William James offers a way to evaluate the fruitfulness of ideas by tethering them to the common ground of lived experience.
“Thanks to you I have for the first time, an intelligible and reasonable conception of freedom,” writes the American philosopher William James in an 1872 letter to Charles Renouvier. “I am beginning to be reborn to the moral life.” Having battled melancholy and suicidal ruminations throughout much of his young adulthood, the eventual “Father of American Psychology” experienced the power lived ideas have to invigorate and animate us. Ideas truly have the ability to save. At least, that is what John Kaag argues in his new book.
In Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life (2020), we are treated to an accessible exploration into the intellectual and emotional life of one of pragmatism’s founders. Part memoir and part history, this contribution is a testament to how one can build their life around fruitful ideas. Our technology-obsessed and materially-reductive age frequently neglects the salvific potency of ideas — to the great detriment of human flourishing.
[Read “Meaning of Life No Longer Matters to Philosophers”]
‘Meat Sacks Destined for the Grinder’
“Today, James is usually described as a man who faced mental illness without the help…
