Pluralisme anglais et pluralisme américain : Bertrand Russell et William James

International audienceThe aim of this article is to present William James’ pluralism in contrast to Bertrand Russell’s one. Though Jean Wahl and Gilles Deleuze tried to put these two pluralisms together, they are quite different and incompatible in many ways. Russell’s one is logical in its origins and makes him able to claim a realistic epistemology. James’ one, on the contrary, has its origins in metaphysics and finds its true sense and value in moral philosophy. While the former rests on the affirmation of a multiplicity of irreducible elements, the latter emphasizes rather the freedom and the novelty in the world. Hume’s atomistic empiricism may well be shown to be the historical root of Russell’s pluralism, but James drew his inspiration rather from Kant’s and Renouvier’s philosophies. The specious likeness between those two is due to an ambiguity on the question of external relations, that prevents us from truly understanding James’ thought on the matter