Mark John Franklin

In a letter written to his friend and philosophical ally Charles Sanders Peirce, William James acknowledged that his essay The Will to Believe had landed him "in much hot water lately." If the subsequent history of critical reaction to the essay is any indication it would appear that the waters have cooled very little. Even today, nearly a full century after its publication, the essay remains something of a philosophical scandal. James' attempt at justifying the acceptence of religious and moral beliefs in evidentially inconclusive or ambiguous circumstances continues to be dismissed as a philosophically suspect venture. Critics charge that by repeatedly drawing our attention to the personal advantages we might gain from holding such beliefs, James erodes intellectual standards, minimizes the role played by evidential realities in our doxastic experience, and finally, gives us the licence to believe whatever we wish to believe . ;Any attempt at sorting out and evaluating the range of critical responses to The Will to Believe cannot get very far unless it is grounded upon a nuanced and contextually alert reading of the essay. Central to such a reading is the belief that the essay reflects relatively persistent and well-established patterns in James' general philosophical outlook. Several such patterns deserve attention. First, we need to realize that the essay expresses James' long-standing interest in showing how such practically-oriented considerations as the enabling effects of our believing might be of justificatory significance. Second, the essay is of a piece with a deep-rooted feature of James' thought, namely, his teleological characterization of experience as shaped by selective acts of attention working in tandem with a diversified range of ends and purposes. Third, The Will to Believe reflects James' often critical relationship to the positivist science of his time and his wish to expand the scope of inquiry in truth-conducive ways. ;The more we view James' essay in relation to these contextual elements, the more adept we are likely to become at seeing how many of the stock criticisms of The Will to Believe either misinterpret significant aspects of the essay or beg certain critical questions by assuming an ethic of belief that James explicitly rejects. Not only are misreadings responsible for the frequently rehearsed complaints about wishful thinking, but interpretive errors also figure prominently in the widespread conviction that James' appeal to our "passional nature" eschews truth-oriented or epistemic values. ;Much as James is interested in showing how selective acts of overbelief can meet pressing personal needs, he also makes it abundantly clear that these beliefs might also promote epistemic values. It is this epistemic or truth-oriented dimension of the essay that needs to be recovered to establish a measure of interpretive balance. ;According to James, our desire for truth is more likely to be served if individuals bring their commitments or faiths into the market place of ideas where they can compete with one another and be subject to critical scrutiny. What we stand to acquire in the way of deeper and more comprehensive insights into reality, may depend in no small measure upon our willingness to invest our energies in seeing how certain of our beliefs might fare when subject to the total drift of our thinking and experience. All forms of "religious agitation and discussion" should be welcomed openly, James insists, for only then can we begin our "tackings to the common port, to that ultimate Weltanschauung of maximum subjective as well as objective richness."