William James: Politics in the Pluriverse

William James is known today as a philosopher of pragmatism. William James: Politics in the Pluriverse challenges this understanding. Ferguson traces the historical importance and contemporary possibilities of pluralism’s original political insight. In this important work he examines the trajectory of pluralism in the United States and England, the mutual influences of turn-of-the-century American and European philosophical traditions, and the relationship between pluralism and James’s active anti-imperialism. James’s unexpected political concepts and commitments both illuminate political philosophy of the 20th century and challenge contemporary assumptions about the desirability of unanimity. Pluralism, not unity, should be the goal of both politics and philosophy.

Kennan Ferguson is director of the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Studies at the University of South Florida. He is the author of The Politics of Judgment: Aesthetics, Identity, and Political Theory.