Life Is Worth Living | William James and the Sick Soul

Fall asleep to the life of William James, the invalid who became America's great philosopher of hope and belief.As a young man William James was so ill in body and mind that he could barely leave his room, and one spring evening he made a private decision that would shape everything after it. This episode follows the whole arc of his life and thought, from a wandering childhood in the most gifted family in America, through the collapse that nearly ended him, to the years when he founded a new science of the mind and taught the world to picture consciousness as a flowing stream. We move with him from psychology into philosophy, through his defense of the right to believe, his tender study of the religious experience of ordinary people, and the practical theory of truth that made him famous and infamous at once. And we follow him to the end, a public conscience in a warring age, insisting to his last breath that the universe is unfinished and that our own efforts help to complete it.Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.Chapters:0:00:00 Chapter 1: The Life and the Turn0:11:44 Chapter 2: A Natural History of the Mind0:21:34 Chapter 3: The Stream That Never Stops0:29:58 Chapter 4: The Great Flywheel0:35:48 Chapter 5: Because We Tremble0:47:29 Chapter 6: The Right to Believe0:56:28 Chapter 7: The Sick Soul1:08:32 Chapter 8: By Their Fruits1:17:25 Chapter 9: One White Crow1:23:32 Chapter 10: What Difference It Makes1:34:57 Chapter 11: Truth Happens to an Idea1:44:09 Chapter 12: A World of Pure Experience1:50:30 Chapter 13: A Universe Still Unfinished2:00:51 Chapter 14: What Makes a Life Significant2:12:22 Chapter 15: The Temper That RemainsIf this helped you rest, follow Sleepy Philosophy Radio on Spotify, and become a member to unlock member only episodes and help keep the show going.Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Tracks used: Anguish, Blue Feather, Evening Fall (Harp), Gregorian Chant, Heartbreaking, Lightless Dawn, Lone Harvest, Magic Forest, Mesmerize, Mourning Song, Oppressive Gloom, Promising Relationship, Quinn's Song: A New Man, Relent, Smoother Move, Sunset at Glengorm, Trio for Piano Cello and Clarinet, Wounded