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Abstract William James’s letter of 12 January 1883 to William Erasmus Darwin is here published for the first time. The letter brings out the importance for the development of James’s philosophy of the Darwinian emphasis on concreteness and the activities of organisms. Evolution and Pragmatism: An Unpublished Letter of William James IGNAS K. SKRUPSKELIS Keywords: Charles Darwin; William Erasmus Darwin; F. E. Abbot; Evolution; Pragmatism; Ethics and Evolution; Essence; Religion; Free Religion; Unitarianism; Christianity; Morality; Suicide. The letter of William James here published for the first time was noted too late for inclusion in The Correspondence of William James. Of James’s early letters, it is among the more important from the point of view of philosophy, because it documents the importance of Darwinian evolution in the development of some of James’s most dis- tinctive views, both theoretical and moral. At work here are not specific hypotheses of evolutionary theory, but the general out- look, placing at the center concrete organ- isms, with each engrossed in its own business. For Darwinian theory, human beings are organisms and only that, a radi- cal claim in its time and crucial in the for- mation of James’s point of view. Humans differ from other organisms not by virtue of a soul, but by their peculiarity of making knowing and valuing important compo- nents of their business. From this, James concludes that both knowing and valuing can be understood only as activities of cer- tain organisms striving for their own ends. The letter is written to William Erasmus Darwin (1839–1914), eldest son of Charles Darwin. James’s link with the Darwins was William Erasmus Darwin’s American wife, TRANSACTIONS OF THE CHARLES S. PEIRCE SOCIETY Vol. 43, No. 4 ©2007 745 746 Sara Sedgwick Darwin, who with several of her relatives belonged to James’s social circle in Cambridge. Sara Darwin was the sister of James’s lifelong friend Theodora Sedgwick, Susan Sedgwick Norton—wife of Charles Eliot Norton, an art historian teaching at Harvard—, and Arthur George Sedgwick, lawyer and journalist. Sara Darwin was the niece of the sisters Anne and Grace Ashburner, at whose home in Cam- bridge James was a frequent guest in his earlier years. In 1882–83, James was in Europe, supposedly writing The Principles of Psychology. From early December 1882 into February 1883 he was lodging in the apartment of his brother, Henry James, at 3 Bolton St., London. Henry in the meantime was rushing off to the United States to be with their dying father—he arrived too late—while William remained in London to await definitive word about their father’s con- dition. William’s social activities in London included meeting the Dar- wins. Thus, on 6 January 1883 he wrote to his wife: “I am going in two hours down to Basset to see the Darwins. . . . I am almost glad to get out of the heart-beating of the postman’s knock.” 1 Charles Darwin died on 19 April 1882, and shortly thereafter, his children set to work upon his manuscript remains. In 1887, Francis Darwin (1848–1925)—another of Charles Darwin’s sons, no direct contacts between him and James are known—published The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin in three volumes. At some point James was consulted about the Darwin-Abbot correspondence, as is clear from a letter to Francis Darwin from William Erasmus Darwin, dated “3 June”: “I enclose Abbot’s letters. Professor James of Harvard (Prof of Psychology) thinks 2 or 3 of the letters should certainly be pub- lished.... I also enclose an interesting letter of James, which I should like again.” 2 Likely, the letter mentioned by William Erasmus Darwin is the letter here published. In The Life and Letters , extensive excerpts from two of Darwin’s let- ters to Abbot were published, namely from the letters of 6 September 1871 and 16 November 1871. 3 In both, Darwin explains that he can- not comment about religion in part because of weak health, but prima- rily, because he has not thought systematically about the subject. To another correspondent, Darwin explained that his thoughts on religion often fluctuate. But even in the extreme, he has never been an atheist. The term agnosticism fits his views better. 4 Francis Ellingwood Abbot (1855–1903) was one of the more tragic figures in American philosophy. Depressed by the death of his wife and having failed to obtain a university position or gain recognition among philosophers, after placing a bouquet on his wife’s grave, he drank poi- son and died. Highly valued by Peirce, among others, he is now rarely more than a footnote in histories of American philosophy. In 1880 Abbot was to be examined on his dissertation for a doctorate in philosophy at Harvard. James was a member of the committee which decided not to accept Abbot’s dissertation and postpone the examination. Explaining his position to Abbot, James wrote that the dissertation was a “programme rather than a performance.” The “establishment of objec- tivism by a simple appeal to the ‘verifications’ of Science seemed to leave undefended and unreasoned out, what to my mind constituted the most vulnerable and difficult points in your position.” Abbot’s claim that there are objective truths and objective moral standards differs from James’s position, which—here James agrees with Abbot—”leads to skepticism.” James’s view is “based on a deliberate skepticism of any objective standard of certitude which all men alike can use.” 5 While justifying the committee’s action, James assured Abbot that the rejection was not on theological grounds, an allusion to sharp pub- lic criticisms of Abbot’s unorthodox view of Christianity and his advo- cacy of what he called free religion. The committee, in James’s view, was “not in the least animated by odium theologicum.” Abbot’s radical religious views are sometimes seen as another reason for his failure to gain recognition and an academic post. He was an ordained Unitarian minister, but resigned to become an advocate of “free religion,” that is, of religion free of churches, ecclesiastical author- ities, historical traditions, supposed revelations. A rough sense of Abbot’s position, a position he claims is the necessary “outcome of all philosophy which deserves to be called scientific,” can be obtained from the following: The universe is known as at once infinite machine, infinite organism, and infinite person—as mechanical in its apparent form and action, organic in its essential constitution, and personal in its innermost being; it is eternally self-evolving and self-involving unity of the Absolute Real and the Absolute Ideal in GOD. 6 But at the core of Abbot’s religious unorthodoxy was his refusal to recognize a special status for Christianity. At a Unitarian conference in 1866, in opposition to Abbot’s proposal, it was decided to retain the claim that Unitarians are “disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.” As a result, Abbot and a group of dissidents left the Unitarian Conference and in 1867 founded the Free Religious Association. In 1870, the group began to publish The Index , a weekly journal with Abbot as edi- tor. 7 Abbot admired Darwin and was a supporter of evolutionary theory. In 1871, he contacted Darwin asking for Darwin’s views on religion to which, as has been noted, Darwin replied that he not thought deeply enough about the subject. The 1871 exchange initiated an occasional correspondence. 