Essays in Philosophy

William James

Edited by Frederick Burkhardt

Edited by Fredson Bowers

Edited by Ignas K. Skrupskelis

Introduction by John J. McDermott

    Essays in Philosophy brings together twenty-one essays, reviews, and occasional pieces published by James between 1876 and 1910. They range in subject from a concern with the teaching of philosophy and appraisals of philosophers to analyses of important problems.

    Several of the essays, like "The Sentiment of Rationality" and "The Knowing of Things Together," are of particular significance in the development of the views of James's later works. All of them, as John McDermott says in his Introduction, are in a style that is "engaging and personal...witty, acerbic, compassionate, and polemical." Whether he is writing an article for the Nation of a definition of "Experience" for Baldwin's Dictionary or "The Mad Absolute" for the Journal of Philosophy, James is always unmistakably himself, and always readable.

  • Cover: Essays in Philosophy

Frederick Burkhardt, formerly a professor of philosophy and then a college president, is President Emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies.

Fredson Bowers is Linden Kent Professor of English, Emeritus, at the University of Virginia.

Ignas K. Skrupskelis is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina.