William James His Life and Philosophy

interesting hopefully. All right. Um, William James, William James, it says born 1842, lived to 1910. He he is honestly our only philosopher.

Um, if you read European books in French or German about American philosophy, they begin with William James and they end with William James, right? One entry. Uh, that's only barely an exaggeration. He was our gate contribution to philosophy.

Ah the good side of it is his contribution was so astoundingly strong that he he really cemented a place uh for American thinkers and philosophy and if you read either the Italian or French philosophers in particular one of the questions they ask is where are the rest of your William Jameses right that's what they want to know much like many of the continental readers think where are the rest of your Henry James's they were uh brothers of course anyway born into the James family in which everybody had the became named for generations. By the way, if you try to read a biography of any of these characters because they only had theirs, William and Henry, and then they named everybody that. And so, you'll have like whole scenes where there'll be like five or six William and Henry James talking to each other or corresponding and you just never know what the hell's going on. Uh but but they were a close family, lots of kids, extended family.

His father was was I wouldn't you call him eccentric. Yeah, he's eccentric. Um but he did not believe in public education. He thought the public schools just ruined your mind.

Um but it's not clear he knew what he believed in. So he would hire tutors and then fire him and then he would take over their education themselves and realize that wasn't working. So then they'd go to Europe for a while and he put them in European schools. He decided those European schools were bad and moved to another city in Europe and they put him in schools there.

So this way James went to uh Germany, England and Germany, several cities in Germany while he's quite young and then to Paris and then back to America where they put him in schools and took him out. And so they did this his whole life into schools, out of schools, private tutors fire them, fire them, get somebody else in, take ...