The Will To Believe by William James - First Printing from 1897
The Will To Believe
And Other Essays In Popular Philosophy
by William James
This book is a First Printing from 1897 published Longmans Green and Co.
This book comes with a pamphlet titled “Society of Psychical Research” which William James was the President of the Society.
—
James Eloquent and Important Defense of "Our Right to Adopt a Believing Attitude in Religious Matters" This, his first overtly piece of philosophical writing, is seminal for any understanding of William James' thought. Here he famously defends religious beliefs because of their beneficial effects on believers. A popular collection, these nine essays - written between 1879 and 1896 - were first published in an edition of 1,000 copies in March of 1897 and had to be reprinted twice that same year and many times thereafter. (See James, Will to Believe, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1979, pp. 307-8)Many of James's most important and innovative contributions are developed in this early book - including his advocacy of pluralism and what he calls in the Preface "radical empiricism". The book clearly illustrates James's efforts to weave together insights from psychology, philosophy, and religion without great regard for the growing and narrowing lines of professional specialization and shows, in the wake of the "The Principles of Psychology, his increasing interest in religious questions.In that sense alone, this book must be read as a major precursor and prelude to his monumental Varieties of Religious Experience - which was published just five years later. In the opening controversial and most famous essay, "The Will to Believe", (which James admitted, might better have been called "The Right to Believe") is "a defence of our right to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters, in spite of the fact that our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced." Driven by his fierce rejection of W.K. Clifford's statement that "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence," James spends most of this essay challenging and then dismissing this very limited 'scientific' approach to truth, knowledge and belief and defending the right to adopt a belief that might prove beneficial. In general, James makes a place for and shows the importance to life for a belief in transcendent reality and he does so, pointedly, without endorsing any specific religious creed.
—
This book is in very good condition for its age. The cover and spine shows some wear, stains, and fading.
