like daring to act originally, without carefully waiting for contemplation of the eternal world to determine all for me, suicide seemed the most manly form to put my daring into; now, I will go a step further with my will, not only act with it, but believe as well, believe in my individuality and creative power .... Life shall be built on doing and suffering and creating.

David Hume: I was continually fortifying myself with reflections against death, and poverty, and shame, and pain, and all the other calamities of life. These no doubt are exceeding useful, when joined with an active life, because the occasion being presented along with the reflection, works it into the soul, and makes it take a deep impression; but in solitude they serve to little other purpose, than to waste the spirits, the force of the mind meeting with no resistance, but wasting itself in the air, like our arm when it misses its aim.

Richard Rorty: Singlemindedness ... is the quest for purity of heart - the attempt to will one thing - gone rancid. It is the attempt to see yourself as an incarnation of something larger than yourself ... rather than accepting your finitude.

Fyodor Dostoevsky: science itself will teach man... that he himself is something of the nature of a piano-key or the stop of an organ... so that everything he does is not done by his willing it, but is done of itself, by the laws of nature....even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point.... the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!

Albert Camus: All Sisyphus' silent joy in contained therein ... Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human ... he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.

"My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will" extended

• Evolution
• The brain

Paul Grobstein: Maybe at this point in human history we've finished cataloguing all the possible things that one MIGHT have used as a solid starting point for continuing inquiry and we can conclude (for the moment at least?) that NONE of them are in fact a solid starting point, in the sense that none can be taken as a given not subject to further skepticism and exploration. Maybe its time to seriously entertain the possibility that looking for a single solid starting point just isn't the right way to go, that one has to find another, different way to proceed ...

One doesn't for all time abandon skepticism for some particular thing. Instead one temporarily abandons skepticism for all things in order to act. Having done so, however, one then returns to a complete skepticism. To put it differently, one acts, observes the consequences of action, and then uses those observations as part of one's on-going inquiry into anything and everything for which they may have relevance ...

by fully and completely following through on a posture of profound skepticism one very much expands the space for exploration and inquiry. While it may be a little uncomfortable to give up the security not only of authority and logic and sense data and thinking but also the "self", one achieves along this path the freedom to become, and, in becoming, to be oneself the agent of new territory to explore and inquire into.