footsteps

I’m not sure whether to call it a conference or a pilgrimage.

The organizers are calling it In the Footsteps of William James: A Symposium on the Legacy – and the On-Going Uses – of James’s Work. It’s to honor and extend that legacy, on the occasion of the centenary observation of his death in Chocorua, New Hampshire in 1910. It begins in Chocorua on Friday and then migrates to Cambridge, near Harvard, on Monday.

I’m chairing a session on Sunday, on morality and freedom and the “will to believe.” Looks like I’ll be delivering a paper too.

But I’m really going for the experience of treading in my favorite philosopher’s footsteps, at his school and in his homes and on his mountain. I’ve been there before, briefly, first in ’93. But this will be the full immersive baptism, as it were. A (secular) variety of religious experience, even.

And I’m on my way…