At various places of his work, William James takes assumptions on basic features of human beings, as regards their intellectual, emotional, moral, religious, and aesthetic nature. Obviously, James's view of the conditio humana has a bearing on his concept of philosophy in general and, in particular, on the development of his own pragmatistic philosophy. This impact will be closely considered based on selected writings, including Psychology. Briefer Course (1892), The Will to Believe (1897), Talks to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1899), and Pragmatism (1907).
It turns out that James's philosophy of pragmatism is in most parts an appropriate philosophical expression of the human nature as it is and, namely, of essential human needs: In terms of the construction of concepts in general, pragmatism holds that human beings orientate themselves by concrete consequences for their future life rather than by abstract conceptual frameworks. In terms of morals, pragmatism grants human beings the opportunity to make their life worth living through what James calls meliorism, thus avoiding ethical nihilism as well as moralistic dogmatism. In terms of religion, pragmatism views religious experience as conceivably real and affirms the possibility of transcendence instead of prohibiting religious beliefs.
James's idea of man and its impact on his philosophy will be distinguished from respective concepts of other thinkers in order to show that he reflects the conditio humana in a partiuclarly realistic manner and, therefore, neither underestimates human beings nor expects too much from them.