Dr William James

The Varieties of Religious Experience Dr William James

Scarcely can anyone ever have been so brought up as to make him almost inevitably a scholar of human nature. Born in New York. His private education was in the USA, England, France, Germany and Switzerland, while Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Stuart Mill were all family friends. Before he was twenty, he spoke five languages. Yet, despite such a vigorous start, or because of it, James' life was blighted by the regular bouts of hypochondria and depression which seem almost essential for a philosopher. 'Varieties of Religious Experience' now stands as such a masterly investigation of the psychology of individual theologies, that his other works tend to be rather pushed to one side. In Pragmatism: A New Name for some Old Ways of Thinking (1907) he expanded CS Peirce's philosophy, in The Will to Believe (1897) he defended individual rational belief against the necessity of reason and evidence.