ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how deeply “Kantian” William James’s pragmatist philosophy is, particularly regarding the conception of humanity at the core of his views on ethics and religion. While James seems to be a strongly anti-Kantian thinker, going (in his own words) “round” rather than “through” Kant, he is committed to a form of “transcendental pragmatism” in his constructivist epistemology and metaphysics as well as his pragmatic approach to the philosophy of religion. Most importantly, however, he shares Kant’s pessimism about human nature: we are not naturally inclined to morality but need to overcome our instinctive “blindness” in order to take other human beings into ethical consideration. The chapter suggests that Jamesian empirical meliorism should be grounded in Kantian transcendental pessimism. The Jamesian pragmatist cannot share Kant’s deontological ethics, but at the level of philosophical anthropology the two philosophers are in striking agreement, and this agreement informs the ways in which the Kantian-cum-Jamesian philosopher should understand the relation between ethics and religion.
