Pawelski, James O. The Dynamic Individualism of William James.

Shaw, Elizabeth C.

PAWELSKI, James O. The Dynamic Individualism of William James. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007. xix + 185 pp. Cloth, $60.00--While William James called himself a "rabid individualist," and scholars have generally agreed with that self-assessment, the precise meaning of the term has heretofore been largely unexamined. Pawelski's project in this volume is to systematize the variety of presentations of individualism that are scattered throughout James's corpus. This is no small task, for James's writings were published over a span of more than thirty years and represent a range of subject matter and contexts that might seem to defy collection. In the first three chapters, Pawelski offers careful analysis of James's dispersed thinking on individualism, organized under three basic areas of his thought--social, psychological, and metaphysical. In explicating the dimensions of individualism within each area, he also draws out some important yet problematic tensions. Of particular note are the tensions between the earlier James's active, volitional individualism, which emphasizes the capacity of self-determination through personal choice and action, and the later James's passive, perceptual individualism, under which the self is fulfilled through receptive openness to and union with the wider, spiritual aspects of reality.

Having noted these tensions, in chapter 4 Pawelski surveys the variety of interpretive methods that have emerged in the secondary literature. In response to the vagueness, inconsistency, and apparent changes in James's thought, two basic camps have emerged. The first camp takes the disconnectedness in his writings as a simple, fundamental fact. Among those who argue for this position, some judge this character of James's writings to be accidental and attributable to a lack of mental clarity or perhaps to sheer carelessness. (James's contemporary Charles Peirce is noted to have espoused this view.) Others, still in this first camp, read the disconnectedness as not accidental but intentional, and indeed a virtue--the presentation of his thought is antisystematic and antirationalistic, and to be appreciated precisely as such.

According to the second camp of interpreters, the disconnectedness is not an irremediable fact; rather, it is merely facial, with an inner coherence lying somewhere, perhaps very deep, below the surface. Pawelski insightfully notes that these scholars "each suggest ways of understanding why the textual difficulties are present in James's work more than they do ways of resolving those difficulties" (p. 99). They seek unity in his thinking by accounting for its disparate character variously--as a function of his consistent philosophical methodology of pragmatism, as tracking with his personal development and biography, and as the outgrowth of a fundamental dualism in his temperament. Richard Gale prominently figures among those who take the last tact, and Pawelski devotes special attention to what he calls Gale's "Divided Self Thesis." According to the thesis, James's thinking reveals two irreducible personas, a "Promethean pragmatist" who is active and employs concepts as tools to maximizing his desire-satisfaction, and an "anti-Promethean mystic" who is passive and eschews concepts in favor of more authentic intimacy with immediate experience. While Pawelski acknowledges the presence of these two personas in James's corpus, he appeals to both textual evidence and the general Jamesian spirit of anti-intellectualism to argue, against Gale, that these pragmatist and mystic selves become more integrated in James's later thought.

Pawelski's main contribution is what he calls the "Integration Thesis," introduced in chapter 4 and fleshed out in chapter 5, by which he argues that the tensions in James's thought are partly (but not fully) resolvable. The key to such resolution lies in understanding the reflex action theory, a physiological model the influence of which is evident throughout James's career. According to this theory, the nervous system is modeled dynamically as an arc, composed of three interrelated elements--sensory nerves, nerve centers, and motor nerves--which correspond to the activities of perception, conception, and volition. As a dynamic system, each element is essential to the function of the others and to the system as a whole. As such, the reflex action theory unites the active and the receptive aspects of the system. Likewise, the model serves to integrate James's Promethean pragmatist and anti-Promethean mystic. Pawelski supports this thesis by again considering the development of James's thought in the social, psychological, and metaphysical contexts. The individualism of James is also compared and contrasted to that of Emerson and of Kierkegaard, and Pawelski offers a persuasive argument that James's variety outstrips the others insofar as it alone is "thoroughgoing and radical enough to maintain the irreducibility and primacy of the individual on the metaphysical level" (p. 125).

Chapter 6 concludes the volume with a thoughtful consideration, in the Jamesian spirit, of certain compelling, pragmatist reasons for adopting the Integration Thesis. Instead of keeping the two selves--the pragmatist and the mystic--divided, Pawelski argues that they ought to be united inasmuch as one who integrates them, as mutually enriching phases of a healthy life, may bear greater fruits of human flourishing.

William James's thought is rich in both its breadth of subject matter and depth of detail, and this volume admirably does justice to that character. In addition to offering a worthwhile interpretive thesis, Pawelski provides a helpful survey and critique of Jamesian scholarship. Wellargued, carefully structured, and comprehensive in its coverage, this volume may serve as both a useful introduction for students and engaging reading for professionals.--Elizabeth C. Shaw, Washington, D.C.