Josiah Royce

Christopher Hookway has been influential in promoting engagement with pragmatist and naturalist perspectives from classical and contemporary American philosophy. This book reflects on Hookway’s work on the American philosophical tradition and its significance for contemporary discussions of the understanding of mind, meaning, knowledge, and value. -/- Hookway’s original and extensive studies of Charles S. Peirce have made him among the most admired and frequently referenced of Peirce’s interpreters. His work on classical American pragmatism has explored the philosophies of William James, (...) John Dewey, and Josiah Royce, and examined the influence of pragmatist ideas outside of the United States. Additionally, Hookway has participated in a number of celebrated exchanges with some of the most high-profile figures of twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy, including Karl-Otto Apel, Philip Pettit, Hilary Putnam, and W.V.O. Quine, through which his treatments of a large range of topics in epistemology and the philosophies of mind and language have been developed and promoted. The chapters in this book—which include contributions from several of Hookway’s former students and colleagues—include studies of Hookway’s engagement with the works of Peirce, James, and Dewey, his contributions to virtue epistemology, and his discussions of hope and pragmatist metaphysics. -/- Pragmatic Reason will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on American philosophy, the history of analytic philosophy, and epistemology. (shrink)

Practical wisdom enables moral decision-making and action by aligning one’s apprehension of proximate goods with a distal, socially embedded interpretation of a more ultimate Good. A focus on purpose within the overall process mutually informs human moral psychology and moral AI development in their examinations of practical wisdom. AI practical wisdom could ground an AI system’s apprehension of reality in a sociotechnical moral process committed to orienting AI development and action in light of a pluralistic, diverse interpretation of that Good. (...) Defining AI purpose in terms of the human struggle to determine the moral “ought” (versus the way reality is) can overcome practical and normative limitations of principle-based approaches to AI ethics without requiring idiosyncratic moral reasoning or a premature commitment to a single ethical theory, which could hinder navigating the moral implications of future unknowns. Dividing practical wisdom into proximate, mediating, and distal processes enables each division to incorporate the moral dimensions of the situation, individual AI system, and sociotechnical community, respectively. Drawing upon externalist (4E) and ecological cognitive psychology theories to extend Xavier Zubiri’s sentient intelligence, proximate apprehension of what an object affords the perceiver includes affordances for practical and moral purposes. Those apprehensions are structured by moral and other social-cognitive schemas that mediate moral constructs, the apprehended situation, and individual commitments and other motivating identifications in a process Ignacio Ellacuria calls historical reality. Distally, Josiah Royce’s community of interpretation characterizes one way of organizing a sociotechnical process to synthesize diverse interpretations of the Good, orient AI moral practice, and align AI development with human and AI moral purpose. (shrink)

In asking to what extent the interaction between pragmatism and phenomenology offers a valuable resource for re-imaging the limits and potentialities of philosophical inquiry, one needs to acknowledge, first, that pragmatist philosophers, beginning with Josiah Royce, actively contributed to the re-elaboration of the issues and strategies of phenomenology in the American context. Secondly, it will be argued that the philosophies of the classical pragmatists, Peirce, Royce, James, and Dewey, contain important resources for creating a new understanding of the human self (...) and of the role of philosophy. We will discuss contributing elements from each of the Classical Pragmatists but focus on the neglected contributions of Josiah Royce. We argue that Royce posits important theses that are valuable to our inquiry: his view of self as “expressive,” i.e. through facial and bodily gestures, through cooperative activities such as art, language, custom, religion, understood via a study of the “expressive signs of mental life”; his idea of science as a thoroughly human enterprise; his belief that habits are common to both physical and mental phenomena; his views on knowledge of other minds and how two minds can know the same thing; and his belief in the social grounding of physical knowledge. (shrink)

