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Philosophical Haiku

William James (1842-1910)

by Terence Green

The will to believe
Deliverance from bondage
The pragmatist’s balm

William James by Alice Boughton c. 1907
National Portrait Gallery/Public Domain

William James was both a man of science and a philosopher. As a man of science he was particularly curious about human psychology, while as a philosopher he contributed to the development of pragmatism, in order to reject the weirdness of the then-popular absolute idealism. Truth, pragmatism says, consists in useful ideas.

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