8 The exchange between Abbot and Darwin reflected in James’s letter to William Erasmus Darwin dates from 1874. To Darwin, Abbot sent 747 his essay “Darwin’s Theory of Conscience and Its Relation to Scientific Ethics,” 9 asking for comments. Darwin replied on 30 March expressing approval of Abbot’s presentation of Darwin’s views, but adding that he cannot comment on the essay because he is not practiced in “following abstract and abstruse reasoning.” However, Darwin does not see how morality can be “objective and universal.” 10 That it is Abbot’s paper on Darwin and conscience that is under dis- cussion is shown by an undated fragment of a letter in the hand of William Erasmus Darwin, possibly to James: It would probably be necessary to read Dr Abbot’s long & striking essay clearly to appreciate the difficulty my Father felt in accepting fully his conclusions. The following sentences may be sufficient to show the general bearing of the portion of the essay in question to which my father refers in his letter. I have shown that ethics treat of rights and duties among all moral beings, as objective and universal facts. This is only to state in other words that moral obligation is itself an objective and universal fact. The relation of mutual moral obligation among all moral beings is just as objective, just as universal, just as necessary as the relation between the double triangles of the square. 11 James’s letter has obvious links to the position he voices in 1891, in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” James there holds that there is no good or bad, no rightness or wrongness, except when there are sentient beings making demands. Moral relations and moral laws can exist only in a “mind which feels them; and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical proposi- tions apply.” In language similar to that of his letter to Darwin, James writes: Since the outcome of the discussion so far has been to show us that nothing can be good or right except so far as some consciousness feels it to be good or thinks it to be right, we perceive. . . that the real supe- riority and authority which are postulated by the philosopher to reside in some of the opinions, and the really inferior character which he supposes must belong to others, cannot be explained by any abstract moral “nature of things” existing antecedently to the concrete thinkers themselves with their ideals. 12 748 The same Darwinian influence can be detected in his treatment of essences in Principles of Psychology . As in the nature of things there is no rightness or wrongness, so apart from knowers, in the nature of things there are no essential properties. Every reality has an infinity of proper- ties, James argues, and any one of them can be seen as essential in the light of some interest. He writes: “ There is no property ABSOLUTELY essential to any one thing. The same property which figures as the essence of a thing on one occasion becomes a very inessential feature upon another.” Thus, common sense—and much of philosophy—is wrong in thinking that every thing has an essence which makes it just the thing it is. As a matter of fact, the “essence of a thing is that one of its properties which is so important for my interests that in comparison with it I may neglect the rest.... The properties which are important vary from man to man and from hour to hour.” 13 The rejection of the traditional notion of essence leads to the very center of James’s philosophy, but is a subject much too broad for treat- ment in the present context. Nor is this necessary for an understanding and appreciation of the letter being published. The importance for James of the Darwinian outlook with its rejection of abstractions and its emphasis on the activities of concrete organisms is evident without detailed analysis. While in Europe, James had with him a caligraph, a bulky machine which gave him much trouble: “After three days of tinkering & screw- ing & unscrewing & and taking apart & putting together, the Caligraph works !” 14 But even when in working order, the machine could only pro- duce capital letters. His letter to Darwin—like many other letters from this period—was typed on this machine. In transcribing, lower case let- ters were used except in cases where James would normally have used capitals. The machine did not always produce clear letters and some- times James found it necessary to overwrite his typing by hand. Such overwriting is treated silently. Several obvious misspellings were left uncorrected, also without comment. But there were also substantive changes, some of unknown origin, and these are commented upon in notes to the text. William James to William Erasmus Darwin 15 3 Bolton St. Piccadilly Jan, 12, 1882[3] 16 My dear Darwin, As to the double use of the word “moral”, & other points touched on in your letter, I could have no opinion without consulting again the texts,—perhaps not even then. But the main difference between your father & Mr. Abbot seems to be this, or something like it: Abbot thinks there is a real, objective, universal rightness or wrongness, grounded in the nature of things, absolute therefore, whether any discover & obey it or not, & fit therefore to be called “the moral environment”. Little by little in the struggle for existence 17 we come to a knowledge of this dimension of our environment. But the knowledge of it possesed by a creature at any given stage of evolution is necessarily imperfect, i.e. the 749 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |