# William James — The New State character guide

> William James in The New State by Mary Parker Follett.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** James

**First appearance:** 0003-i-the-group-and-the-new-psychology

## Snapshot

The pragmatist whose war on the absolute becomes, in these pages, a political program: we have no state until we make one.

## Who they are

James supplies the book's most quotable move — the absolute is real only as far as you make it real — and the narrator extends it: we cannot become the state imaginatively, only actually, through group relations. His antagonism to the idealists, who assert the absolute always has been and always will be, is repurposed into a doctrine of creative citizenship exercised every moment. He matters because he gives the argument its trumpet call: not rights, not duties, but the individual as an activity of society.

## In the story

### [The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_new_state_se/chapters/the-new-state)

Cited for his psychological insights into group consciousness and the pluralistic universe.

### [I: The Group and the New Psychology](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_new_state_se/chapters/i-the-group-and-the-new-psychology)

Mentioned for his contribution to psychology regarding the many selves in each individual, which the author parallels to society as a complex of groups.

### [VII: The Individual](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_new_state_se/chapters/vii-the-individual)

Quoted for the concept of 'confluent' individuals and the idea that the chasm between men is an individualistic fiction.

### [X: Society](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_new_state_se/chapters/x-society)

Cited for showing the individual as a self-unifying centre, which is extended to the social mind.

### [The Group Principle at Work](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_new_state_se/chapters/xiv-the-group-principle-at-work)

Not directly mentioned in excerpts, but the chapter's focus on group process and community aligns with Jamesian themes; no explicit reference found.

### [XXVIII: Political Pluralism](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_new_state_se/chapters/xxviii-political-pluralism)

His philosophy of the compounding of consciousness is invoked to reconcile distributive and collective pluralism, and to guide the formation of federalism.

### [XXXII: Political Pluralism (Concluded)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_new_state_se/chapters/xxxii-political-pluralism-concluded)

Quoted on reality falling into conceptual analysis but mounting in living its own undivided life.

### [Endnotes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_new_state_se/chapters/endnotes)

Cited for the idea that the process of life is to 'compenetrate.'

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_new_state_se/characters/william_james
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_new_state_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_new_state_se/characters