Greetings,
Bob Doyle stated that W.J. was the first! And he bemoaned that other
philosophers borrowed from W.J. without giving him proper credit. But that's
just foolishness. It has been documented that W.J. read and reread, in the
often cited crisis period of his life, Buddhist and Vedic texts. James's
biography (p.126) clearly states he had read and reread Upanishad and Buddhist
texts, texts that belonged to his father. This would have been around 1870,
while still in his twenties.
Here's a list of some of the books:
Modern Buddhist - Alabaster
Religion des Buddha (Vol.1) - Koeppen
Le Buddhisme - Taine
Weltauffas der Buddhisten - Bastian
Brahma Somej: Four Lectures - Sen
(William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism
by Robert D. Richardson)
I don't see where James gave proper credit to the Eastern ideas he extracted
from the above reading material. The East, Buddhist's philosophy of mind in
particular, has a great deal more to offer, and with a history of investigation
and methods that goes back 2500 years. I believe the reason so many American
Buddhist scholars are a fan of William James is because they recognized and
appreciate the similarities in ideas and would use W.J. as a doorway to
introduce and legitimize Buddhism's more expansive and credible material.
Nothing wrong with that, but why settle? The MoQ gives credit to Eastern
ideas and is a wonderful bridge between the two. I ask again: How does
William James improve the MoQ? As far as I can see it does not. It just
points backwards and has nothing to say about Quality, static patterns, or the
hierarchical, evolutionary structure that helps evaluate many conflicting
patterns.
Marsha
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