The Moral Equivalent of War

William James

Description

From one of nineteenth-century America’s leading philosophical thinkers, William James, this fascinating short essay is an engaging read exploring the reasons for war, and methods and resources to prevent conflict.

The Moral Equivalent of War was written as part of an initiative to stir interest in international peace among US residents. First published in 1910, the Executive Committee of the Association for International Conciliation used this treatise to encourage civilians to support the movement promoting international peace. In this short essay, William James discusses the reasons for war in general and explores the various ways in which we can prevent it.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Éthique et morale
• Moral Philosophy
• Philosophie et théologie
• Philosophy
• Ethics
• Ethique et morale

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 22 décembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781473365377
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Moral Equivalent of War
by
William James


Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be
reproduced or copied in any way without
the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
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William James
William James was born on 11th January 1842 at the Astor House, in New York City, United States. His family were both wealthy and influential. His father was the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr, his uncle was the prominent novelist Henry James, and his aunt was noted diarist Alice James.
James suffered a variety of physical ailments as a youth, including problems with his eyes, back, stomach, and skin. However, he still received an excellent transatlantic education, becoming fluent in both French and German. The two trips he made to Europe as a child, set a pattern in James’ life that led to thirteen subsequent trips to the continent.
He began an apprenticeship with the artist William Morris, but decided that his calling was the world of science, and in 1861 he enrolled at the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University. He then moved to Harvard Medical School in 1864 and received his M.D in 1869, although he never actually practised medicine. James spent almost his entire career at Harvard, teaching a variety of subjects, including physiology, anatomy, psychology, and philosophy. He has now become known as the “Father of American Psychology”, due to being the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. In 1890, he published The Principles of Psychology, which is considered to be a ground-breaking text in the field. In this work he outlined what is now known as the James-Lange theory of emotion (an independently formulated theory named after James and Carl Lange). In a simple example, James states that we do not see a bear, fear it, and then run. We see a bear and run, consequently we fear the bear. Our mind’s perception of the higher adrenaline level, heartbeat, etc., is the emotion. This had huge ramifications to the traditional view in the philosophy of aesthetics.
In 1902, he produced The Varieties of Religious Experience. He was always extremely interested in the investigation of mystical experience and was not averse to testing substances such as nitrous oxide and peyote to induce an altered mental state. Amusingly, he claimed that it was only under the influence of nitrous oxide that he understood the work of Hegel.
Another very important work by James was Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912) in which he asserts that experience includes both particulars and relations between those particulars, and that therefore both deserve a place in our explanations. In concrete terms: any philosophical world-view is flawed if it stops at the physical level and fails to explain how meaning, values and intentionality can arise from that. This work influenced intellectual giants such as Emile Durkheim, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty.
James made a massive contribution to many fields, writing on topics such as epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. His impact on the intellectual landscape still remains today, often being quoted and cited in academic works. He died on 26th August 1910.