Ramsey presents a new analysis and interpretation of the religious views of the nineteenth-century American philosopher William James. He argues that James was primarily motivated by religious concerns in his writings and that this fact has been obscured by the artificial scholarly division of his "philosophy," "psychology," and "religion"-- a symptom of the professionalization which James himself strenuously resisted in his own time.

"Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas," wrote Kierkegaard, "our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale." The life of reasoned evaluation, he said, is being sold "dirt cheap." Everyone wants "to go further." So also argues Nicholas Rescher in The Validity of Values, the second volume of A System of Pragmatic Idealism. Like Kierkegaard, Rescher sees the theory and practice of rational evaluation being put "on sale." He finds influences similar to those seen by Kierkegaard (...) at work behind the sale's scene: a pervasive prudential, marketplace mentality; a philosophical vogue, cultivated by what Rescher calls our "civilized sophisticates", in which the normative role of reason is disdained. (shrink)