From Anuario Filisofico, (Spain) Vol. XLII/1 2009, pp. 222-223.
James, W., A Pluralistic Universe. A New Philosophical Reading, edited and introduced by H.G. Callaway, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne (United Kingdom), 2008, 50+ 286 pp.
Just in time for the centennial of William James’ Hibbert Lectures, addressing the contemporary situation in philosophy, a new edition has appeared of this classic work of the American pragmatist tradition. The volume collects James’ eight lectures, presented with enormous success in May of 1908 at Manchester College in Oxford, repeated at Harvard in November of that year and which were published by Longmans, Green & Co. of New York in April of 1909.
In this new edition, Howard Callaway modernizes and homogenizes the original orthography of the text and complements James’ scant notes with abundant additions, which clarify the more obscure elements of James’ vocabulary and judiciously add information relevant to the understanding of the questions which James tackled in these lectures. It is an edition more manageable in lecturing than the excellent critical edition published by Harvard University Press in 1977 as volume 4 of The Works of William James. The new edition of the James text is preceded by a valuable Introduction by Callaway under the general title of “The Meaning of Pluralism” (pp. xi-l) and is closed by a brief chronology of James’ life (pp. 243-250), a careful bibliography covering all citations in the volume (pp. 251-274) and an expanded index (pp. 275-286) aiming to better accommodate “contemporary interests” (p. ix).
As suggested in the subtitle, A New Philosophical Reading, the editor aspires in his Introduction and his notes to “facilitate a deeper understanding and a critical evaluation (...) of this crucial and difficult philosophical work” (p. ix). This was the last important book which James published during his lifetime. With it James aims at a critical evaluation of Hegelian monism and an exploration of the philosophical and theological alternatives. “Our world of some one hundred years on”—the editor says (p. ix)—“is much the better for James’ contribution, and understanding William James on pluralism deeply contributes even now to America’s self-understanding.” For the Hispanic reader of particular interest are Callaway’s presentation of the Unitarian audience of religious non-conformists at Manchester College, which was not integrated into the University of Oxford until 1996, of the relations between William James and Ralph Waldo Emerson (pp. xv-xxiv), and of the context provided by the general reaction against Hegelianism and the relation of this to the philosophy of pragmatism (pp. xxiv-xxi).
The titles of the eight lectures by James are “The Types of Philosophic Thinking,” “Monistic Idealism,” “Hegel and his Method,” “Concerning Fechner,” “The Compounding of Consciousness,” “Bergson and his Critique of Intellectualism,” “The Continuity of Experience,” and “Conclusions.” Following the original edition, the present work includes as well James’ three appendices: “The Thing and its Relations,” “The Experience of Activity,” and “On the Notion of Reality as Changing.” Remarkable is James’ invitation, in this final appendix, to compare the philosophies of Peirce and Bergson in order to describe their enormous congruence: both believe in the genuine appearance of novelty in things, in the reality of chance, in creative evolution which for Peirce is agapasticism (pp. 240-1). “If such a synechistic pluralism as Peirce, Bergson, and I believe in, be what really exists, every phenomenon of development, even the simplest, would prove equally rebellious to our science should the latter pretend to give us literally accurate instead of approximate, or statistically generalized, pictures of the development of reality.” (p. 241).
It is unfortunate that this work by William James has not been yet translated into Spanish. Perhaps the centennial will be a suitable occasion: Callaway’s edition, with its abundant explicative notes, will greatly facilitate the needed translation.
Jaime Nubiola University of Navarra