Biography
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12. Working Hard, Then Wearing Out
The ensuing years were marked by more travel, tenuous health, and further lecturing. He spent the spring of 1905 traveling Europe, meeting with Henri Bergson in France and a group of Italian philosophers headed by pragmatist Giovanni Papini. The following winter William was a visiting professor at Stanford University, where in February 1906 he delivered his well-received lecture "The Moral Equivalent of War," in which he argued that the aggressive, warlike element of our character is ingrained in us, expressing itself in what he called the "martial virtues" – for example, "intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command."[20] Unable to give up such virtues but desirous of eschewing the blood bath that is war, William suggested that we retain our habits in "moral equivalents" like conquering nature or forging stronger bonds of community.
By 1907, William prepared to shift gears once again. After several years of debate with Harvard administration, William finally took retirement at the end of January. With his teaching duties behind him, he was able to turn his attention to the publication of his book Pragmatism, the result of his Lowell Lectures at Boston and Columbia Universities. This completed the disciplinary triumvirate in his bibliography – first psychology, then religion, finally philosophy.
In his final years William, though constantly in ill health, continued lecturing while defending his work from critics, most of whom espoused an idealism that was at odds with his more empirically grounded work. Affording him another trip abroad, he gave and published (in 1909) the Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College, Oxford under the title A Pluralistic Universe. William also set out to write a comprehensive opus that could stand as his final statement tying up the various concepts he had written about throughout his career – pluralism, radical empiricism, pragmatism, theism, and so forth. The project would never see completion (though an incomplete version was published posthumously in 1911 as Some Problems in Philosophy).
One final trip to England occurred in the spring and summer of 1910 in response to pleas from brother Henry who was in ill health. However, William's own health continued its decline and his heart could no longer sustain him. Shortly after his arrival back in the States at his country home in Chocorua, New Hampshire, he succumbed to his heart condition on August 26, 1910. His wife insightfully recorded the cause in her diary: "Acute enlargement of the heart. He had worn himself out."
[20] See McDermott JJ (ed). 1977. The writings of William James: a comprehensive edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p 668.
Source: Talisse RB, Hester DM. 2004. Lives in transition: experiencing James. In On James, chap 1. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing. pp. 15-16. [Adapted by permission of the authors.]
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