John Kaag (the author) is an American philosopher born in 1979 in Pennsylvania. He is currently Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at University of Massachusetts Lowell. He studied philosophy and related fields: he earned his PhD from the University of Oregon in 2007.
In the late 1800s, people believed they were living in an age of progress and happiness. Science and reason were supposed to be making life better than ever. But William James, a deep and sometimes troubled thinker, didn’t fully believe that story. He saw that many intelligent people around him felt empty and hopeless, as if life had no real joy or purpose. He called this feeling anhedonia "an·he·do·ni·a”, the loss of the ability to feel pleasure.
James himself had felt this darkness. During a trip to the Amazon in 1867, he suffered deep depression and described it as being “unmoored at sea.” (pg. 43 SSHM). He compared it to seasickness so bad that everything good in life seemed disgusting.
He realized something hard but true: suffering is part of life, not an exception to it- meaning pain and struggle aren’t mistakes or detours, they’re built into what it means to be alive. When you look closely at the world, nature itself seems cruel.
He used examples like cats toying with mice or snakes eating their prey to show that pain and struggle are built into existence. This, he thought, was the real meaning behind Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest, the weak die, and eventually everything becomes weak.
But he also believed there was a way out. The people who felt life’s pain the most, the “sick souls,” as he called them, could be “twice-born.” (pg. 44 SSHM). This meant that after hitting rock bottom, they could be spiritually or psychologically reborn into a new way of living. Life might still be painful, but it could become meaningful again.
To show what he meant, James liked to talk about another American thinker, John Muir, who once almost died climbing a mountain in the Rockies. Muir slipped, froze in terror, and believed he was doomed to fall to his death. Then suddenly, something inside him changed, he said it felt like another self, or a “guardian angel,” took control (pg. 46 SSHM). His fear vanished, his movements became sure and calm, and he climbed to safety.
James saw this as a picture of rebirth through crisis. When a person faces death, something new can awaken inside, a stronger will to live. Many people who survive near-death experiences say they suddenly regret wanting to die and realize how much they want to live. James thought this kind of moment, when you survive what should have destroyed you, was how the “twice-born” soul begins.
In 1870, James experienced his own turning point. He had been depressed for years, but one day, while reading the French philosopher Charles Renouvier, something changed. Renouvier argued that free will was real, which means a person could make choices that weren’t already determined by past causes.
This went against the popular belief of the time called positivism (pg. 48 SSHM), which said everything, even human thoughts and actions, followed strict physical laws and that only science could reveal truth. Positivists like Auguste Comte and Thomas Huxley thought questions about meaning or free will were useless because they couldn’t be measured.
Renouvier disagreed. He said chance and choice exist in the real world. A person’s will can “break” the chain of mechanical causes and start something new. James was deeply moved. He decided to test this idea in his own life. He wrote in his diary: “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.” That single choice marked his rebirth. From that point on, James began to live with the belief that he had the power to direct his own life.
After this change, James returned to work with new energy. In 1871, he joined his old friend Henry Bowditch to teach physiology at Harvard. By 1872, he was teaching Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, and soon philosophy became his main passion. He wrote to Renouvier thanking him for giving him his first “reasonable conception of freedom.”
For James, philosophy became more than theory, it was a way of living. In 1873, he told his father that he finally felt “restored to sanity.” He compared the difference between his new life and his old despair as “the difference between life and death.”
Even so, recovery wasn’t simple. Depressed people often don’t fully trust their own happiness, they fear it won’t last. James felt that way too. He soon had another downturn in 1873 and felt exhausted again, wishing only for rest. He traveled to Europe to recover and eventually regained his balance.
This showed something he would later teach: even people who are “twice-born” can still suffer again. Growth isn’t a straight path. But each time, he would come back stronger.
James’s belief in free will seemed strange to some people. How can you prove free will by choosing to believe in it? Isn’t that circular logic? James didn’t care. He realized that not every belief can be logically proven, but some beliefs are still worth having because they make life possible.
He explained that humans don’t make choices using logic alone. Feelings, willpower, and personality are always part of how we form beliefs. He wrote that “the whole man within us”, our mind, emotions, and desires, all work together when we form our deepest opinions.
In simple terms, we don’t believe things only because they’re proven; we also believe them because they help us live better. That’s what James called pragmatism(pg. 47 SSHM), the idea that beliefs should be judged by how they work in real life, not just whether they make logical sense.
When James went back to Harvard in 1875, he began to see how closely the mind and body were connected. The mind wasn’t just a cold, thinking machine, it was part of the living, feeling body. Changing your mind means changing your whole being, not just your thoughts.
This belief would later become the foundation of psychology as a science of both thought and emotion, not just logic.
In 1876, James met Alice Howe Gibbens, who became his wife. He fell in love with her, and this became another example of how belief and emotion work together. Falling in love, he said, is a kind of leap of faith, you act as if you know everything about someone, even though you don’t. (pg. 66 SSHM)
Alice, like James, cared deeply about freedom, but she focused on the kind found in society, freedom for workers, women, and oppressed people. Together, their relationship joined James’s personal freedom of the soul with Alice’s vision of social freedom.
Discussion question:
Why do you think some people find meaning through pain, while others only feel lost in it?
I think it has to do with hope. If you know its making you better, that you don't have to endure it long, or that someone can bail you out, it makes it more bearable
Longer Lecture:
Shorter Videos About Pragmatism and William James in General:
