Charles Renouvier

From the diaries of William James, 30 April 1870

I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier�s second �Essais� and see no reason why his definition of Free Will—�the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts�—need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present—unitl next year—that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.   (Etc.)

WILLIAM JAMES ON PSYCHIACAL RESEARCH,
Editors G. Murphy and Robert Ballou.
New York : Viking 1960, p. 6.

From an Introduction (1960) by Gardner Murphy

The question has often been debated as to what factors, other than his marriage and his steady work at Harvard, had turned the semi-invalid [William James] into a productive and effective teacher and writer. The answer which he himself apparently emphasized most was that the restitution of his health came from the study of the evolutionary philosophy of the French philosopher Renouvier, who taught that spontaneity, genuine freedom, is available to the individual who strikes out on a new path for himself. He can creatively remake his personal life, including his health as well as his intellectual and spiritual goals. Evidently James�s long sufferings, his backaches, his eye-aches, his periods of semi-invalidism, his pathetic and futile journeys to the mud-baths in Bohemia, all of which left him still an invalid, were things of the past when once he realized, in the language of Renouvier, that he could spontaneously, arbitrarily re-create his own life. Though he never became really rugged, his physical and intellectual vitality were in some measure a response to this new conviction.

WILLIAM JAMES ON PSYCHIACAL RESEARCH,
Editors G. Murphy and Robert Ballou.
New York : Viking 1960, pp. 5-6.

Bibliographic

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