Online research in philosophy

Now back in print, and in paperback, these two classicvolumes illustrate the scope and quality of Royce’sthought, providing the most comprehensive selection ofhis writings currently available. They offer a detailedpresentation of the viable relationship Royce forgedbetween the local experience of community and thedemands of a philosophical and scientific vision ofthe human situation.The selections reprinted here are basic to any understandingof Royce’s thought and its pressing relevanceto contemporary cultural, moral, and religious issues.

This essay investigates Josiah Royce's sustained interest in the Platonic dialogues by focusing not only on Royce's explicit commentary on Socrates and Plato but also on significant philosophical connections between Royce and these figures. In section 1, we explain the nature of loyalty according to Royce and how Socratic loyalty exemplifies Royce's ideas in both evident and surprising ways. In section 2, we claim that Royce's treatment of “lost causes” (particularly truth as a lost cause) relates to Socrates' dedication to the logos; the Platonic dialogues are reinvestigated in order to make this point. In section 3, we explain the nature of “cause” both in Royce's thought and in the Platonic dialogues in order to see how loyalty to a cause culminates in the art of wise living—Socrates' philosophical practice.

Contained among the Josiah Royce Papers, housed at the Harvard University Archives, are three unpublished lectures on the topic of loyalty delivered by Royce in Pittsburgh some time after the publication of The Philosophy of Loyalty in April 1908. The titles of the Pittsburgh Lectures are, respectively, “The Conflict of Loyalties,” “The Art of Loyalty,” and “Loyalty and Individuality.” The precise dates and location of these lectures has been the subject of longstanding uncertainty. Witness this sample of conjectures. Atop the first page of “The Conflict of Loyalties,” one finds written in archivist Ronald A. Wells’s hand, “1908? 1910?” Royce’s student, Jacob Loewenberg—compiler of Royce’s posthumously published ..