At first glance, Tommy Curry’s project in Another white Man’s Burden may seem like a strange undertaking. While American philosophers have been writing more frequently on Royce over the past decade, he remains a fairly peripheral figure. Those of us in Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy circles may be able to recognize terms like “Beloved Community” or “Loyalty to Loyalty” readily, but we would be hard-pressed to gain an audience for conversations about them at the American Philosophical Association’s (...) regional meetings. Royce rarely ends up on undergraduate syllabuses, and few people read Royce in the greater philosophical community. Royce is not Aristotle, Kant, or even Dewey. He is a... (shrink)

I studied Royce a bit as an undergraduate, and in graduate school, I took a course that included readings from Race Questions. Memory was, and is, an abiding interest of mine, and so I focused on that element of Royce’s thought—specifically, the community of memory and of hope in his Problem of Christianity. I suppose I had a naïve sense of Royce’s racism at the time—something along these lines: “Of course, a nineteenth-century white man was racist, but he was not (...) a bad racist.” However, I was a Peirce scholar at heart, and so set Royce aside for years, except for pairing Philosophy of Loyalty with Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince in an ethical leadership course that I taught twice.In the interim, I moved to a... (shrink)

In 1814, Baron de Vastey wrote in The Colonial System Unveiled: “When Europeans came to the new world, their first steps were accompanied by crimes on a grand scale, massacres, the destruction of empires, the obliteration of entire nations from the ranks of the living”. Jean Louis Vastey was a Black Haytien man born in 1781, who assumed the role of an administrator in Hayti after Jean-Jacques Dessalines freed the island from European rule. The Haytien Revolution, which was fought from (...) 1791 to 1804, is the origin of Black theories of liberation from the nineteenth century. The possibility of freedom was not found in the rhetoric of American democratic proclamations, as many authors have asserted, but... (shrink)

Tommy J. Curry’s Another white Man’s Burden presents a rigorous intellectual history of Josiah Royce’s essays on race. Curry explains the several arguments that Royce made on this topic between 1900 and 1908, and he situates these within Royce’s social philosophy and some contemporaneous literatures on racism. The result is a comprehensive theory of cultural assimilation informed by an idealist metaphysics. Royce, namely, disdained segregation and rejected biological accounts of racial difference. But Royce scholars have wrongly taken these observations, Curry (...) argues, as evidence that their hero held progressive views on race. Royce rather began from the premise of Anglo-American cultural superiority, and... (shrink)

in early 2019, the josiah royce society arranged two Author Meets Critics sessions on Tommy J. Curry’s Another white Man’s Burden: Josiah Royce’s Quest for a Philosophy of white Racial Empire. The first was held in New York City, at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meeting. The second was at the annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, in Columbus, Ohio. The sessions were vibrant and well-attended. With the exception of a few tendentious questions at (...) the close of the second meeting, however, our sessions lacked the element of controversy that is customary in discussions of racism in the history of philosophy. The panelists and the audience alike rather... (shrink)

Identity politics has become dangerous and toxic. How should one respond to the current American psychosocial attitudes and mood swings? Should I keep my circle large or small? Professor Royce might respond: “It depends upon the community ideal that fosters one’s identity and individuality.” But from the perspectives and experiences of marginalized peoples, the answer is not so simple. A prominent Africana scholar retorts: “Keep your circle plastic!” Such is the distinction brought out in Tommy Curry’s investigative study of Royce’s (...) philosophy of white racial empire. Focusing on assimilation and Royce’s advocacy of practicing the “Dark Arts” of imperial rule, which Royce modeled on a system of British... (shrink)

Examining AI spirituality can illuminate problematic assumptions about human spirituality and AI cognition, suggest possible directions for AI development, reduce uncertainty about future AI, and yield a methodological lens sufficient to investigate human-AI sociotechnical interaction and morality. Incompatible philosophical assumptions about human spirituality and AI limit investigations of both and suggest a vast gulf between them. An emergentist approach can replace dualist assumptions about human spirituality and identify emergent behavior in AI computation to overcome overly reductionist assumptions about computation. Using (...) general systems theory to organize models of human experience yields insight into human morality and spirituality, upon which AI modeling can also draw. In this context, the pragmatist Josiah Royce’s semiotic philosophy of spirituality identifies unanticipated overlap between symbolic AI and spirituality and suggests criteria for a human-AI community focused on modeling morality that would result in an emergent Interpreter-Spirit sufficient to influence the ongoing development of human and AI morality and spirituality. (shrink)

