The Ontology of William James's Pluralistic Universe: Issue of Individual Autonomy and the Relationship Between Part and Whole

Abstract

The article analyzes William James's concept of pluralistic unity, descibed in his series of lectures Pluralistic Universe, where he seeks to reconcile pluralism and monism. The article specifically focuses on how such a concept of pluralistic unity transforms the perception of oppositions between the individual and the general and between individualism and holism. In the historical-philosophical dimension, the article examines James's reading of Bergson's philosophy, as well as the Transcendentalist influences of Emerson on the formation of Jamesian pragmatism. The criticism of the Jamesian approach by Bertrand Russell and Émile Durkheim is also analyzed. While Bergson points to the primarily instrumental nature of our intellect and the limited abilities of the intellect to comprehend time and gradual transformations, James indicates the same limitations of intellect regarding contemplation of autonomy and unity. He argues that intellect tends to think about two systems either as separate entities (pluralism) or as a whole and its part (monism). However, this logic, which is the instrumental logic, doesn’t fit for an ontological description of the world and especially of social and transcendental phenomena. Instead, James proposes an ontology of pluralistic unity, where both the principle of unity and the principle of autonomy are always partially present simultaneously. The concept of the individual as well as various holistic phenomena are not in opposition, but only different dimensions of the same multi-level reality. In summary, in the ontology of pluralistic unity of William James, a supersystem always exists through its subsystems and, also, as a new quality through the connections between subsystems, but not as an abstraction outside of subsystems. It means that whole depends on its parts and is determined by their characteristics, but at the same time it is not only a set of parts, but also creates a new unity, which again can become a part of a yet more global whole.