Abstract: In this chapter, while acknowledging an important and famous early influence of Renouvier on James’s notions of belief and free will, the author documents a major and growing disagreement in their exchanges. The author argues that this disagreement is by no means a peripheral matter, since it involves James’s assessment of Renouvier’s neo-Kantianism. After having presented the core of...
According to a common reading in the Wittgensteinian literature, William James’s writings, especially the psychological ones, were for the Viennese philosopher a paradigmatic example of conceptual confusion. This chapter argues against this reading, although without minimizing the criticism that Ludwig Wittgenstein leveled against James. More specifically, rather than ascertaining whether...