First Things RSS Feed - Peter Ochs https://www.firstthings.com/author/peter-ochs en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:50:37 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/peter-ochs 60 Submitting Freedom https://www.firstthings.com/article/1994/11/submitting-freedom https://www.firstthings.com/article/1994/11/submitting-freedom Tue, 01 Nov 1994 00:00:00 -0500 Pragmatism is Western philosophy that seeks to speak once again to the practical needs of everyday life, including religious life. In this book, Bennett Ramsey reads the pragmatic philosophy of William James both in the way it may have spoken to the religious needs of James’ society and in the way it speaks to the religious needs of ours.

Toward both ends, the most telling passage of the book comes in the middle, when Ramsey describes James’ only public oration, on May 31, 1897, at the Boston Music Hall, on the occasion of the unveiling of a war memorial to Colonel Robert Shaw. Here was the incongruous event of James, the neurasthenic, “standing before the assembled gathering of soldiers and citizens, speaking about a colonel in a war from which James had been excused.”

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