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Did James have an Ethics of Belief?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
it is easy to think that he did. Clifford certainly had one. In a celebrated essay he argued for the thesis that “it is wrong always, everywhere and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence“; and his title was “The Ethics of Belief.” Clifford was not alone, for Huxley, also, was of that same opinion. For him, such belief was not just wrong: it was “the lowest depth of immorality.” With that opinion, and with those advocates of it, James was locked in a struggle throughout his life; and it is a reasonable suspicion that the opponent of one ethics of belief is himself an ethicist with a rival ethics of belief of his own. That suspicion, moreover, appears to be confirmed by James's best known essay. He himself came to the view that his The Will to Believe would have been better named The Right to Believe, and it is a commonplace that “right” is a word of the ethical vocabulary. In short, there are obvious signs pointing to a positive answer to our question.
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- Copyright © The Authors 1976
References
1 See Clifford, W.K. Lectures and Essays (London 1879), Vol. 2.Google Scholar
2 Quoted in James, W. The Will to Believe (New York. 1921), p. 7–8Google Scholar.
3 See Perry, R.B. The Thought and Character of William James (Boston. 1935), Vol. 2, p. 245Google Scholar.
4 Canadian journal of Philosophy, Vol. IV, No.2. December 1974, p. 327-343.
5 Ibid., p. 327.
6 Idem.
7 Idem.
8 Idem.
9 Ibid., p. 328.
10 Ibid., p. 336.
11 Ibid., p. 329.
12 . Ibid., p. 330.
13 Ibid., p. 329.
14 Idem.
15 Ibid., p. 327.
16 Ibid., p. 330.
17 Idem.
18 Ibid., p. 327.
19 Ibid., p. 336.
20 Ibid., p. 330.
21 Ibid., p. 329.
22 Idem.
23 Ibid., p. 329-30.
24 . Ibid., p. 330.
25 James, W. The Principles of Psychology (Dover, New York. 1950), Vol. 2, p. 322Google Scholar, footnote.
26 Idem.
27 . Idem.
28 The Will to Believe, p. 11. Throughout the following, “to believe,” “believing,” etc. are abbreviations for “to believe when the evidence is insufficient.”
29 Ibid., p. 30.
30 Quoted in Madden, E. H. Chauncey Wright and the Foundations of Pragmatism (Seattle. 1963), p. 45Google Scholar.
31 See James, W. Collected Essays and Reviews (New York. 1920), p. 71Google Scholar. James's words are “ … je ne serai qu'on sot si je ne crois pas ….”
32 The Will to Believe, both phrases quoted from p. 97.
33 Ibid., p. 94, footnote.
34 Ibid., p. 96-7.
35 . Kauber and Hare, p. 340.
36 The Will to Believe, p. 11.