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William James Society

@wjsociety.bsky.social

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Encouraging the discussion and application of the pragmatic, pluralistic philosophy of William James (1842-1910).

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William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · Apr 26

The philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books; it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos.

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William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 7d

no one of us can get along without the far-flashing beams of light it sends over the world's perspectives. These illuminations at least, and the contrast-effects of darkness and mystery that accompany them, give to what it says an interest that is much more than professional.

William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 7d

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens out the widest vistas. It 'bakes no bread,' as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage…

courage.no

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William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 9d

Good news: the full recording we thought was botched exists after all: jcbmtsu.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Page...

Philosophy of Happiness - PHIL-3160-001

James Oliver

jcbmtsu.hosted.panopto.com

William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 10d

Bertrand Russell was famously critical of American philosophers like William James and their radical theories of truth. But Russell’s attack rests on a caricature, argues philosopher John Kaag…

iai.tv/articles/rus...

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William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 10d

Kaag on Russell on James www.facebook.com/share/p/1JRH...

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William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 11d

youtube.com/watch?v=ZhTS...

Dr. Megan Craig, Stony Brook University, at MTSU’s Applied Philosophy Lyceum Sep 26 2025

YouTube video by Phil Oliver

youtube.com

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William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 11d

Excellent Lyceum address from Megan Craig, on staying human(e) and present in the face of mortality. #mtsu #AppliedPhilosophyLyceum

William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 12d

—Levinas and James: toward a pragmatic phenomenology

William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 12d

James, alongside Bergson, recognized the value of non-intellectual sense, urging us to reanimate our capacity for greater intimacy and sensible contact with the world… James encouraged us to access “our earliest, most instinctive, least developed, kind of consciousness.” Megan Craig

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William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 14d

Megan Craig (Stony Brook University) is MTSU's upcoming Applied Philosophy Lyceum speaker...

RELATION AND RUPTURE
AT THE END OF LIFE
Friday, September 26, 2025 • 5 p.m.
College of Education, Room 164

philoshap2.blogspot.com/2025/09/a-co...

A conversation with Megan Craig

Megan Craig (Stony Brook University) is MTSU 's upcoming Applied Philosophy Lyceum speaker... RELATION AND RUPTURE AT THE END OF LIFE ...

philoshap2.blogspot.com

William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 17d

Only over the past 100 years has the discipline, through an “analytic turn,” been “trying to reduce all of human experience to the understandable, to the explicable,” he said. “And James says, no, reality always outstrips the descriptions of it — and that’s for the best.”

William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 17d

“The findings of psychedelics wouldn’t have surprised Heraclitus, Plato, Plotinus, Spinoza, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Emerson, Nietzsche and, most certainly, William James,” John Kaag, a philosopher at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and an expert on James, told me.

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William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 17d

Psychedelics Blew His Mind. He Wants Other Philosophers to Open Theirs. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/b...

Psychedelics Blew His Mind. He Wants Other Philosophers to Open Theirs.

www.nytimes.com

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William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 18d

Few of us are tender-foot Bostonians pure and simple, and few are typical Rocky Mountain toughs, in philosophy. Most of us have a hankering for the good things on both sides of the line. Facts are good, of course—give us lots of facts. Principles are good—give us plenty of principles.

William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 28d

Each type believes the other to be inferior to itself; but disdain in the one case is mingled with amusement, in the other it has a dash of fear.

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William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 28d

The tender feel the tough to be unrefined, callous, or brutal. Their mutual reaction is very much like that that takes place when Bostonian tourists mingle with a population like that of Cripple Creek.

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William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · 28d

The antagonism between intensely tough and tender temperaments has formed in all ages a part of the philosophic atmosphere of the time. It forms a part of the philosophic atmosphere today. The tough think of the tender as sentimentalists and soft-heads.

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William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · Sep 1

Tender-minded and tough-minded people, characterized as I have written them down, do both exist. Each of you probably knows some well-marked example of each type, and you know what each example thinks of the example on the other side of the line. They have a low opinion of each other.

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William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · Aug 22

I hope summer has glided away as happily for you as it has for us. Now it begins to fade towards the horizon over which so many summers have slipped, and our household is on the point of "breaking up" just when the season invites one most imperiously to stay. Dang all schools and colleges, say I.

William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · Aug 19

The word came out of one who is unfit to be a philosopher because at bottom he hates philosophy, especially at the beginning of a vacation, with the fragrance of the spruces and sweet ferns all soaking him through with the conviction that it is better to be than to define your being.

William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · Aug 19

My dear Howison,—How you have misunderstood the application of my word "trivial" as being discriminatively applied to your pluralistic idealism! Quite the reverse—if there be a philosophy that I believe in, it's that.

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William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · Aug 16

This is exciting (if you're a Jamesian):

William James Society board member and (with his Pragmatism Cybrary) master archivist of American Philosophy John Shook has recovered the earliest society publications… jposopher.blogspot.com/2025/08/in-b...

In the beginning (of the William James Society): "The Streams of William James"

This is exciting (if you're a Jamesian ): William James Society executive board member and (with his Pragmatism Cybrary ) master archivis...

jposopher.blogspot.com

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William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · Aug 12

I have no doubt whatever that most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. We all have reservoirs of life to draw upon, of which we do not dream. The practical problem is "how to get at them." Most never do.

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William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · Aug 5

THE TENDER-MINDED
Rationalistic (going by 'principles'), Intellectualistic, Idealistic, Optimistic, Religious, Free-willist, Monistic, Dogmatical.

THE TOUGH-MINDED
Empiricist (going by 'facts'), Sensationalistic, Materialistic, Pessimistic, Irreligious, Fatalistic, Pluralistic, Sceptical.

William James Society @wjsociety.bsky.social · Aug 5

The rationalist finally will be of dogmatic temper in his affirmations, while the empiricist may be more sceptical and open to discussion.
I will write these traits down in two columns… 'tender-minded' and 'tough-minded' respectively.

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