A Pluralistic Universe · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in A Pluralistic Universe by William James.
Skim names here — open a free preview to see character cards and Character Web beside the page as you read.
Gustav Theodor Fechner
major
Also known as Fechner, poor Fechner, a Fechner
Fechner barely registers with English readers, yet James treats him as the coming influence, the thinker whose intense concreteness fills him with admiration. Against the shiveringly thin wrappings of transcendental idealism, Fechner offers a world thick and burly enough to live in, and James contrasts him with absolutism precisely to show that the doctrine of the absolute need not fill the whole welkin. His presence in the lectures gives pluralism a vivid, concrete ally rather than a mere abstraction.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
major
Also known as Hegel
Hegel saw a real dialectic movement in things, and James grants that, taken in the rough, he is not only harmless but accurate. His originality lay in transporting the process from the sphere of percepts to that of concepts, making contradiction germinative and superseding the old logic of identity. But he clung to the rationalist contempt for the given world of sense, and his studious vagueness leaves James confessing he makes no claim to understand him — only to treat him impressionistically.
Henri Bergson
major
Also known as Professor Bergson, Professor Henri Bergson, Bergson, M. Bergson
Bergson insists that concepts yield only static relations — maps of positions, eternal truths of comparison — and never touch the world of causal and dynamic relations, of activity and history. James agrees, and uses him to argue that insight into moving life requires perception, not bare conception. Yet James presses further than Bergson: concepts also bring new values into life, and abstractness itself seems to carry a touch of ideality, so the break with intellectualism is not total.
F. H. Bradley
supporting
Also known as Mr. Bradley, Bradley, VI Mr. Bradley
Bradley defines his desired intellectual transitions only negatively — not spatial, temporal, predicative, causal, or relational — and his nearest approach to describing them suggests nothing but the conflux pure experience already offers, as when space, white, and sweet are confluent in a lump of sugar. James finds him repeating the fable of the dog, the bone, and its image in the water, asking for a duplicate of what he already possesses. Polemic against him is odious, James admits, but with absolutism in possession in so many quarters, silence would count as superficiality or inability.
Immanuel Kant
supporting
Also known as Kant, Immanuel Kant
Kant's unity of apperception — the fact that to be counted in experience a thing must be witnessed — gets transformed by his successors into a living spirit of the world, and hence into a monism of a devout kind. James uses this genealogy to show how rationalism preserves affinities with monism, since wholeness goes with union, while empiricism inclines to pluralistic views. Kant thus stands behind the whole debate the lectures stage: the habit of explaining parts by wholes against the habit of explaining wholes by parts.
Josiah Royce
supporting
Also known as Royce, Professor Royce, continuity Royce, Lotze and Royce
Royce appears in these lectures as a philosopher of continuity and absolute truth, quoted on 'loyalty to loyalty' and on truth at large as a momentous issue against the poor scraps of true particulars. He is also one of the combatants in the scandal of activity, excluding opponents with a grundsätzlich ausgeschlossen and reviewing Stout in the ongoing quarrel. James treats him with respect but keeps his distance, since Royce's absolutism is exactly the monistic position radical empiricism must answer.
Hermann Lotze
minor
Also known as Lotze, Lotze and Royce
German philosopher whose work on pluralism and continuity is discussed.
T. H. Green
minor
Also known as T. H. Green, Green
British idealist philosopher whose monistic views are referenced.
David Hume
minor
Also known as David Hume, David Eitchie—to, David, Hume
Scottish empiricist philosopher whose ideas on experience are invoked.
John McTaggart
minor
Also known as Mr. McTaggart
British idealist philosopher whose arguments on time and reality are cited.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
minor
Also known as Leibnitz
German philosopher whose monadology is discussed in relation to pluralism.
Charles Sanders Peirce
minor
Also known as Charles, Mr. Charles S. Peirce, Mr. Peirce, Peirce
American philosopher and logician, founder of pragmatism, cited by James.
Zeno of Elea
minor
Also known as Zeno
Ancient Greek philosopher known for paradoxes about motion and plurality.
Achilles
minor
Also known as Achilles
Mythological Greek hero used in Zeno's paradox of the tortoise.
John Stuart Mill
minor
Also known as Mill, John Mill, John
British empiricist philosopher whose logic and metaphysics are referenced.
James Ward
minor
Also known as Mr. Ward, Ward
British psychologist and philosopher, referenced in pluralistic contexts.
Socrates
minor
Also known as Socrates
Ancient Greek philosopher, used as an example in philosophical discussion.
Baruch Spinoza
minor
Also known as Spinoza
Dutch rationalist philosopher whose monism is discussed.
Samuel Bailey
minor
Also known as Samuel Bailey
British philosopher and economist, cited in a specific argument.
Aristotle
minor
Also known as Aristotle
Ancient Greek philosopher, foundational figure in Western thought.
Henry Jones
minor
Also known as Professor Henry Jones, Henry
Scottish philosopher, cited in discussions of idealism.
Plato
minor
Also known as Plato
Ancient Greek philosopher, foundational figure in idealist tradition.
John Locke
minor
Also known as poor old Locke, Locke
British empiricist philosopher, criticized for his view of substance.
William Wallace
minor
Also known as W. Wallace, Wallace
British philosopher and translator of Hegel, referenced.
G. F. Stout
minor
Also known as Stout, Professor Stout
British psychologist and philosopher whose views on consciousness are discussed.
Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison
minor
Also known as Andrew Seth Pringle - Pattison
Scottish philosopher whose criticisms of idealism are referenced.
Harold Joachim
minor
Also known as Mr. Joachim, Joachim
British idealist philosopher whose views on truth are critiqued.
Friedrich Paulsen
minor
Also known as Professor Paulsen, Paulsen
German philosopher and educator, cited in discussions of Fechner.
John Grote
minor
Also known as The late Professor John Grote of Cambridge, John
British philosopher whose ideas on experience are mentioned.
Edward Caird
minor
Also known as Cairds
Scottish idealist philosopher, referenced alongside his brother John Caird.
A. E. Taylor
minor
Also known as Mr. Taylor, Taylor, Professor Taylor, Professor A. E. Taylor
British philosopher whose views on time and reality are critiqued.
Charles Renouvier
minor
Also known as Renouvier
French philosopher known for his neo-criticism and pluralism.
Richard Burdon Haldane
minor
Also known as Haldane, Mr. Haldane
British philosopher and statesman, referenced in idealist debates.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
minor
Also known as Emerson
American transcendentalist philosopher, quoted by James.
Martin Luther
minor
Also known as Luther
German theologian, used as an example of religious experience.
