Essays in Philosophy brings together twenty-one essays, reviews, and occasional pieces published by James between 1876 and 1910. They range in subject from a concern with the teaching of philosophy and appraisals of philosophers to analyses of important problems.
Several of the essays, like The Sentiment of Rationality and The Knowing of Things Together, are of particular significance in the development of the views of James's later works. All of them, as John McDermott says in his Introduction, are in a style that is engaging and personal...witty, acerbic, compassionate, and polemical. Whether he is writing an article for the Nation of a definition of Experience for Baldwin's Dictionary or The Mad Absolute for the Journal of Philosophy, James is always unmistakably himself, and always readable.