Tommy J. Curry’s Another white Man’s Burden is an excellent study of Josiah Royce’s philosophy, particularly his social philosophy, within its historical milieu. I think that Curry is right with respect to his criticism of Royce’s social philosophy. As I read Another white Man’s Burden, I found myself distinguishing between the “good Royce” and the “bad Royce,” along the lines of the simplistic yet fruitful good-bad dichotomy Richard Rorty used to characterize philosophers such as John Dewey. By the “good Royce,” (...) I mean the Royce whose thought is neither necessarily anti-black and racist, nor advances the cause of Anglo-Saxon cultural superiority. By the “bad Royce,” I mean the Royce whose... (shrink)

This article investigates religious ideals persistent in the datafication of information society. Its nodal point is Thomas Bayes, after whom Laplace names the primal probability algorithm. It reconsiders their mathematical innovations with Laplace's providential deism and Bayes' singular theological treatise. Conceptions of divine justice one finds among probability theorists play no small part in the algorithmic data-mining and microtargeting of Cambridge Analytica. Theological traces within mathematical computation are emphasized as the vantage over large numbers shifts to weights beyond enumeration in (...) probability theory. Collateral secularizations of predestination and theodicy emerge as probability optimizes into Bayesian prediction and machine learning. The paper revisits the semiotics and theism of Peirce and a given beyond the probable in Whitehead to recontextualize the critiques of providence by Agamben and Foucault. It reconsiders datafication problems alongside Nietzschean valuations. Religiosity likely remains encoded within the very algorithms presumed purified by technoscientific secularity or mathematical dispassion. (shrink)

This essay analyzes possible affinities and differences between William Ernest Hocking and Edmund Husserl in relation to the topic of solipsism and with particular emphasis on how it is that we encounter other minds in experience. Before comparing Hocking’s and Husserl’s ideas around such topics, the essay provides a brief reconstruction of William James’s and Josiah Royce’s engagement with them as a way of explaining why Hocking had a fascination for the question of how and under what methodological conditions other (...) selves are experienced. The aim is to highlight in what ways Hocking can be considered a phenomenological thinker. This overall approach should also facilitate a deeper understanding of where the limits of Husserl’s Ideas II and Fifth Meditation are and why Hocking’s views are relevant to the phenomenological investigation of the experience of minds other than our own. (shrink)

In Pragmatism’s Evolution, Trevor Pearce demonstrates that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism owes an enormous debt to specific biological debates in the late 1800s, especially those concerning the role of the environment in development and evolution. Many are familiar with John Dewey’s 1909 assertion that evolutionary ideas overturned two thousand years of philosophy—but what exactly happened in the fifty years prior to Dewey’s claim? What form did evolutionary ideas take? When and how were they received by American philosophers? Although the (...) various thinkers associated with pragmatism—from Charles Sanders Peirce to Jane Addams and beyond—were towering figures in American intellectual life, few realize the full extent of their engagement with the life sciences. In his analysis, Pearce focuses on a series of debates in biology from 1860 to 1910—from the instincts of honeybees to the inheritance of acquired characteristics—in which the pragmatists were active participants. If we want to understand the pragmatists and their influence, Pearce argues, we need to understand the relationship between pragmatism and biology. (shrink)

