Gary R, List,
John Kaag's essay is beautifully written. The pace, the examples, the poetry draw one forward from James' "Maybe" to the question itself: "Is my life really worth living?". I'd be interested in a threaded discussion if others have similar interests. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 ________________________________ From: Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com> Sent: Monday, October 1, 2018 12:04:02 PM To: Peirce-L Subject: [PEIRCE-L] John Kaag on William James (& Peirce & Whitman) on "The greatest uses of life" List, An engaging essay, "The greatest uses of life," by John Kaag appeared in the e-journal, Aeon, today, and I thought it might provide an interesting springboard for discussion of a facet of the work of William James, Peirce, and Walt Whitman relating to the title of the essay. See: https://aeon.co/essays/is-life-worth-living-the-pragmatic-maybe-of-william-james?utm_source=Aeon We've been concentrating intensely and for some time now here on Peirce's semeiotic, especially its first branch, theoretical grammar, and for a while now I must admit that, as interesting and valuable as I have found that discussion to be, I've been looking to find a way to open a thread on some aspect of pragmatism not directly involving logic as semeiotic. I'm hoping that this essay might provide something of a springboard into a discussion of the theme of Kaag's essay in the light of pragmatism, James', Peirce's, Whitman's, and other's. The work of Kaag, author of American Philosophy: A Love Story (2016) and, more recently, Hiking with Nietzsche, published this year, has been briefly discussed on Peirce-L from time to time in recent years and it is my sense that at least some forum members find his work of interest. Of course we all have notions as to "the greatest uses of life" which we could expound upon without further reflection, but I'd like to ask those who might be interested in a threaded discussion on the topic to read Kaag's short essay before posting. To perhaps pique your interest, here's the conclusion of "The greatest uses of life." Before the Brooklyn Bridge was built, a ferry carried passengers from one side of the river to the other. Walt Whitman was often among the crowd. The American poet was one of James’s longstanding heroes, the embodiment of the capacious ‘healthy mind’ he describes in the Varieties. James occasionally sensed the sublime or the religious on his hikes in the Adirondacks or in the testament of mystics, but Whitman could tap into it on a routine basis, even on a dirty ferry ride, which most people would regard as a rather annoying commute. It wasn’t annoying for Whitman. In his poem ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry’ (1855), he described the spectacle – the experience of nature and the experience of the human throng. Both were inexplicable and hopeful and shared: Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from shore to shore, Others will watch the run of the flood-tide; Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east; Others will see the islands large and small; Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high. A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them, Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring in of the flood-tide, the falling back to the sea of the ebb-tide. 3. It avails not, neither time or place – distance avails not. James read and reread this poem. This was wonder, and there was enough of it to go around. It turns out that one can probably set aside the nuttier aspects of the Society for Psychical Research and still retain a Whitman-esque experience of the world, the numinous immanence of an all-too-human ferry ride. That, at least, was James’s hope. Whitman’s vision, in James’s words, was sufficient ‘to prompt our curiosities and hopes and suspicions’. The world is not always, or ever, exactly as it seems. A dirty ferry ride might be more than just a dirty ferry ride. There is something more – at least it is possible. Whitman’s was a type of religious experience – and so very different from the way that most people experience the world. Reflecting on ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry’, James explained: When your ordinary Brooklynite or New Yorker, leading a life replete with too much luxury, or tired and careworn, about his personal affairs, crosses the ferry or goes up Broadway, his fancy does not thus ‘soar away into the colours of the sunset’ as did Whitman’s, nor does he inwardly realise at all the indisputable fact that this world never did anywhere or at any time contain more of essential divinity, or of eternal meaning, than is embodied in the fields of vision over which his eyes so carelessly pass. However, one does not have to be careless. Thankfully there are other ways to pass the time and other times to pass away. The flood and the ebb continue to go out and come in. And James suggests that it is possible, even for a pragmatist, to occasionally feel the reassuring cycle of its flow. At these moments, one has a chance to be ‘religious’ in James’s sense of the word, to enter ‘a state of mind, known to religious men, but to no others, in which the will to assert ourselves and hold our own has been displaced by a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in the floods and waterspouts of God. In this state of mind, what we most dreaded has become the habitation of our safety …’ I looked out to the Statue of Liberty again, and back down into the water below. The sun was indeed setting, and I tried to let myself watch it, as Whitman and James hoped we would, for what seemed like many minutes. Just long enough to be glad that I still had the chance. I'll wait a few days to see if any folk are interested in discussing this topic in light of American pragmatism. Again, I believe it would be most valuable to read Kaag's essay first before commenting on the theme. Best, Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York 718 482-5690
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