United States, 1842–1910
William James
A founder of American pragmatism and of modern psychology, who judged ideas by their practical effects and defended the will to believe.
William James in 2 lines
Every William James passage in thinkr's library, with the theme each one speaks to.
“Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”
“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”
Where William James lands on a hard choice
Quotation is the easy part. The harder test is what a position does when it meets a situation where every option costs something.
You are good at the work and no longer want it.
You are editing rather than escaping. The danger is that the part you love may not be the part anyone pays for.
A machine can now do the part of your work you were proud of.
You are separating your worth from a particular motion of the hands. The risk is discovering the pride was load-bearing.
You were wrong in public and no one has noticed yet.
You are aiming at the outcome rather than the announcement. The cost is that quiet fixes teach no one anything.
A belief you hold arrived from your parents, unexamined.
You are letting the belief prove itself in use rather than in argument. The danger is a permanent provisionality that never commits.
The work is good and you keep finding reasons to hold it.
You are letting contact with the world do what another draft cannot. The risk is confusing speed with courage.
You gave good advice that you do not take yourself.
You are letting the idea stand separately from your record with it. The danger is candour used to buy exemption.
A grief has not moved in a long time and people expect it to.
You are treating grief as something you participate in rather than wait out. The risk is forcing a schedule that belongs to no one.
A stranger needs help and you have somewhere to be.
You are aiming at the outcome rather than the gesture. The cost is a habit of finding the cheapest sufficient act.
The better-paid job is the one that means less to you.
You are funding a future self who will have more room to choose. The risk is that the room arrives and you no longer want it.
A past version of your life keeps looking better than this one.
You are treating the longing as information about what you need. The risk is reconstructing conditions without the person you were inside them.
Staying where you are from is costing you what you could become.
You are refusing a clean break that the facts do not require. The danger is being half-present in two lives.
You got the thing you wanted and it did not land.
You are accepting that the reaching is the life. The risk is a treadmill you have agreed to call a path.
You have started measuring something you used to simply do.
You are keeping the instrument and refusing it authority. The danger is that numbers quietly become goals whatever you intend.
Reading William James today
William James wrote in 1842–1910, from United States — a world with different assumptions about authority, death and what a life is for. That distance is useful rather than a problem: it is what lets the ideas cut against assumptions you did not know you were making.
In thinkr, William James is one of 44 thinkers you can put a real question to, and the answers come back in that thinker's own voice and commitments rather than as a neutral summary. The 2 passages above are what the app draws on.
Working at roughly the same time
- Albert Camus — France/Algeria, 1913–1960
- Arthur Schopenhauer — Germany, 1788–1860
- Bertrand Russell — UK, 1872–1970
- Carl Jung — Switzerland, 1875–1961
- David Hume — Scotland, 1711–1776
- Friedrich Nietzsche — Germany, 1844–1900
Argues the same cases
Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, Aristotle, Jeremy Bentham take positions on the same dilemmas as William James, which is usually where the disagreements become concrete.