[KALKI]

So, if James was in fact influenced by Schopenhauer more than we have realized (and it wouldn’t take much to reach this criterion), let’s not assume that this is somehow unusual or even shocking. Anyone who chooses to investigate the connection between James and Schopenhauer should keep an open mind about the possible outcome, as Schopenhauer himself – yes, and James too – would have done if they were in our place.

This is not the time for an extensive, much less exhaustive treatment of the relationship between Schopenhauer and James. (In any case, I am not capable of providing one.) But a few words about James’s relation to Schopenhauer in the years after 1875 and a few hints about possible areas of influence seem in order. Hopefully, they will provide some initial guidance for scholars who may wish to look more deeply into the connection between Schopenhauer and James. Whatever “loathing” James may have felt for Schopenhauer’s tone and attitude (see Note #3), he seems to have been inspired by Schopenhauer’s honesty about the evils of the world, by his criticism of the stagnant habits of the philosophical community, by his clear and sprightly writing (including his frequent and effective use of clinching metaphors), and by his careful and unfettered analysis of previous human thought, including Kant’s first Critique, which formed the root of Schopenhauer’s own work. Getting other thinkers right was always a concern – a matter of justice as well as utility – for both Schopenhauer and James.

The first tangible example of Schopenhauer’s influence on James became apparent in 1877 as he worked on publications that appeared in 1878 and 1879. I mentioned in the text that James took out Wilhelm Gwinner’s Schopenhauer aus persönlichem Umgange dargestelt (1862) several times during the late 1860s. Gwinner’s book focused on Schopenhauer’s life and character as well as his system of thought. James’s repeated return to this book indicates an early interest in the relation between the philosopher’s character or temperament, on the one hand, and his way of thinking, on the other, an interest that was generalized in James’s “The Sentiment of Rationality” (1879/1978c), which made pertinent references to Schopenhauer (1859) and led to James’s later distinction between the philosophical tendencies of “the tender-minded” and those of “the tough-minded” (James, 1907/1975a) and to his claim that “a philosophy is the expression of a man’s intimate character, and all definitions of the universe are but the deliberately adopted reactions of human characters upon it” (James, 1909/1977, p. 14). All three works reflect James’s underlying interest in the psychology of philosophers, or more precisely, “The Psychology of Philosophizing,” which he had tentatively considered as a title for “The Sentiment of Rationality” (James, ca. 1877/1978d, p. 359). His views on this topic, underlying his defense of “the subjective method” (e.g., James, 1878/1978b), were thus almost certainly influenced by his reflections on Schopenhauer – and more than that, they were probably influenced by Schopenhauer’s own reflections on “man’s need for metaphysics” (Schopenhauer, 1859, Vol. 2, Ch. 17: “Ueber das metaphysiche Bedürfniss des Menchen”), which James made a special note of having read in late 1869 (James, 1868-1873). His annotated copy of Schopenhauer’s (1859) masterpiece confirms the care that he took in this reading.

Schopenhauer also seems to have made a deep impression upon James through his discussion of moral principles. This was first apparent in James’s initial article (1875/1987a) on the vivisection controversy of the mid-1870s, in which he expressed respect but also some reservation regarding an unbending application of the Buddhist principle neminem laede (“injure no one”). This way of stating the principle, in Latin, clearly comes from Schopenhauer, who frequently invoked this formulation in his works (e.g., Schopenhauer, 1841/2009, p. 140). (The full principle, in Latin, is neminem laede, imo omnes, quantum potes, juva, i.e., “injure no one; instead, help everyone as much as you can.”) The final proof that this is so comes from the fact that, when James (1879-1885/1988) cited this principle in his later lectures, he gave Schopenhauer credit for it (p. 175).

