William James’s career was a quest for intellectual vitality in the face of the deadening asceticism of academic philosophy and psychology. This pursuit of living thought connects apparently disparate elements of James’s work: his theory of the will as receptivity, his conception of faith as mental risk, and his late practice of exemplification over sequential argument. It also offers a much-needed tonic for the malaise of contemporary humanistic scholarship.

Benjamin Barasch is Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer in the Humanities Program at Yale University.

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