This paper discusses the relationship between the views of James and Royce on representation and their attempts to explain the "possibility of error," views which are, I argue, closer than many have thought. Appreciating where they do differ will point not only to an unstressed problem with Royces' argument for the Absolute but also to some unappreciated features of how James' account of truth ties in with his account of epistemic justification.

In this brilliantly articulated new book, ethicist Jacquelyn Kegley carefully explicates and enlarges the scope of Roycean thought and shows that Royce's views on public philosophy have direct and valuable application to current social problems.

: Josiah Royce, a Johns Hopkins Fellow (1876–1878), polished two manuscripts for publication: "The Spirit of Modern Philosophy" (SMP; 62 pp.), and his dissertation, "The Interdependence of the Principles of Knowledge" (IPK; xi + 332 pp.). Although he penned the texts in blue ink and headers and footnotes in red, he never published either work. SMP—not Royce's 1892 work of the same title—critiqued Francis Bowen's Modern Philosophy from Descartes to Schopenhauer and Hartman, and created a new epistemology. My essay ventures (...) the hypotheses that Royce prudently abstained from publishing SMP to avoid alienating Bowen, a Harvard board-member for faculty admissions, and IPK to avoid advancing an interpretation of Kant he felt unsure of and would later publicly disown. Mainly, however, this paper inquires whether, in drafting SMP, Royce created an outline for IPK. I sketch Royce's life at Hopkins and present context and content of these two MSS. From these I unearth seven philosophical themes running parallel in SMP and IPK. This grounds the paper's major hypothesis that Royce's overriding aim in SMP was less to critique Bowen than to create an outline for the long Introduction and Part One of IPK. (shrink)

Josiah Royce was born in California where he began his teaching career.