Instinctive mythology

"If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance with his instincts, he will accept it even on the slenderest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way."

— Bertrand Russell, Proposed Roads To Freedom

Opening Day!

Another semester dawns. An inaugural I always enjoy...

https://open.substack.com/pub/philoliver/p/opening-day-b66?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

https://bsky.app/profile/wjsociety.bsky.social/post/3lg7ltodrd22y

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

On a Cold, Dark Inauguration Day, a Message From the Birds

"…Birds don't exist to serve as symbols, and yet they can't help but mean something to the symbol-making species watching them through a window or a storm door. On this Inauguration Day that brings no hope for help from elected officials to address climate change or to protect vulnerable species, including our own, the living world is showing us what to do: In the dark days already gathering, we will need to do our best to look out for one another and for the creatures we love."

Margaret Renkl

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/opinion/winter-birds-cooperation-survival.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Read banned books

I got a Little Free Library for Christmas (aptly complementing the gift of light). I'm going to put it up soon as the next big freeze ends and ground yields to shovel. Ray's going in there, for sure.

“I tell people, Make a list of ten things you hate and tear them down in a short story or poem. Make a list of ten things you love and celebrate them. When I wrote ‘Fahrenheit 451’ I hated book burners and I loved libraries. So there you are” —Ray Bradbury

A problem with (most) academics

(And the virtue of inter-disciplinarity):

"Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise — even in their own field." — Isaac Asimov

Disruptive avatar

That's another name for Philosopher, at least the sort fashioned in a Socratic mold. Agnes Callard's new book is out just in time for the start of our semester. (And she'll be our Lyceum guest in March.) Can't wait to resume my disruptive vocation on Tuesday. There will be questions, starting as always with "Who are you? Why are you here?" And why are we?

"Socrates did not write great books. And yet he is responsible for one truly great creation: the character of Socrates. Socrates made himself into someone that other people could be. He fashioned his very person into a kind of avatar or mascot for anyone who ventures to ask the sorts of questions that disrupt the course of a life."

— Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life by Agnes Callard

It was nice to see Ann Patchett giving a brief shout-out to Callard (though she mispronounces the name, which rhymes with mallard and J.G. Ballard... and though it sounds like Dr. Karl is more enthusiastic for the subject matter than she is.

See this Instagram post by @dremilyherring

"This week the New York Times ran the review of my biography of Bergson in print! If anyone knows how I can get my hands on a copy in Paris let me know!" --

dremilyherring

osopher

 17h

Great to see the book getting this attention! But Bergsonians (and Jamesians) will rightly resent Anthony Gottlieb's dismissive condescension. If subjective human experience is not relevant to our grasp of the significance of time, what in the world is??

@dremilyherring: https://www.instagram.com/p/DE0HV1_MCah/?igsh=ZGUzMzM3NWJiOQ==

==

I'm tempted to write a letter to the Times Book Review.

I wrote The New Yorker a letter, taking issue with Gottlieb's Leibniz, which they won't publish so soon on he heels of my last one. But I needed to write it:

Anthony Gottlieb wants us to overlook Gottfried Leibniz's "best of possible worlds" theodicy and give the old philosopher a break. [The Man Who Knew Too Much, Jan.6]

William James was an ecumenical philosopher prepared to give just about every variety of experience-based philosophy more than an even break. But he rightly drew the line at Leibniz,

a rationalist mind, with infinitely more interest in facts than most rationalist minds can show. Yet if you wish for superficiality incarnate, you have only to read that charmingly written 'Theodicee' of his, in which he sought to justify the ways of God to man, and to prove that the world we live in is the best of possible worlds. --William James, Pragmatism Lecture I: The Present Dilemma in Philosophy

The notion that suffering on earth could ever be adequately compensated by its hypothetical absence elsewhere in the cosmos is indeed a feeble attempt to rationalize the insufferable.

