Description
Book SynopsisAn examination of the intriguing question: what happens when the ideas of a thinker such as William James, who, despite his originality, was deeply rooted in American traditions, are refracted through a culture that draws on a heritage profoundly different from his own?
Trade ReviewIn this wise and timely set of essays, crucial Russian movements and thinkers—including Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Lev Shestov, Maxim Gorky—are brought up against our most exemplary American philosopher. Many of their central dilemmas (the threat that science posed to faith, the ethical responsibility of ends to means) are ones that James himself struggled to resolve. His startling texts were gaining readership in Russia when, in the 1920s, the Bolsheviks excised James from Russian philosophical debates. Now we owe it to philosophy on both sides of the Atlantic to bring him back in. This volume is the necessary first step. -- Caryl Emerson, A. Watson Armour III University Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University
This excellent collection of essays on James' influence on pre- and post-Soviet writers is a tribute to the universality of his philosophy and its power to reach out to persons in very different cultures from his own and stir them. It makes for fascinating reading. -- Richard Gale
The thematics assembled in this volume are well chosen, and the essays themselves all of a high caliber. * Slavic and East European Journal *
This intriguing collection of essays examines how William James' philosophy has been received in Russia. Its primary focus is the so-called 'silver age' of Russian culture in the early 1900s, when Russian interest in James was at its peak, though there is occasional discussion of the Soviet era, during which James's work was reviled as the epitome of American bourgeois decadence, and a chapter devoted to his philosophy in post-Soviet thought….there is much here for students of Russian Intellectual history to admire….many students of philosophy would profit from dipping into it. It helps reveal the breadth of James' vision and thereby stands as a corrective to those who represent the pragmatist tradition as a kind of antidote to philosophy. The book is a valuable, if eccentric, contribution to the process of retrieving the neglected philosophical culture of pre-revolutionary Russia. -- David Bakhurst, Queen's University
This focused, well-organized collection of studies by English- and Russian-speaking scholars fills a gap and lays a foundation. . . . The excellence of the volume as a whole, however, is in the contextualizing of James's links with Russian culture. . . . Like all good books, this one leaves the reader hungry for more. * Seer *
Finally, the presumption that James is important only for philosophy, and only for Americans, has been thoroughly refuted. The contributors to this artful volume break down the putative boundaries between philosophy and literature, art and politics, East and West. Showing the influences of Russian thinkers on James, and of James upon his Russian contemporaries, these essays remind us of the vitality of his thought and the transnational import of his explorations. -- Kennan Ferguson, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, University of South Florida
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 William James: The European Connection Chapter 3 Adventures in Time and Space: Dostoevsky, William James, and the Perilous Journey to Conversion Chapter 4 What Men Live By: Belief and the Individual in Lev Tolstoy and William James Chapter 5 The Moral Equivalent of War: Violence in the Later Fiction of Lev Tolstoy Chapter 6 Phlosophers, Decadents, and Mystics: James's Russian readers in the 1890's Chapter 7 James and Viacheslav Ivanov at the Threshold of Consciousness Chapter 8 William James in the Moscow Psychological Society: Pragmatism, Pluralism, Personalism Chapter 9 Lev Shestov's James: A Knight of Free Creativity Chapter 10 James and Konovalov: The Varieties of Religious Experience and Russian Theology Between Revolutions Chapter 11 Gorky and God-Building Chapter 12 James and Vocabularies of Contemporary Russian Spirituality Chapter 13 Afterword: William James in Contexts, Plural
