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Title: A Pluralistic Universe
Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the
Present Situation in Philosophy

Author: William James

Release Date: April 10, 2004 [EBook #11984]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE

Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in
Philosophy

BY WILLIAM JAMES

1909

CONTENTS

LECTURE I

THE TYPES OF PHILOSOPHIC THINKING 1

Our age is growing philosophical again, 3. Change of tone since 1860, 4.
Empiricism and Rationalism defined, 7. The process of Philosophizing:
Philosophers choose some part of the world to interpret the whole by, 8.
They seek to make it seem less strange, 11. Their temperamental
differences, 12. Their systems must be reasoned out, 13. Their tendency
to over-technicality, 15. Excess of this in Germany, 17. The type of
vision is the important thing in a philosopher, 20. Primitive thought,
21. Spiritualism and Materialism: Spiritualism shows two types, 23.
Theism and Pantheism, 24. Theism makes a duality of Man and God, and
leaves Man an outsider, 25. Pantheism identifies Man with God, 29. The
contemporary tendency is towards Pantheism, 30. Legitimacy of our demand
to be essential in the Universe, 33. Pluralism versus Monism: The 'each-
form' and the 'all-form' of representing the world, 34. Professor Jacks
quoted, 35. Absolute Idealism characterized, 36. Peculiarities of the
finite consciousness which the Absolute cannot share, 38. The finite
still remains outside of absolute reality, 40.

LECTURE II

MONISTIC IDEALISM 41

Recapitulation, 43. Radical Pluralism is to be the thesis of these
lectures, 44. Most philosophers contemn it, 45. Foreignness to us of
Bradley's Absolute, 46. Spinoza and 'quatenus,'47. Difficulty of
sympathizing with the Absolute, 48. Idealistic attempt to interpret it,
50. Professor Jones