William James’s “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”
By James Anisi
What is the Certain Blindness?
The blindness in human beings, as James describes it, is the inherently selfish nature of our thoughts and ideas. Even if we understand the opinions of others, we still possess an inability to think from their perspectives. James himself admitted to being victim to this blindness, even though he saw himself as a selfless and altruistic. How could a considerate and generous person admit to having a blindness of selfishness?
Objective v. Subjective Morality
In order to understand the blindness that James is describing in his essay, it’s important to think how James thought prior to his realization. Consider three pairs of ideas: Happy v. Sad, Suffering v. Contentment, and Right v. Wrong. Which is the odd one out? If you are anything like William James was before writing his essay, you would say that right v. wrong is the only subjective pair. Right and wrong are completely subjective ideas while someone can definitely be happy or sad. Someone can definitely be suffering or content. As a pragmatist, William James thought that, although it was impossible to determine objective right and wrong, he could make the world a better place by affecting people objectively. However, he soon realized that he could not simply try and make people happier or end suffering, because all of those are also subjective.
Difference Between Truth and Perspective
To better understand the difference between considering one’s feelings and their perspective, consider the personal example James gave from his life. James was journeying through the mountains of North Carolina with a mountaineer, when he noticed stumps of trees riddling the hillsides and ugly houses with large crop fields being built on top. James thought this was a clear example of selfish behavior. While the mountain men only cared about building their homes and planting their crops, James instead was being more selfless, caring more about the destruction of natural beauty and the downsides of deforestation. When he confronted the mountain man, he was not given an explanation for their selfish actions, but instead an explanation for why they weren’t being selfish. The Mountaneer said that he and his fellow men never wanted to live in the mountains so far away from society, but instead they were doing what was morally right. When James questioned with confusion, the Mountaineer further explained that chopping down these trees by hand was a beautiful and honorable accomplishment amongst their community and that building houses with crop fields were for the purpose of expanding civilization. He believed that what he was doing was in fact morally correct, and from this James better understood the difference between truth and perspective. There is no fundamental misunderstanding between the two, James and the Mountaineer agree that the mountain man are destroying forests in order to build houses and cultivate the land. What they disagree on, though, is what beauty, goodness, and generosity mean in this context. The blindness that humans have is not an inability to consider others’ feelings, but rather we can only understand others in the context of our own perspective of the world. I also chose to use the cartoon above that is often used as a political cartoon. Both sides can agree what the shape is (a circle with curly tail) but they understand them as different things from their perspectives. Another one of my favorite examples is the poem “The Clod and the Pebble” by William Blake.
In this poem, the clod of clay and the pebble have different perspective on what it means to be in a relationship. While they both can agree that, in a relationship, two people sacrifice something for the happiness and comfort of the other, both give and both get. However, the clay thinks that the true goal of a relationship is to give to another at your own expense. Perhaps the other person gives something to you, but that isn’t something for you to focus on. Your job in the relationship is to “build a heaven in hell’s despair.” On the contrary, the pebble believes that your role in the relationship is to be given love at the expense of another. Of course you will do your part to give to your significant other, but fundamentally you are being selfish by expecting another to sacrifice for you.
This is analogous to James’s disagreement with the Mountaineer. The same way that James thought the mountain men were being selfish in destroying the forest, the pebble thinks love is selfish for expecting happiness given from another. And again the other way, the Mountaineer sees their job as selfless and a service to the community, the same way the clod of clay believes that love is meant to lift up another. How can one say that love is immoral when you are sacrificing some joy for another? But how can one say that love is moral if you are expecting sacrifice from another? The entire idea of morality becomes a lot more difficult when you have to consider the perspectives of others.
What’s the Solution?
In the end, James decides that we must do our best to understand where other people are coming from when trying to have philosophical discussion. Everything from politics to basic cophilosophy needs a strong foundation where opposing, or even agreeing, sides of a discussion can properly communicate. The first step in creating this foundation is everyone agreeing to consider the perspective of others. It isn’t something that humans are naturally good at, it’s not even something that’s easy to learn with practice, but we need to be able to understand others’ points of view before we hope to have effective debates, discussions, and disagreements.
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