What influence did Josiah Royce's academic work (1913-1917) have on the development of classical Symbolic Interactionist thought? And which philosophical influences shaped Royce's social and philosophical thought? This book provides a holistic approach to Royce's academic work and the social philosophy that shaped Symbolic Interactionist theory. By critically evaluating the works of Royce, this book reveals how his ideas and social philosophy made significant contributions to both Symbolic Interactionist thought and sociological theory. Situating his contributions within a socio-historical time frame, (...) Royce's social philosophy is compared and contrasted to the major concepts of George Herbert Mead (Mind, Self, and Society) and Herbert Blumer's core synthesized components of classical symbolic interactionist thought (Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method). Thus, demonstrating that Royce's later academic works closely resemble not only the basic ideas of Mead but also have a strong correspondence with Blumer's synthesis of the three basic premises and eight root images that outline the theoretical core of Symbolic Interactionist thought. For those looking to investigate or discover new aspects of symbolic interactionist theory from a classical viewpoint, this book offers a unique insight into an American philosopher whose contribution to the development of Symbolic Interactionism has been largely unnoticed. (shrink)

-/- Winner of the 2020 Josiah Royce Prize in American Idealist Thought, presented by the Josiah Royce Society, for demonstrating the extent to which Josiah Royce’s ideas about race were motivated explicitly in terms of imperial conquest. -/- Another white Man’s Burden performs a case study of Josiah Royce’s philosophy of racial difference. In an effort to lay bare the ethnological racial heritage of American philosophy, Tommy J. Curry challenges the common notion that the cultural racism of the twentieth century (...) was more progressive and less racist than the biological determinism of the 1800s. Like many white thinkers of his time, Royce believed in the superiority of the white races. Unlike today, however, whiteness did not represent only one racial designation but many. Contrary to the view of the British-born Germanophile philosopher Houston S. Chamberlain, for example, who insisted upon the superiority of the Teutonic races, Royce believed it was the Anglo-Saxon lineage that possessed the key to Western civilization. It was the birthright of white America, he believed, to join the imperial ventures of Britain—to take up the white man’s burden. To this end he advocated the domestic colonization of Blacks in the American South, suggested that America’s xenophobia was natural and necessary to protecting the culture of white America, and demanded the assimilation and elimination of cultural difference for the stability of America’s communities. Another white Man’s Burden reminds philosophers that racism has been part of the building blocks of American thought for centuries, and that this must be recognized and addressed in order for its proclamations of democracy, community, and social problems to have real meaning. (shrink)

Winner of the 2020 Josiah Royce Prize in American Idealist Thought presented by the Josiah Royce Society Another white Man’s Burden performs a case study of Josiah Royce’s philosophy of racial difference. In an effort to lay bare the ethnological racial heritage of American philosophy, Tommy J. Curry challenges the common notion that the cultural racism of the twentieth century was more progressive and less racist than the biological determinism of the 1800s. Like many white thinkers of his time, Royce (...) believed in the superiority of the white races. Unlike today however, whiteness did not represent only one racial designation but many. Contrary to the view of the British-born Germanophile philosopher Houston S. Chamberlain, for example, who insisted upon the superiority of the Teutonic races, Royce believed it was the Anglo-Saxon lineage that possessed the key to Western civilization. It was the birthright of white America, he believed, to join the imperial ventures of Britain—to take up the white man’s burden. To this end he advocated the domestic colonization of Blacks in the American South, suggested that America’s xenophobia was natural and necessary to protecting the culture of white America, and demanded the assimilation and elimination of cultural difference for the stability of America’s communities. Another white Man’s Burden reminds philosophers that racism has been part of the building blocks of American thought for centuries, and that this must be recognized and addressed in order for its proclamations of democracy, community, and social problems to have real meaning. (shrink)

The killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and others have instigated widespread debate concerning the ethics and politics of police behavior toward young black men in America. In this article, I show how Josiah Royce’s philosophy of loyalty provides a useful theoretical framework for diagnosing and working to overcome strained relations between police and black citizens in the United States. I begin by establishing the relevance of Royce’s thought to the realm of (...) police ethics. Then, I argue that Royce’s notion of loyalty to loyalty is a useful and powerful lens through which we can examine the practice of police discretion, particularly as it comes to bear on racial profiling and use of force. I conclude by offering what I regard as Roycean recommendations aimed at ameliorating the fractured relationship between police and blacks in America today. (shrink)

The focus of this book is Royce's imaginative proposal to preserve world peace by virtue of international insurance and his reasons for choice of insurance as an instrument of peace. He attempted to combine the art of statistics with the precepts of insurance as a means to craft a scheme for international peace.

