PHILOSOPHY PROFESSOR SAYS JAMES HAD FASCISTIC BELIEFS

William James, Harvard's pragmatic philosopher who wrote like a novelist, "was, like the fascists, exalting the claims of action, will, and feeling over thought, of intuition and instinct ever analytic intelligence," according to Donald C. Williams, associate professor of Philosophy in an interview over the Crimson Network last night.

Though fascism is "a very natural kind of depravity," there is a definite correlation between James pragmatism and irrationalism and the fascist movement, said Williams. "He glorified the concrete, the vital, the subjective, which are the darlings of the fascistic ectasy." There is a danger that this denial of rational processes may sap the resistance of Americans to the fascistic ideologies which follow the same line, Williams believes.

Discussing the war aims of the United Nations, Williams said that though the primary conscious motive is "to save our skin," "we are, in effect, fighting also for the preservation of reason and democracy."

In fact, said Williams, war propaganda in this case has been very diferent from usual. It has been the scholars and thinkers who have done the convincing. "The people who needed to be convinced were the practical men, the politicians, the militarists, the munitions manufacturers, and formerly jingoistic newspaper proprietors."

We must not be fooled by propaganda to the effect that the German people have been temporarily "debased" by evil leaders, Williams stated. As an irrationalist society they can not be changed by a mere dose of democratic education. They must be made helpless and harmless, "preferably in a world union, but by decimation and captivity if necessary."