Senses of the Future in 19th Century France and America, with Reference to the Philosophies of Victor Cousin, Henri Bergson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William James

Abstract

This thesis examines a group of philosophers in Victor Cousin, Henri Bergson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William James, each of whom sought to resolve past, present, and future in a true vision of the world. I argue that these visions should be characterised as sets of practical accomplishments. That is to say, if they could be glimpsed in theories of perception or knowledge, they were only realised when lived out and held forth as models of human cultivation. Cousin, Bergson, Emerson, and James devoted considerable effort to combining in themselves the exemplary figures of the scientific knower and the spiritual guide concerned with the care and direction of the soul. They did so concretely, as teachers who worked within or against educational institutions that were completely transformed over the course of the nineteenth century. This thesis brings out how these philosophers sought to teach their respective audiences to look at the world differently so that they would know how to act purposefully in it. Each of my four chapters will show that the philosophy of its subject was a complex practice made up of several parts. The most important of these parts were habits of attention with respect to inner and outer phenomena, disciplines of self-correction and emotional regulation, and methods for the presentation and organisation of knowledge as well as the interpretation of past texts. These practices varied significantly between the four philosophers. Moreover, as complexes they were held together by different scholarly offices and exemplars of mental conduct. From an intellectual-historical perspective, the significance of such practical variation is that it registers the essential contingency of philosophical efforts to impose some degree of temporal unity on the world. Throughout this thesis I return to four sets of contingencies: the past thinkers or doctrines which each philosopher recognised as authoritative; the scholarly or scientific ethos that guided his thinking; the religious setting and atmosphere of belief in which he moved; and, finally, his institutional environment and its dominant mode of intellectual cultivation. Altogether, these contingencies help to characterise my subjects as philosophers and explain why the imposition of certain unities of perception and purpose was for them an activity centrally about the future of humankind.