This text, by the author of The Pragmatic Philosophy of William James, provides a critical analysis of James's philosopy of religion. It examines and extends his insights and arguments, exhibiting their depth and contemporary relevance.

Essays in Radical Empiricism shows William James concerned with ultimate reality and moving toward a metaphysical system. The twelve essays originally appeared in journals between 1904 and 1906. James himself collected them to illustrate what he called “radical empiricism,� but this volume was not published until 1912, two years after his death. Included are such seminal essays as “Does Consciousness Exist?� and “A World of Pure Experience.� The distinguished scholar and biographer Ralph Barton Perry, who edited this volume, called the essays essential to an understanding of James’s writings. Radical empiricism takes us into a “world of pure experience.� In the essays, as introducer Ellen Kappy Suckiel notes, “James inquires into the metaphysically basic reality underlying the common-sense objects of our world. It is here that he defends his view that ‘experience’ is the sole and ultimate reality.� The essays deal with the applications of this “pure� or “neutral� experience: the general problem of relations, the role of feeling in experience, the nature of truth. Horace M. Kallen observed: “The fundamental point of these essays is that the relations between things, holding them together or separating them, are at least as real as the things themselves . . . and that no hidden substrata are necessary to account for the clashes and coherences of the world.�

"It is no surprise that William James's philosophy continues to draw creative and critical interpretations. Ellen Kappy Suckiel's is another such reading, but one that is neither narrowly analytic nor obtusely continental in its philosophical approach. It is fair-minded, well-documented, and sprinkled with important insights and connections to other current philosophical approaches to religion." -The Journal of Religion

With the clarity that William James deemed obligatory, Some Problems of Philosophy outlines his theory of perception. The early chapters expose the defects of intellectualism and monism and the advantages of empiricism and pluralism. The novelty that enters into concrete perceptual experience, and that is disallowed by the rationalizing intellect, suggests exciting possibilities. Denied any absolute truth in an ever-changing world, privy to only a piece of the truth at any given moment, the individual can, with faith and good will, help create order out of chaos. Some Problems of Philosophy, published posthumously, represents an important advance in William James's thought.