cover image Genuine Reality: A Life of William James

Genuine Reality: A Life of William James

Linda Simon. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), $35 (496pp) ISBN 978-0-15-193098-2

G.K. Chesterton complained that although James popularized philosophy, it was unfortunate that it was his own philosophy. Rejecting theory, James contended in what he labeled Pragmatism that the meaning of any idea can be found only in its experiential consequences. How he got there in the face of academic philosophy is the narrative thread of Simon's biography, which traces James (1842-1910) through the irregular and undisciplined schooling dictated by his restless and cranky father to medical, then psychological studies that led through physiology to what was then called mental science. Educational tyranny at home resulted in erratic health, nervous breakdowns and episodes of panic that finally pushed James into asserting that he was ""cut out for a speculative rather than an active life."" Independence and marriage at 36 failed to end his chronic depression, but domestic felicity and the economic pressures of a growing family turned him into a popular and much-read thinker. Not content as a Harvard professor, he remained because other posts eluded him, and he produced an influential text, Principles of Psychology, in 1890, and in 1902, Varieties of Religious Experience. He had formulated ""both a philosophy of psychology and a psychology of philosophy."" Simon (The Biography of Alice B. Toklas) eschews the jargon of both disciplines in bringing to life a complex intellectual who relentlessly questioned the orthodoxies of his time. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Feb.)