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James and politicsIn Alexander Mugar Klein (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of William James, Oxford University Press. 2018.
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William James and the quest for an ethical republicPalgrave-Macmillan. 2014.The ethical origins of James's pragmatism -- Religion and the refinement of James's pragmatism -- The ethical republic -- Citizen James -- Legacies and prospects.
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8Jamesian Ethics: A Working ModelContemporary Pragmatism 19 (1): 59-67. 2022.In this essay I respond to critical readers of my book, William James and the Quest for an Ethical Republic. I argue that James’s ultimate preoccupations are ethical, and that his ethical and moral writings constitute a rich resource for pluralistic societies seeking democratic tools for negotiating deep ideological, cultural, and religious differences, and for building a thriving commons.
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18Thorstein Veblen, Bard of DemocracyEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 13 (1). 2021.Few remember Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) as a connoisseur of beauty or champion of beauty’s importance to an institutionally modern and technologically sophisticated society. Similarly few credit Veblen with any constructive theory of politics. Yet Veblen’s conception of the beautiful, his account of its role in human cultural evolution, and his critique of its perversion in the industrialized societies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are invaluable to contemporary social-aesthe…Read more
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20The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present (review)Ethics and International Affairs 28 (3): 397-399. 2013.
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45The will to behold: Thorstein veblen's pragmatic aesthetics*: Trygve throntveitModern Intellectual History 5 (3): 519-546. 2008.No philistine, Thorstein Veblen thought humankind's innate impulse to imbue experience with aesthetic unity advanced all knowledge, and that the most beautiful objects, ideas, and actions met a standard of communal benefit reflecting humanity's naturally selected sociability. Though German idealism was an early influence, it clashed with Veblen's historicist critique of Western institutions, and it was William James's psychology that refined his ideas into a coherent aesthetics with ethical and …Read more
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15William James’s Ethical RepublicJournal of the History of Ideas 72 (2): 255-277. 2011.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:William James’s Ethical RepublicTrygve ThrontveitFor William James (1842–1910), all philosophical problems were ultimately ethical. In Pragmatism (1907), James invoked the logical theory of his friend Charles Peirce to argue that the “meaning” of any belief consisted solely in “what conduct it is fitted to produce.” There was “no difference in abstract truth,” he elaborated, “that doesn’t express itself in a difference in concrete fa…Read more
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