Transforming One's Self

Clifford S. Stagoll is Honorary Research Fellow in Philosophy at The University of Western Australia. He is the coeditor (with Michael P. Levine) of Pragmatism Applied: William James and the Challenges of Contemporary Life, also published by SUNY Press.

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsAbbreviationsIntroduction: William James's Ethics in the Pragmatist Tradition1. Locating James's Therapeutic Project2. Uncovering Life's Potential: Relational Experience3. Defining Life's Potential: The Self-Transforming Self4. Realizing Life's Potential: An Ethics of Habit and Creative WillingConclusion: Recovering James's Therapeutic EthicsNotesBibliographyIndex

"Transforming One's Self represents an in-depth study of James's moral philosophy as hinged on the notion and practice of self-transformation. Stagoll contributes to the literature on James's ethics (and philosophy overall) by showing the extent to which moral reflection rests on open-ended experimentation rather than on established rules, on therapeutic instructions rather than on normative prescriptions. This pragmatist understanding of moral theorizing (or lack thereof) is paired with a fallibilist conception of experience, consciousness, habit, and will. In so doing, it joins a growing literature resisting a picture of James and pragmatism's moral thought as one more variety of either deontology or consequentialism." — Sarin Marchetti, author of Ethics and Philosophical Critique in William James