Ethical Conduct and Political Activity

Abstract

Much has been written about the extent of James’s social and political commitments. This aspect of his moral thought has in fact been the most discussed: mainly attacked from the cultural left1 but also championed as one particular version of it.2 Since the 1990s this portion of James’s work has been witnessing a renewed interest,3 and the future looks even brighter as per a series of fresh, imaginative, and detailed studies on several aspects of his ethical and political agenda. 4 While such fine studies tackle in depth and from a variety of perspectives this portion of James’s work, from the point of view of both its involvement with the American intellectual scene and its legacy, in this chapter I am interested in showing how the philosophical and moral insights sketched in the previous chapters are at work in some of his ethical and political writings. Thus, rather than surveying the vast territory of James ethical and political ideas, for which I strongly recommend the mentioned literature, I am interested in showing here how the themes I have addressed in the previous chapters find original articulation in what we might call his practical essays. In particular, I shall focus on the ways in which the hortatory register is at work in such writings, and how it informs James’s reflections on pluralism, originality, self-experimentation, moral heroism, and what I shall call the politics of the self.