#try

We pragmatists must frequently remind ourselves, as WJ did when he mocked himself for thinking he could "settle the universe's hash" with a grand final statement in philosophy:

"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength." ― [falsely attributed, probably, to Marcus Aurelius, Meditations]

And yet we must try. Fools and authoritarians do seem to have an outsize influence on events. #meliorism

"to work for something because it is good"

That's hope.

"F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function,” but the summations of the state of the world often assume that it must be all one way or the other, and since it is not all good it must all suck royally. Fitzgerald’s forgotten next sentence is, “One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

You wonder what made Vaclav Havel hopeful in 1985 or 1986, when Czechoslovakia was still a Soviet satellite and he was still a jailbird playwright. Havel said then, The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul; it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation.

Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed."

"Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities" by Rebecca Solnit: https://a.co/2ykoSIT

William James Society - A Note from the President

 Now, to work on that Presidential Address in D.C. in March...

William James Society

A Note from the President: Happy New Chapter!

Welcome to the William James Society, members old, new, and prospective. I greet you at the dawn of the next quarter-century of our organization’s history. I was honored to be here in the beginning as an inaugural board member, and am humbled to be here now as president in 2025-6.

On behalf of the society I invite you to (re-)join our growing, pluralistic community. We reflect various backgrounds, disciplines, and traditions. Some are institutionally affiliated scholars, others are independent. But all share the belief that William James’s philosophical and humanistic legacy offers something crucial our time desperately needs.

The future is (as ever) uncertain but, we Jamesians believe, is also malleable and at least partly, potentially responsive to our most thoughtful and committed exertions in the present. “The really vital question for us all,” he said, “is What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself?”

James also liked to say life feels like a “real fight,” not a mere game of inconsequential “private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will.” That rings at least as true in 2025 as it must have in 1884, when in Dilemma of Determinism he sought to rally his peers to the spirit of “meliorism”–of trying to improve the human prospect, without any advance guarantees of success.

But because James was a happy fighter, a seeker and celebrant of what he called our “springs of delight,” I think an organization devoted to promoting his distinctive mode of thought and action must also court joy, hope, and a resolute resilience in the face of whatever hard challenges await us.

And because he was a pluralistic humanist, we should also embrace his philosophy of ‘co’: “The pluralistic form [of philosophy] takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of, being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of ‘co’…”

As so, my fellow James Society cohorts, we can afford neither of the twin luxuries of excessive optimism or pessimism in these challenging times. Neither of those attitudes can summon our best efforts. Let us get on with doing our small bit to try and build a better world.

The great essayist E. B. White said “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” Hard, sure. But a Jamesian will insist on both.

So let us be meliorists. And let us have a good time doing it.

Happy New Year!

Phil Oliver
President, William James Society

==

About WJS

Membership in the Society is open to anyone interested in issues related to the thought and character of William James, and joins you to a growing community of scholars and others with related academic interests.

The William James Society (WJS) is a multidisciplinary professional society which supports the study of, and communication about, the life and work of William James (1842-1910) and his ongoing influence in the many fields to which he contributed.

The William James Society was founded in 1999 by Randall Albright and quickly grew to include members from across the USA and around the world. In 2001, the Society ratified an organizational constitution, held its first annual meeting, and elected executive offices. For many years, WJS published the in-house newsletter and scholarly outlet Streams of William James. In 2006, the society shifted gears and began publishing the academic, peer reviewed, online journal William James Studies.

Joining the Society helps to fund the following:The offering of the annual WJS YOUNG SCHOLAR PRIZE.
Co-hosting academic panels at:The American Philosophical Association
The American Academy of Religion
Society for the Advancement of Philosophy
European Pragmatism Conference
Making and making freely available our online journal: William James Studies.

If you are also interested in the life and work of William James, we hope that you will consider joining us in our endeavors.

https://wjsociety.org/

Waking on the mountain

Good to begin 2025 in such a peaceful calming place.