User:Mabuckle/sandbox

What I am contributing to the Personality article is the influence and role of personality in the history of philosophy according to William James. My sources include primarily the lectures of James in 1906 and 1907 compiled in a book called Pragmatism, as well as a reader compilation about the Empiricist philosophers, and a reader compilation of the Rationalist philosophers.

    William James argued that temperament explains a great deal of the controversies in the history of philosophy. Temperament is argued to be a very influential premise in the arguments of philosophers who despite this seek only impersonal reasons for their conclusions. It is tantamount to a bias which James explains as a consequence of the trust philosophers place in their own temperament. The significance of James observation lies on the premise that in philosophy the objective measure of success is that philosophy is peculiar to its philosopher and that a philosopher is dissatisfied with any other way of seeing things.
    William James argues more broadly that temperament may be the basis of several divisions in academic disciplines, but philosophy is his focus. In fact, James' lecture of 1907 fashioned a sort of trait theory of the empiricist and rationalist camps of philosophy. As in most modern trait theories, the traits of each camp are distinct and opposite, and may be possessed in different proportions on a continuum, and thus characterize the personality of philosophers of each camp. James' purpose is to explain his pragmatist philosophy, and so does not describe the categories precisely. The "mental make-up" (i.e. personality) of rationalist philosophers is described as "tender-minded" and "going by "principles"," and that of empiricist philosophers is described as "tough-minded" and "going by "facts"." James distinguishes each not only in terms of the philosophical claims they made in his day 1906, but by arguing that such claims are made primarily on the basis of temperament.