William James and the Moral Life

The literature on James’s ethics has expanded significantly over the past decade, but Lekan’s book is undoubtably the best treatment we have seen of this important topic yet. Rather than merely glossing over the tensions between the theoretical ethics James presents in "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life" and the more ‘existential’ themes that run through the rest of James’s corpus, Lekan’s account of ‘responsible self-fashioning’ does a remarkable job of showing how these two strands in James’s ethical thought can be harmonized. It’s an impressive achievement that is sure to anchor future work on the subject for years to come.

—Henry Jackman, York University

Many scholars have acknowledged the ethical insights of William James, but few have appreciated the depth and breadth of his moral philosophy. In this work Todd Lekan successfully argues that taking an expansive view of James’s work—not just essays like "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life" or "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings" but works like Pragmatism, Varieties of Religious Experience, and "The Will to Believe" (among others)—demonstrates a robust and cohesive pragmatic ethical theory. As such, this book speaks not only to those interested in American philosophy but scholars studying comprehensive and practical moral thought, writ-large, and places both Lekan (as a contemporary scholar) and James (as historically important philosopher) squarely into any vital conversation on ethics and ethically challenging situations.

—D. Micah Hester, PhD, chair/professor of Medical Humanities & Bioethics at UAMS and co-author of On James (2004)