Philosophy Faculty Publications

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Spring 2016

Publication Source

The Pluralist

Abstract

Placed side by side, James' A Pluralistic Universe and Addams’s Twenty Years at Hull-House seem to have little in common. James’s critique of absolute idealism is written for intellectuals comfortable with philosophical abstractions. Twenty Years is full of stories about the lives of poor people and immigrants. Yet, sometime after April 1909, when A Pluralistic Universe appeared, and before November 1910, when Twenty Years was published, Addams inserted a few telling quotations into her manuscript. I will give a reading of Twenty Years as a presentation in real time of James’s pluralistic universe, with both form and contents conveying the “essential provisionality” of experience in James’s “strung-along” universe.I will then show how sympathy and memory serve as wires upon which the universe is strung.

Inclusive pages

1-18

ISBN/ISSN

1930-7365

Document Version

Postprint

Comments

The document available for download is the author's accepted manuscript, provided in compliance with the publisher's policy on self-archiving. Differences may exist between this document and the published version, available using the link provided. Permission documentation is on file.

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press

Volume

11

Issue

1

Peer Reviewed

yes

Link to published version

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