ABSTRACT
James’s philosophy not only covers issues in morality and religion, but was even dominated by them. His own personal struggle over the free-will problem, his serious commitment to religious belief, and the background of his father’s Swedenborgian sympathies all underline the importance these problems had for him. His discussion of these non-cognitive issues, however, depends upon his epistemology; indeed it is not too much to say that his epistemology was in part constructed for these issues. James evidently wished to provide an empiricism which was not only rigorous and down to earth but also accommodated moral, religious, even super-natural beliefs. It was this wish which led him to mediate between the tough-and tender-minded philosophies and to envisage with characteristic cheerfulness a new dawn in which empiricism and religion were reconciled and co-operative.1 He recognised, however, the difficulties of that reconciliation. Even in his own writings there are clear signs of conflict between, for example, the hostility expressed to supernatural belief and to ‘trans-marginal’ consciousness in the Principles2 and the sympathetic attitude to these expressed in A Pluralistic Universe and his articles on psychic phenomena.
