AbstractsPhilosophy & Theology

What is the relation between thinking and acting, between our ideas about ourselves and the world, and our actions in that world? This is an analysis of three novels from the early to mid-twentieth century alongside of selected works from James that seeks a variety of distinct yet similar responses to those questions. The novels are Passing, by Nella Larsen, The Man without Qualities, by Robert Musil, and The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway. In each of the four there is an effort to develop certainty about possible actions so that choices can be intelligent and deliberate, and move a person forward, whatever forward looks like in any particular case. But they all face a problem of profound uncertainty regarding the limits of knowledge. The lack of certainty engenders questions and hypotheses. James’s Pragmatic Theory of Truth and the ideas he express in “The Will to Believe” and elsewhere are attempts to incorporate action into a theory of truth and meaning, and provide guidance for moving forward in the absence of certainty. Each of the novels enacts and depicts some variation of the pragmatic thesis that thoughts are experiments used to test reality. We will also see in James and these novels a privileging of not-knowing. The novels and James show that there is a benefit to directing ourselves or being thoughtfully directed to a place of deliberate not-knowing or uncertainty in order to take action or to make some new emergent knowing possible, often through action. Advisors/Committee Members: Kasulis, Tom (Advisor), Berman, Nina (Advisor).