The Pleasures of a Saint, the Pleasures of a Plant: William James, Walt Whitman, and the Varieties of Hedonic Experience

2021 ◽  
Vol N° 167 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-84
Author(s):  
Michael Jonik
Keyword(s):  
Walt Whitman ◽  
William James ◽  
Hedonic Experience

The ““Sky-Blue”” Variety: William James, Walt Whitman, and the Limits of Healthy-Mindedness

2008 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 493-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Tessitore
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Walt Whitman ◽  
William James ◽  
Religion And Gender ◽  
John Addington Symonds ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Edward Carpenter

Although Neo-Pragmatist scholars have long considered Walt Whitman an intellectual and literary forebear to William James and the American Pragmatic tradition, James believed Whitman to be a far more problematic thinker than has been acknowledged. Haunting much of James's writings, and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) in particular, is a Whitman who is less a figure for emulation than an embodiment of a particular kind of metaphysical excess, at once unworldly and effeminate. In characterizing Whitman as a paragon of an untrustworthy ““healthy-mindedness”” and a ““queer”” idealism that he wished to excise from his own Transcendental inheritance, James developed a gendered critique of the ““sky-blue”” optimism he recognized as the peculiar legacy of the poet, a critique that took into account Whitman's roots in Hegelian and Emersonian thought as well as the well-publicized homoeroticism of his life and work. Ambivalent about the sexual and moral ““indifferentism”” that he believed accompanied Whitman's ““sky-blue”” acceptance of evil and death, James then traced Whitman's influence——both implicitly and explicitly——through the writings of the leading gay Whitmanites of his era, including the ““mystics”” John Addington Symonds and Edward Carpenter. Thus, in the war for the American soul——a war that James waged on the battlefields of metaphysics, religion, and gender identity as well as within his own person——the father of Pragmatism turned a ““feminine”” and ““unnatural”” Whitman into his chief foil and his main adversary; Whitman became the standard against which his own ““manly”” beliefs and methodologies, particularly with respect to religious experience, were defined.

The Emersonian Presence in Abstract Expressionism

Prospects ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 91-108
Author(s):  
Matthew Baigell
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Walt Whitman ◽  
William James ◽  
Abstract Expressionism ◽  
American Art ◽  
Process Art ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
American Intellectual History

In all of the literature on abstract expressionism, very little has been written about what I would call the Emersonian presence. It is a presence rather than a source or influence. And it is not limited to Emerson, since it can be found in such figures as Walt Whitman and William James, among others. But it is easier to say “an Emersonian presence” because precise influences are difficult, probably impossible, to establish. What I am concerned with is an attitude of mind that recurs in American intellectual history and that resonates through much 20th-century American art, ranging from early modernists such as John Marin through artists associated with process art. I do not mean to deny other welldocumented European and American sources, influences, and presences in abstract expressionism and other American movements, but only to call attention at this time to the Emersonian presence.

A pragmatist philosophy of psychological science and its implications for replication

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Gantman ◽  
Robin Gomila ◽  
Joel E. Martinez ◽  
J. Nathan Matias ◽  
Elizabeth Levy Paluck ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Behavioral Measurement ◽  
The World ◽  
Pragmatist Philosophy

AbstractA pragmatist philosophy of psychological science offers to the direct replication debate concrete recommendations and novel benefits that are not discussed in Zwaan et al. This philosophy guides our work as field experimentalists interested in behavioral measurement. Furthermore, all psychologists can relate to its ultimate aim set out by William James: to study mental processes that provide explanations for why people behave as they do in the world.

William James Sidis, the broken twig.

1977 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 265-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Montour
Keyword(s):  
William James

The Little World of William James

1968 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 177-180
Author(s):  
ROBERT G. WEYANT
Keyword(s):  
William James
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