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Damn Great Empires!: William James and the Politics of Pragmatism

Livingston, Alexander

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Damn Great Empires offers a new perspective on the works of William James by placing his encounter with American imperialism at the center of his philosophical vision. This book reconstructs James's overlooked political thought by treating his anti-imperialist Nachlass -- his speeches, essays, notes, and correspondence on the United States' annexation of the Philippines -- as the key to unlocking the political significance of his celebrated writings on psychology, religion, and philosophy. It shows how James located a craving for authority at the heart of empire as a way of life, a craving he diagnosed and unsettled through his insistence on a modern world without ultimate foundations. Livingston explores the persistence of political questions in James's major works, from his writings on the self in The Principles of Psychology to the method of Pragmatism, the study of faith and conversion in The Varieties of Religious Experience, and the metaphysical inquiries in A Pluralistic Universe.

Against the conventional view of James as a thinker who remained silent on questions of politics, this book places him in dialogue with a transatlantic critique of modernity, as well as with champions and critics of American imperialism, from Theodore Roosevelt to W. E. B. Du Bois, in order to excavate James's anarchistic political vision. Bringing the history of political thought into conversation with contemporary debates in political theory, Damn Great Empires offers a fresh and original reexamination of the political consequences of pragmatism as a public philosophy.

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Publisher

OXFORD UNIV PR

Bisac Major Subject

Political Science

Binding Type

Paperback

Country Of Origin

Number Of Units

Length

9.1 Inches

Barcode Indicator

EAN

Width

6.1 Inches

Publication Date

1970-01-01

Height

0.5 Inches

ISBN 10

0190237163

Weight

0.7 Pounds

Book EAN

9780190237165

Target Audiance

Adults

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Damn Great Empires!: William James and the Politics of Pragmatism