Quotation
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“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”
William James · Pragmatism · Modern · 1895
What does it mean?
The usual reading is a claim about some truths that action helps to make: believing that life is worth living can produce the energies and the engagements that make it so, so the belief is not a report after the fact. A competing reading hears a command to pretend, a mood you force on evidence you have ignored. James is explicit that this is not an ordinary scientific proof, and he places the address among arguments about the will to believe, where a live option that evidence cannot settle may be decided by our willing nature. The sentences are the last words of Is Life Worth Living. They apply to the worth of life, which he thinks is partly created by the living of it. They do not say every belief creates its object. A belief that the train will wait does not hold the train.
Did William James really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. James's own English, the close of the 1895 address. He says these are his last words to the audience, and that the scientific proof may not be clear before the day of judgement. The sentence is not from Pragmatism of 1907.
Where it comes from
'Is Life Worth Living?', an address of 1895, reprinted in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)
Approximate date: 1895.
How to use it
A newcomer in a Newcastle evening class who joins before feeling like the sort of person who belongs, and who becomes that person by joining, is the pattern he is willing to bless. The sentence does not tell a person in despair that the despair is a failure of nerve. It says that, where the worth of a life is in question, waiting for a proof before you live is a way of making the negative answer true. A manager who uses the line to stop a grievance is not using it. He stated a risk and a hope, not a gag.
A mindset reading
Distinguish a fact your belief cannot budge from a fact your conduct helps constitute. The habit is to ask which kind the present fear is. James thinks the worth of life is partly the second kind. Treating every question as a spectator's question is, on his view, already a decision, and often the one that starves the fact you said you were waiting to see.
Understand the philosophy
The address began as a talk to the Harvard YMCA in 1895 and was collected in The Will to Believe in 1897. The key claim of the close is that belief can help create the fact that life is worth living. It belongs with his critique of a science-only rule for belief, and it is narrower than the poster version. Pragmatism's later formula, that the true is the expedient in our way of thinking, is a different sentence, already in this library, from a different book.
- meaning
- mind
- resilience
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading is a claim about some truths that action helps to make: believing that life is worth living can produce the energies and the engagements that make it so, so the belief is not a report after the fact. A competing reading hears a command to pretend, a mood you force on evidence you have ignored. James is explicit that this is not an ordinary scientific proof, and he places the address among arguments about the will to believe, where a live option that evidence cannot settle may be decided by our willing nature. The sentences are the last words of Is Life Worth Living. They apply to the worth of life, which he thinks is partly created by the living of it. They do not say every belief creates its object. A belief that the train will wait does not hold the train.
Did William James really say this?
Well attested. James's own English, the close of the 1895 address. He says these are his last words to the audience, and that the scientific proof may not be clear before the day of judgement. The sentence is not from Pragmatism of 1907.
Which work is it in?
'Is Life Worth Living?', an address of 1895, reprinted in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897) Approximate date: 1895.