In various ways this principle is deeply consonant with “the moral business” to which James had dedicated his life. In fact, it seems eventually to blend for him, as it did from the start for Schopenhauer, into a far-reaching view of how we should understand and approach one another. Toward the end of the century, James wrote “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” (1899/1983), which he considered his most important essay since it reveals “the perception on which my whole individualistic philosophy is based” (James, 1899/2000, p. 522). In this essay, undercutting later criticisms (based on misunderstanding) of his individualism, he argued that his individualistic philosophy is founded upon the perception that each and every individual – not just “I” or a limited group of “we” – is to be treated with the same respect and accorded the same dignity because of the underlying humanity shared by all. This essay, which has been called the first modern manifesto for multiculturalism (Sollors, 1996), is both pluralistic in its emphasis on variation and difference, and monistic in its emphasis upon equal rights and mutual dependency. In defense of a theme that James expressed in various ways in multiple writings (e.g., that each of us contributes a different syllable to the common message of human experience), James argued that every person enjoys “a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands” (1899/1983, p. 149). He spelled out the implications of this view in subsequent works (e.g., James, 1907/1975b & 1909/1975c), and the same attitude suffused his notion that the community – ultimately the world-wide community – is the operative agent for the advancement of knowledge, ideals, values, and behavior. This is not a replication of Schopenhauer’s views, but it suggests that James eventually came to see the identification of individuals with each other, which caused him such anxiety in the early 1870s, in a more positive light. By then, sympathy and compassion, Schopenhauer’s key moral virtues, had become fundamental to his own ethical and social thought.

James also came to have a more positive view of Hindu thought and of Tat twam asi in particular, as seen in the mysticism chapter of The Varieties of Religious Experience, where he wrote:


This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition….‘That art thou!’ [Tat twam asi] say the Upanishads, and the Vedantists add: ‘Not a part, not a mode of That, but identically That, that absolute Spirit of the World.’ (James, 1902/1985, p. 332)

That James now saw what had previously scared him as a positive thing, as the essential “mystical truth” (p. 333), is demonstrated by the entire context in which he wrote this passage. Like “such self-contradictory phrases as ‘dazzling obscurity,’” he now regarded talk about melding many into one as being closer to “music” than “conceptual speech” (p. 333). Schopenhauer, the great advocate of music, would have understood and appreciated this statement, which underscores a point made above, about the artistic rather than literal significance of Schopenhauer’s thought. Such music gives us a way of comprehending our common, shared humanity, warts and all. And that comprehension led James to the implicit poly- or pantheism, mentioned earlier, that held humans responsible for assisting in the creation of a more ideal world (see James, 1882/1997a, p. 195; 1902/1985, p. 413; & 1907/1975b, pp. 131-144). In this way and others, Schopenhauer seems to have provided a stimulus that eventually sensitized James to the claims, rights, and significance of “the other.”

Much more could be said, even in this truncated discussion – for example, about Schopenhauer as a possible source of James’s beloved concept of the “sting” of certain precious moments of experience, of his aversion to “resignation” as opposed to “hope” as the “keynote” of life, of his views on immortality, and so forth. And I haven’t touched at all upon the possible influence of some of Schopenhauer’s other works, which seem often (like his major work) to provide ideas that James pushed against, which surely constituted as important – sometimes a greater – influence than ideas he agreed with. For instance, in understanding and then opposing both naïve optimism and rebarbative pessimism, the latter being represented by Schopenhauer, James came to his own middle position of meliorism, which treats “salvation” as neither inevitable (as optimism does) nor impossible (as pessimism does) but as possible; and from early on, possibility was a word that opened up for James a vibrant, challenging, and ultimately invigorating world of risk and opportunity (see James, 1875/1987b, p. 313, & 1907/1975b).

But it is time to end. In doing so, I want to be clear: I don’t think Schopenhauer was a major influence on James, but he was instrumental at an important moment in James’s life, and he seems to have remained on the edges of his consciousness, prodding and provoking, throughout his career. It will be interesting to see how the connection between Schopenhauer and James will come to be understood if and as other scholars subject it to closer inspection.