LISTEN. In Happiness we turn to John Kaag's Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life.
Audacious title, but if a life can be saved by philosophical intervention I think James is as plausible a lifesaver as any old dead philosopher. He intervened successfully on his own behalf, in one of the great shifts of vision in the annals of self-recovery.
Young William James felt "pulled in too many directions" and worried that we might be nothing but cogs in the machine of natural necessity. He wanted to find a single direction he could commit to, and a resolute will with which to do it.
His age, like ours, was distinctively obsessed with the quest for meaning and beset by anxiety, depression, and fear. He found a new way, Renouvier's, to think about things, decided to try it, and the rest is the historical founding myth of pragmatism I like to purvey... (continues)
From Montaigne's view it is meaningless that James is dead, because to the reader his books are as alive as ever, made immortal through writing. Friendship made alive through a thorough reading of his works. A intellectual who used to be a favorite of mine Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola faced a similar dilemma, faced with the desire to kill himself upon his return to Rome after ww2, in which he fell into despair. But upon reading a Buddhist writing, which is how the story goes anyway, he much like James had a radical re-orientation of direction. Finding a traditional element in this writing he revivified himself.
ReplyDeleteThere is an interesting book which might be pertinent on the topic of despair and anxiety induced by technological mediation called: The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality. The philosophy of technology is seemingly ignored as a distinct area of philosophy but in these times I can think of few things more important.
ReplyDeleteAnother very interesting and possibly relevant book on the topic which documents the history of the immense power of technology and science in human society-he traces both back in the form they exist now in what he calls Technique: The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul is the book. Definitely worth a read.
ReplyDelete