WILLIAM

See also:

• JAMES
• JAMES (Gr. 'IlrKw,l3or, the Heb. Ya`akob or Jacob)
• JAMES (JAMES FRANCIS EDWARD STUART) (1688-1766)
• JAMES, 2ND EARL OF DOUGLAS AND MAR(c. 1358–1388)
• JAMES, DAVID (1839-1893)
• JAMES, EPISTLE OF
• JAMES, GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFOP
• JAMES, HENRY (1843— )
• JAMES, JOHN ANGELL (1785-1859)
• JAMES, THOMAS (c. 1573–1629)
• WILLIAM JAMES (1842–1910)
• JAMES, WILLIAM (d. 1827)

JAMES (1842–1910)  , American philosopher, son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James, and brother of the novelist Henry James, was born on the 11th of January 1842 at New York City . He graduated M.D. at Harvard in 1870 . Two years after he was appointed a lecturer at Harvard in anatomy and physiology, and later in psychology and philosophy . Subsequently he became assistant professor of philosophy (188o–1885), professor (1885–1889), professor of psychology (1889–1897) and professor of philosophy (1897–1907) . In 1899–1901 he delivered the Gifford lectures on natural religion at the university of Edinburgh, and in 1908 the Hibbert lectures at Manchester College, Oxford . With the appearance of his Principles of Psychology (2 vols., 1890), James at once stepped into the front rank of psychologists as a leader of the physical school, a position which he maintained not only by the brilliance of his analogies but also by the freshness and unconventionality of his style . In metaphysics he upheld the idealist position from the empirical standpoint . Beside the Principles of Psychology, which appeared in a shorter form in 1892 (Psychology), his chief works are: The Will to Believe (1897); Human Immortality (Boston, 1898); Talks to Teachers (1899); The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York, 1902); Pragmatism—a New Name for some Old Ways of Thinking (1907); A Pluralistic Universe (1909; Hibbert lectures), in which, though he still attacked the hypothesis of absolutism, he admitted it as a legitimate alternative . He received honorary degrees from Padua (1893), Princeton (1896), Edinburgh (1902), Harvard (1905) . He died on the 27th of August 1910 .