The Thought and Character of William James

Ralph Barton Perry

When it was originally published in a two-volume edition in 1935, Ralph Barton Perry's magisterial work on William James was greeted with much critical acclaim. A briefer one-volume edition was published in 1947 to serve as both a systematic account of James's development and a repository of selections from his unpublished writings. The one-volume work (which forms the basis for this new paperback edition) offers a brief and convenient sourcebook of James's thought, set forth in terms that require no previous familiarity with technical problems of philosophy and psychology. An anthology of well-edited primary source material as well as a critical biography, The Thought and Character of William James today remains a classic text in the field of American philosophy. Interspersed throughout Perry's insightful and engaging narrative are excerpts not only from James but from many other of the leading philosophical figures of his day, including Bergson, Davidson, Dewey, Emerson, Holmes, both the elder and the younger Henry James, Peirce, Royce, and Santayana. The whole is a gracefully written examination of the life of a key American philosopher and an illuminating introduction to many of the founding personalities that today define American philosophy.