After Cloven Tongues of Fire by Hollinger David A

Author:Hollinger, David A.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2013-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Notes

1. For representative examples of the invoking of James as a precursor of post-modernism, see Stephen Best and Douglas Kellner, Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations (New York, 1991), 28; and James Livingston, Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution, 1850–1940 (Chapel Hill NC, 1994), 273–79.

2. Two recent examples are Gerald E, Myers, William James: His Life and Thought (New Haven, CT, 1986), esp. 451–52; and Samuel Levinson, The Religious Investigations of William James (Chapel Hill, NC, 1981), esp. 55.

3. For the classic narrative of this revolt and a typical account of James’s role in it, see H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society (New York, 1958). For a more recent account, distinguished by an excellent treatment of James, see James T. Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought, 1870–1920 (New York, 1986).

4. See, for example, Richard M. Gale, “Willam James and the Ethics of Belief,” American Philosophical Quarterly XVII (1980), 1–14. Gale characterizes (14) his own analysis of the problem of the ethics of belief as capturing “some of the spirit and thrust” of James’s “The Will to Believe.” But Gale could more justly be described as salvaging James by critically expanding James’s argument in Clifford’s direction. This is not to find fault with Gale’s discussion of the ethics of belief, which is one of the most rigorous and illuminating in the literature. It is a sign of the effectiveness of James’s destruction of Clifford that later philosophers arguing more in Clifford’s tradition than James’s can ignore Clifford and claim James as their inspiration. Another of the leading studies of “The Will to Believe” enters decidedly Cliffordian caveats against James without apparently realizing it. The thoughtful article by Peter Kauber and Peter H. Hare, “The Right and Duty to Will to Believe,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy IV (1974), defends James by drawing out “implications” of James’s argument that (1) rule out any “technique” that leads a believing subject away from seeking more evidence (339), and (2) support an actual “duty” to induce belief under certain conditions (342).

5. One of the very few philosophers to show signs of studying Clifford’s essay has ended up offering a mildly sympathetic reading of it: see Van Harvey, “The Ethics of Belief Reconsidereed,” Journal of Religion LIX (1979). Another philosopher who has actually studied Clifford’s text is James C. S. Wernham, whose James’s Will-to-Believe Doctrine: A Heretical View (Toronto, 1987) came to my attention only after this article was completed. A refreshing feature of Wernham’s discussion is its sensitivity to the extent to which James misrepresented Clifford; see esp. 69–74.

6. Clifford 1877, 309.

7. For a convenient, brief account of Clifford’s life and career, see Alexander Macfarlane, Lectures on Ten British Mathematicians of the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1916), 78–91. Clifford is a major character in the history of agnosticism, as recounted splendidly by Bernard Lightman, The Origins of Agnosticism: Victorian Unbelief and the Limits of Knowledge (Baltimore, 1987). Lightman points to the exceptional esteem the young Clifford enjoyed within the Victorian intellectual elite of his time.

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