The Cambridge Companion to William James

Citation

Guha, M. (1998), "The Cambridge Companion to William James", Collection Building, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 44-44. https://doi.org/10.1108/cb.1998.17.1.44.1

As a new century dawns on us it is, perhaps, interesting to consider how many of the people regarded as key thinkers 100 years ago are still now regarded as being of importance. It can be said that the most important intellectual influences on the twentieth century were Marx and Freud, who both reached the stage of being seriously debunked at about the same time, but are both still fiercely controversial figures. Darwin is holding his own, in spite of determined efforts by various individuals, from various angles. Others, however, such as Henry Maudsley or Herbert Spencer, who were once considered to be major thinkers, have largely fallen into obscurity. There has been some danger of William James coming into the same category. Founder of the first psychological laboratory (even before Wundt), Professor of Philosophy at Harvard for 20 years, and once, improbably, hailed as the “Greatest Living American,” he never founded a school of thought, and his books sit on my library’s shelves, largely unread. Librarians can see the decline in the influence of James’ thinking, by the fact that Melvil Dewey, as a follower of James, ensconced psychology firmly in the middle of his philosophy schedules, from which, in successive editions, it has gradually been separated.

This is not an introduction to, or even a handbook on William James. It is quite correctly entitled a companion, a collection of essays, mainly by professors of philosophy, on aspects of James’ thinking, aimed at readers who already have some knowledge of James’ own writings. I have found the best general introduction to James to be Barzun’s (1983) A Stroll with William James, and the most accessible of James’ own writings to be The Varieties of Religious Experience and the Principles of Psychology (both of these have been reprinted on a number of occasions, although I do not know of any reprints as cheap as this companion to them!). A useful selection of his writings can be found in Wilshire (1984). There is a lot of interesting reading here, particularly for philosophers. Academic philosophy libraries should buy this book; academic psychology libraries should consider it, as a marginal purchase. Public lending libraries that already have some of James’ writings may find a small, but worthy, demand for it as a companion to them.