Move the point, shift the field
In his talk on the will in Talks to Teachers on Psychology, William James outlines a distinction between inhibition that is negative or repressive and inhibition by substitution. ‘The difference between them’, he writes, is that in the case of inhibition by repression, both the inhibited idea and the inhibiting idea, the impulsive idea and the idea that negates it, remain along with each other in consciousness, producing a certain inward strain or tension there; where, in inhibition by substitution, the inhibiting idea supersedes altogether the idea which it inhibits.’ James illustrates this point with an example from the class room where a teacher can try to regain the attention of his or her pupils distracted by something going on outside by calling for their attention or by doing something more interesting. The former he supposes will fail whereas the latter will succeed. More recent psychology has found this to be largely the case, you are less likely to change a habit by repression than by substitution.
Yet James prefers substitution to repression not just on instrumental grounds. He think it speaks to something about living. He goes on to say ‘he whose life is based upon the world “no,” who tells the truth because a lie is wicked, and who has constantly to grapple with his envious and cowardly and mean propensities, is in an inferior situation in every respect to what he would if the love of truth and magnanimity positively possessed him from the outset.’ Here he draws on Spinoza’s account of one aspect of what it means to be free:
Spinoza long ago wrote in his Ethics that anything that a man can avoid under the notion that it is bad he may also avoid under the notion that something else is good. He who habitually acts sub specie mali, under the negative notion, the notion of the bad, is called a slave by Spinoza. To him who acts habitually under the notion of good he gives the name of freeman. See to it now, I beg you, that you make freeman of your pupils by habituating them to act, whenever possible, under the notion of the good.
Here substitution is not mere substitution. The classical tradition has always insisted that a rational will can only act under the notion of the good. It is possible to be mistaken about what good in this or that moment or circumstance is and one is free only insofar as they are good. James does not believe in good in the transcendental sense. His conception of it here is to psychologise it. To say you must act towards what you conceive of as good rather than from avoidance of what you conceive of as bad. Being free is not so much finding but seeking.
This ultimately finds expression in James’ pragmatism. Philip Davis is his wonderful book on James puts it this way commenting on his essay The Moral Equivalent of War:
What James was urging was more to do with dynamism of getting their thoughts into your mind, and seeing what you could do with them, and what they did with you deep down inside there. First truly enter the point of view. But then in the second place, says James in just four crucial words…“move the point”. Move the point is what shifts the field.
Substitution, not repression. Move the point. Shift the field. Davis again ‘what could come from small shifts and re-workings in the search for the right place were wonderful surprises and unsuspected powers. This was what could happen within the field if one could keep it relatively undamaged, let it make repairs, make it work.’