From Virtue to Morality: Republicanism in the Texts and Contexts of William James

Year 1995, Issue: 2, 37 - 48, 01.10.1995

Paul Jerome Croce

Abstract

For most of this century, William James's reputation quietly included assumptions about his political and cultural role. For example, Ralph Henry Gabriel believed that his ideas were "reminiscent of the frontier" 336 , and Henry Steele Commager maintained that James's philosophy "reflected qualities in the American character" that were "wonderfully adapted to the average American" 96-97 . William James was the all-American philosopher. Recently, historians have redoubled their attention to the importance of ideas in context, which has led to a highlighting of the ideological components of theoretical constructions and beliefs--including those of philosophers. As a result, James has gotten redressed and appears a bit more trendy than those early to middle twentieth-century portraits made him out to be. We have witnessed a William James renaissance, with his thought contextualized in portraits of him: critically adapting the work ethic to modern questions of vocation in James Gilbert's study of industrial alienation; crusading for a "culture of inquiry" in David Hollinger's work; displacing his artistic vocation into his psychology and becoming the great philosopher of secular modernism in Daniel Bjork's two books; pioneering a non-Freudian American psychotherapeutics in Eugene Taylor's reconstruction of his unorthodox psychology; helping to create a "via media" between scientism and traditional religion in James Kloppenberg's analysis of political ideologies; emerging as a culturally engaged "public philosopher" in George Cotkin's recent book; surviving the critical pen of Frank Lentricchia as an advocate of "committed radical pluralism" with "comedic selfdeflation"; and even achieving canonization as a "culture hero" in Monroe Spears' recent literary studies for my discussion of James's cultural role, see Croce .

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