William James

Proponent of PragmatismPhilosophy

William James was born in New York in 1842, the first of five children of Henry and Mary James. He received a peripatetic education in Europe and America, ending up at Harvard, where he became close friends with both CharlesSandersPeirce and OliverWendellHomes?. In 1869 he earned a degree from Havard Medical School, his only academic credential. From 1869 to 1872 he suffered from depression and illness, but in 1872 accepted a position at Harvard, where he spent the remainder of his career, teaching physiology, psychology, and eventually philosophy. His reputation was established by The Principles of Psychology (1890). Later books include The Will to Believe (1897), The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), Pragmatism (1907), A Pluralistic Universe (1909), and The Meaning of Truth (1909). In 1898 he began suffering from a weaken heart; he died in 1910. -- Excerpt from Pragmatism, A Reader by Louis Menand.

http://www.emory.edu/EDUCATION/mfp/james.html

When complimented by one of his correspondents regarding his lucid writing style, James wrote back, "If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first; but when once objectified I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more."