William James's moral theory

Abstract

James's moral theory, primarily as set out in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (in his The Will To Believe (1897)), is presented here as having a two-level structure, an empirical or historical level where progress toward greater moral inclusiveness is central, and a metaphysical or end-of-history level—James's “kingdom of heaven”—characterised by universal agreement on moral content that is likely to be pluralistic, including deontological elements in a broadly consequentialist endeavour to attain the greatest good, by the lights of a variety of moral ideals. This consequentialism of ideals is significantly different from a straightforward consequentialism that aims to satisfy preferences. The pluralism of moral content is mirrored in the pluralism he suggests at the end of The Varieties of Religious Experience about gods. The various theisms will eventually make accommodations to each other in a greater whole, as a Science of Religion matures. The pluralistic pattern in ethics and religion gains strength from an analogy with pluralism in science.