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STÉPHANE MADELRIEUX William James, L'attitude empiriste (William James, The Empiricist Stance) Paris: Puf, 2008.
The release of Stéphane Madelrieux's William James, L'attitude empiriste (William James, The Empiricist Stance) is excellent news indeed for French James studies: it is the first comprehensive study of James's works in French. It will certainly prove to be a reference for James studies and empiricist studies in general.
James was introduced quite early in France, and although there are a number of translations at hand,1 as well as two books by David Lapoujade,2 a comprehensive monograph was still lacking. Madelrieux's book is, from this standpoint, a remarkable achievement. Massive problems, such as the relationship between James's philosophy and his psychology, between his naturalist approach to action and his empiricism, between pragmatism and radical empiricism, are faced. The book covers overlooked parts of the corpus, in this country at least, such as James's psychology3 and his works on abnormal psychology. The book will thus prove very precious to students in the process of discovering James, as a "companion" throughout their reading; it casts light on nearly all of James's texts and gives resources against major misunderstandings. It will also be valuable to more advanced readers, whether they are familiar with a part only of James's works, or whether they are interested in telling what precise brand of empiricism one is to find in James's work.
The book, which is drawn from the doctoral thesis of the author, focuses on James's empiricism. The claim is that, if there is a "thread" which "runs through all James's thought, it is that of empiricism, from which he claims to be both a follower and a reformer."4 The book assesses the status of empiricism in James's work, on the one hand, and James's position in the empiricist lineage, on the other hand. In this latter picture, James would represent "psychological empiricism," the link between Locke's "classical empiricism" and the Vienna Circle's "logical empiricism." As an attitude-since the book deals with the "empiricist attitude"-this particular brand of empiricism would have a critical side, which is pragmatism, and a constructive side, which is radical empiricism and involves the capacity of empiricist philosophy to "turn philosophical problems into questions of fact."5
Such a feat-writing a book of...