William James, Week 1: "The Present Dilemma in Philosophy"
“The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments”
Thus James introduces his first main idea. He posits two types of philosophical temperament: the tough-minded and the soft-minded. The former tend towards empiricism, the latter towards rationalism. He suggests that their differences are strictly due to temperament, or the aesthetic responses they have to various ideas.
We should note here a striking similarity to Nietzsche (as I will often do over the course of these guided readings). The German philosopher wrote: “every philosophy is in fact the unconscious biography of its author.”
Is James ruling out reconciliation between temperaments? In several passages he seems to suggest that the opinions of philosophers from the opposite temperament will always seem repulsive. Of course, he does allow that most of us are not “pure” rationalists or empiricists, and this seems to be his middle ground. He cannot hope to convince the highest philosophers (who are set in their dogmatic ways) to adopt the pragmatic method. But those of us who sit around the fence: we want the best of both worlds, and he feels Pragmatism can give that to us.
Interestingly enough, James mentions that we are in an empirical age, where science is almost dogma, and facts are everything to us. But James has little to say against this mindset, in fact, and he obviously prefers it. Given that Pragmatism is described here as a sort of “middle way” or compromise between the two mind-sets, does anyone think this bias upsets James’ claim to impartiality in matters of pragmatic judgment?
Of course, modern empiricism is in reaction to a long rationalist tradition in philosophy, beautifully illustrated by the Leibniz passage. However, we should recall that Leibniz was a rather extreme rationalist, who, in holding that we live in “the best of all possible worlds”, was incredibly alienated from the terrible conditions that many people have lived in throughout history. I think the important thing to note is not that rationalism is always this extreme, but that one of its fundamental tendencies is away from facts, towards abstract principles.
We should also note that James’ argument against Leibniz’s Rationalism (borrowed from one of his contemporaries) is not a logical one. It’s kind of an appeal to our intuition that a theory about the world should reflect what it is like to live in the world, though there really is no necessary connection between the experiences of a few advanced apes and the overall value of the universe. The passage he’s borrowed from Morrison Swift is purely rhetorical, and I’m not sure that we should allow its emotional impact to affect our overall judgment of Leibniz’s position. Why should the experience of one person significantly affect the “harmonious perfection” of the universe?
My final reflection on this section concerns relativism. Both James and Nietzsche have been interpreted by less charitable readers as espousing a kind of relativism. James’ reference to “temperaments” here seems to suggest that there may not be an actual final “truth” towards which philosophers might strive. However, this isn’t entirely accurate: of course, his whole project is a redefinition of “truth” itself in terms of pragmatic value. However, it seems to me that if James’ Pragmatism is ultimately unsatisfactory (that is, if it cannot satisfy basic requirements for describing what it means for a statement to be “true”), then if we accept his idea about philosophical "temperaments" being the basis for belief, we are left with nothing but temperament to describe why anyone believes anything. In short, relativism is inevitable.