william james | Search Results

The new site is a successor in several senses. It will bear whatever initial revisions it may occur to me to make in my dawn posts. The old site will thus stand as an uncorrected, unvarnished record of dawn's earliest light, as I've reflected it, and of my earliest daily errors. "Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things," as James said in "Will to Believe."

This site, as of May 2017, will also serve as an archival repository of posts, tweets, re-tweets, and whatever other dispatches can be easily shunted here.

So, the two sites may also stand together as a record of their fallible author's occasional self-correction and growth. "If I get up every day with the optimism that I have the capacity for growth, that's success for me." (Paula Scher)

Both sites will remain dedicated to the Thoreauvian proposition that morning "is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night.”

And as for versions 3.0 and beyond? My intent is that they will one day pop up between hard covers.

Meanwhile, may we all have a good day!

Morning

Why do we bother with the rest of the day, the swale of the afternoon, the sudden dip into evening, then night with his notorious perfumes, his many-pointed stars? This is the best— throwing off the light covers, feet on the cold floor, and buzzing around the house on espresso— maybe a splash of water on the face, a palmful of vitamins— but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso, dictionary and atlas open on the rug, the typewriter waiting for the key of the head, a cello on the radio, and, if necessary, the windows— trees fifty, a hundred years old out there, heavy clouds on the way and the lawn steaming like a horse in the early morning. -Billy Collins

Strong coffee, whanging sun, skimming gulls

How at the mercy of bodily happenings our spirit is. A cup of strong coffee at the proper moment will entirely overturn for the time a man's view of life. Our moods and resolutions are more determined by the condition of our circulation than by our logical grounds. *** Remember when old December's darkness is everywhere about you, that the world is really in every minutest point as full of life as in the most joyous morning you ever lived through; that the sun is whanging down, and the waves dancing, and the gulls skimming down at the mouth of the Amazon, for instance, as freshly as in the first morning of creation; and the hour is just as fit as any hour that ever was for a new gospel of cheer to be preached. I am sure that one can, by merely thinking of these matters of fact, limit the power of one's evil moods over one's way of looking at the cosmos. -William James

Up@dawn

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“No Professor’s Lectures Can Save Us” And that’s the truth! I’m pleased to see John Stuhr’s new book (and the little shout-out on p. 47). Subtitle: William James’s Pragmatism, Radical Empiricism, and Pluralism (OUP ’23)… https://t.co/UYAhlE6rkF

Ezra Klein cites Jenny Odell on “the revolutionary potential of taking back our attention,” which William James explained a long time ago: https://t.co/bl8oYNNFw6 Attention must be paid. https://t.co/XEPEfYv8wT

@Philip_Goff Don’t guess you like William James’s take on that. “The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments…” https://t.co/7nch1eHPv1

Just stumbled across this old realty promo for William James’s beloved summer place in Chocorua, where WJ Society members made pilgrimage in 2010. We sat on the wall and recreated that famous scene with Royce. https://t.co/BQMqSVwdOO

As William James said, pragmatism is a house with many rooms. And there’s a Rortian room…concerned about getting beyond the subjectivism & solipsism of Descartes…all about a move toward community…We begin with a “we,” not an “I.” That’s pragmatism… https://t.co/W1aMpkbB8j

“A feeling of perfect, absolute peace…and no words…But if there had been words, they would’ve sounded something like: “It’s OK. Don’t worry. It’s OK.” It was the closest thing I have ever known to the sort of moment William James described…” https://t.co/ozC6orIzPo

Last night’s William James Society session went well, though the tech setup was a bit low-rent. My presentation emphasized the penumbral “friction” of experience that can’t be reduced to language. Peripatetics feel it, literally. https://t.co/3dJT3csoZ8

“There ain’t no answer. There ain’t gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer.” Gertrude Stein may also once have written, to her Professor William James, that she didn’t feel like taking an exam. https://t.co/kAW752hI9G

until I have settled the Universe’s hash in one more book… Childish idiot—as if formulas about the Universe could ruffle its majesty, and as if the common-sense world and its duties were not eternally the really real!” William James, 1903

It is the same problem that William James identifies when he writes of the miserable person for whom “nothing is habitual but indecision”… https://t.co/pTJ62v4Gxl

Up@dawn 2.0

Up@dawn 2.0

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