Lexington Books
Pages: 270
•
Trim: 6½ x 9
978-1-4985-6062-7 • Hardback • August 2019 • $117.00 • (£90.00)
978-1-4985-6063-4 • eBook • August 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)
Michela Bella is postdoctoral researcher at Université de Nantes.
Introduction
Chapter 1: Psychology of Continuity
Chapter 2: The Philosophical and Scientific Context of James’s Elaboration of Continuity
Chapter 3: Ontology of Continuity
Chapter 4: Epistemology of Continuity
It is obvious that Michela Bella has remarkably done justice to the central aims of the book : (1) to analyze the theme of continuity and (2) to illustrate the continuity of thought in James. . . . The scholarliness of the author is evident from the literature consulted and studied. She has painstakingly examined all the works of William James including reviews and correspondences and has consulted extensively the most relevant secondary literature. The thematic continuity and intellectual eruditeness of the work is greatly appreciable. . . . the academic profundity of this book exhibits the scope of a comparative scholarship of ‘continuity’ between James and each of them. Bella has not attempted to find applications of James’s view of ‘continuity’ and ‘dynamism.’ In fact, this work can be used as key source for future research and further interpretations in various inter-disciplinary fields like science-religion interaction, positive psychology, etc.
— Acta Philosophica
Michela Bella’s Ontology after Philosophical Psychology: The Continuity of Consciousness in William James’s Philosophy of Mind offers a detailed survey of James’s thought using “continuity” as its focal lens. . . It will particularly interest James scholars studying the entanglement of the metaphysical with the psychological and epistemological. . . . Bella convincingly supports her thesis that continuity is the concept for following the bridge between the empirical and psychological and the epistemological and metaphysical in James. . . Bella’s book is invaluable for shedding light on how fecund and subtle [James's] thought is.
— Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society
Henri Bergson said we were sure to misunderstand William James's thought if we did not read him “integrally.” Michela Bella's book perfectly rises to this challenge by showing that the idea of continuity illuminates his psychology as well as his philosophy. She argues convincingly that continuity is the connecting tread linking his pragmatism, his radical empiricism, his pluralism and his meliorism. She also offers us an extremely enlightening study on the sources of this psychology and ontology of continuity, as well on the side of the United States (Peirce) as of Europe (Mach and Bergson). It is a book to read for anyone seeking to escape rigid dualisms and clear-cut dichotomies.— Stéphane Madelrieux, Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3
Michela Bella offers a sophisticated and updated fresco of the thought of William James, illuminating in a clear language the complex continuity of his ontology with the philosophical and psychological methodology. This book is an important and precise contribution to current discussion of the most delicate issues of philosophy of mind, but also an invitation to amend the many misunderstandings and fragmentations that have surrounded the work of this great philosopher and psychologist.— Rosa Maria Calcaterra, Università degli Studi Roma Tre
Ontology after Philosophical Psychology provides the first systematic analysis to date of the issue of continuity in William James’s psychology, metaphysics, and epistemology. Through her incisive exegesis of many of James’s writings and by comparing James’s views with those held by Charles S. Peirce, Henri Bergson, and Ernst Mach, Bella demonstrates persuasively that James’s initial psychological analysis of the felt continuity of the stream of thought was ‘the very source’ of the philosophical positions for which he is known: radical empiricism, pragmatism, and pluralism. With this important work, Michela Bella has made herself into a major player in the vigorous transatlantic field of James studies.— Francesca Bordogna, Notre Dame