| Summary: | In this critical response to James Campbell's book on William James, Greg Moses affirms the value of Campbell's scholarship and critical analysis, but with one or two quibbles. Campbell's overview of James is comprehensive, extensively researched, and sympathetic, especially in defense of the often maligned "The Will to Believe." But Moses argues that James is not post-Copernican, rather he is post-Darwinian, and this means that James' debt to science should not be minimized. After all, he was hired by Harvard to teach anatomy. An evolutionary view of pragmatism is here, once again, emphasized. Finally, Moses applauds Campbell's recovery of a previously published insight, for nearly 40 years neglected by the field of James studies, that Jamesian pluralism demands not just appreciation but radical inclusion, and that radical empiricism has not sufficiently confronted the Jamesian discernment of radical blindness. Jamesian engagements with Du Bois and Alain Locke should therefore be pursued.
|
|---|