Audacious title, but if a life can be saved by philosophical intervention I think James is as plausible a lifesaver as any old dead philosopher. He intervened successfully on his own behalf, in one of the great shifts of vision in the annals of self-recovery.
Young William James felt "pulled in too many directions" and worried that we might be nothing but cogs in the machine of natural necessity. He wanted to find a single direction he could commit to, and a resolute will with which to do it.
His age, like ours, was distinctively obsessed with the quest for meaning and beset by anxiety, depression, and fear. He found a new way, Renouvier's, to think about things, decided to try it, and the rest is the historical founding myth of pragmatism I like to purvey.
In his late 20s he "just about touched bottom." He'd lost his dearest friend, possibly the love of his life. He couldn't commit to anything. He couldn't envision his own future. He needed something solid and reliable to hold onto, something to embolden his will and get him up and doing.
On the last day of April, 1870, he recorded a new diary entry: " I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. [He'd been having a lot of those!] I finished the first part of Renouvier's 2nd Essay and saw no reason why his definition of free will-- the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts-- need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present-- until next year-- that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will."
And: "Today has furnished the exceptionally passionate initiative... needful for the acquisition of habits."
On the last day of April, 1870, he recorded a new diary entry: " I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. [He'd been having a lot of those!] I finished the first part of Renouvier's 2nd Essay and saw no reason why his definition of free will-- the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts-- need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present-- until next year-- that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will."
And: "Today has furnished the exceptionally passionate initiative... needful for the acquisition of habits."
We are what we repeatedly do, as Artistotle had long since noted. Funny how we have to keep rediscovering the most basic things, we humans. And sad how we don't learn the hardest lessons by attending to the hard-earned wisdom of those who've gone before us
On Feb. 6, 2014 John Kaag, a young post-doc scholar at Harvard who'd been languishing in his own sea of despond, happened on the scene of a horrific tragedy. A young man named Steven Rose, about the age James had been when he confided his own crisis in that diary entry, leapt to his death from the observation deck of William James Hall.
On Feb. 6, 2014 John Kaag, a young post-doc scholar at Harvard who'd been languishing in his own sea of despond, happened on the scene of a horrific tragedy. A young man named Steven Rose, about the age James had been when he confided his own crisis in that diary entry, leapt to his death from the observation deck of William James Hall.
I've been there, in 2010. The view is bracing. In a glance you take in Harvard, James's home at Irving Street, and everything else for miles around. It's vivifying, if you're in a mind to receive an infusion of liveliness. Tragically, Mr. Rose was not.
He may have been one of those given to "too much questioning and too little active responsibility," resulting in deep pessimism and a hopeless view of life. Who knows?
We do know, though, that identifying and fighting actual problems and challenges to lives worth living is itself a source of "cheerfulness" and self-strengthening resolve.
And we know there's reason to suspect far more in heaven and earth than is typically dreamt of in our normal waking consciousness. The dog on my lap hasn't a clue about such things, and yet we share a life-world. Of what wonders may we be similarly clueless?
James doesn't know, nor do we. The point is to remain in touch with the "deepest thing in our nature," which deals with possibilities rather than finished facts. That "dumb region of the heart" is smarter than we know.
So we'll discuss that feeling of being "pulled in too many directions" and why, for those who feel that way, philosophy can't just be a "detached intellectual exercise." Philosophical arguments (such as free will vs. determinism) must "vivify" and point away from darkness and stasis, to matter at all.
Can belief that life is worth living become self-fulfilling? James said it could. But as Tim McGraw's dad Tug's old rallying slogan said, you gotta believe. You gotta believe.
"Is life worth living?" Maybe. But that implies maybe not. Can we, should we ever say that? Ask your doctor, the cartoon on my door advises, if a longer life is right for you. But no: ask yourself.
Ask yourself what your hypothetical future self, after you've made an irreversibly-terminal decision, would wish to tell you. In a word, I think it would be: Stay.
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ReplyDeleteI am actually really interested to read this book. I think the highlighted points of being "pulled in too many directions" is definitely a feeling that a lot of college students and young adults have. Instead of falling into a sadness or constantly focusing on the negative aspects of our lives, maybe we could turn to philosophy to meet our needs. We could find answers to the burdening questions that have us stressed out most of the time. Maybe we could find our lives to be self fulfilling in ways that we previously could not even imagine.