"The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life"

In 1891 William James delivered a lecture to the Yale Philosophical Club entitled "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life." It was later included as an essay in The Will to Believe and other Essays in Popular Philosophy. In the essay James draws a distinction between three questions in ethics: psychological, metaphysical, and casuistic.

"The psychological question asks after the historical origin of our moral ideas and judgments; the metaphysical question asks what the very meaning of the words 'good,' 'ill,' and 'obligation' are; the casuistic question asks what is the measure of the various goods and ills which men recognize, so that the philosopher may settle the true order of human obligations.”

The essay is a little under 10,000 words and will take around 35 to 50 minutes to read. You can download *.pdfs of the essay from The University of Chicago Press Journals, Internet Archive, JSTOR (a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources) and Monadnock. I haven’t found any audio versions of the essay; if you find one feel free to post a link to it in the comments below.

If you prefer audio or video over the written word, the creator of this YouTube video [22:37] gives a thoughtful commentary on the essay. And this YouTube video search returns lots of videos if you’re curious about William James’s overall philosophy.

We look forward to seeing you.