RESUMENEl presente trabajo tiene por objetivo reconstruir sistemáticamente la “hermenéutica trascendental” de Karl-Otto Apel. En primer lugar, se describe el desarrollo de la interpretación apeliana de Heidegger, la cual consideramos que puede ser dividida en cuatro momentos. En segundo lugar, se explican los principales puntos de disenso de Apel con la hermenéutica filosófica de Gadamer. A lo largo del trabajo sugerimos, además, posibles caminos teóricos abiertos para la hermenéutica trascendental en tanto programa filosófico de investigación. ABSTRACTThis paper aims to systematically (...) reconstruct "transcendental hermeneutics" of Karl-Otto Apel. Firstly, we describe the development of Heidegger's apelian interpretation, which we consider can be divided into four stages. Secondly, we explain the main points of disagreement of Apel with Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. Throughout the work we suggest further possible theoretical opened paths to transcendental hermeneutics as philosophical research program. (shrink)

The study of community is an integral part of pragmatist thought, as is the continual reminder to reconstruct and re-evaluate our theories in light of changing conditions. A contemporary, literal, and significant source of changing conditions is anthropogenic global climate change, conjoined with a general increase in concern for non-human life. Already, a great deal of work has been done on applying pragmatist conceptions and insights to these issues.1 However, other pragmatist resources remain to be marshaled. One such resource is (...) Josiah Royce’s philosophy of insurance, which, while primarily offered as a way of preventing international conflicts, also concerned the mitigation of natural calamities, such as.. (shrink)

Josiah Royce’s The Problem of Christianity has been studied in numerous ways since its publication in 1913. The most common approaches to studying PC among historians of classical American philosophy and Royce scholars are to regard it as a contribution to the psychology of religion, as a contribution to philosophy of religion, or as an application of Royce’s logical theory to the study of religion. Scholars who study PC as a contribution to the psychology of religion often emphasize such things (...) as the continuity between Royce’s phenomenological description of a range of religious insights in The Sources of Religious Insight and his... (shrink)

In recent years, scholars have increasingly paid attention to the philosophy of Josiah Royce. Long lost in the shadow of fellow classical American figures, Royce’s philosophy has enjoyed a renascence, with a spate of publications in a variety of venues studying and applying his thought.1 Like his philosophical brethren, Royce wrote on a wide variety of subjects, his discussions underpinned by a smattering of influences. Much has been remarked of the various Western sources that made an impression on Royce’s thought, (...) but comparatively little has been said of his indebtedness to Eastern sources. Kurt Leidecker’s Josiah Royce and Indian Thought2 and Frank M... (shrink)

In this article, I respond to the criticisms that Richard Royce has made of my theory of competition in Sport, Ethics and Philosophy. While I find some of his attacks misplaced, a number of his criticisms address key difficulties to which I offer clarification and defense.

While acknowledging a certain affinity between his own thought and the Vedanta concept of a world-soul or universal spirit, Josiah Royce nevertheless locates this concept primarily in what he terms the Second Conception of Being—Mysticism. In his early magnum opus, The World and the Individual, Royce utilizes aspects of the Upanishads in order to flesh out his picture of the mystical understanding of and relationship to being. My primary concern in the present investigation is to introduce some nuance into Royce’s (...) conception of Indian thought, which may then serve to suggest similar possibilities for nuance for Royce’s conception of the Absolute. I will attempt to do in two primary ways: first, I will consider Royce’s use of Indian thought via the Upanishads in explicating his second historical conception of Being. I will then turn briefly to Emerson’s poem ‘Brahma’ and the Bhagavad Gita to see if a certain reversal that occurs in both places problematizes Royce’s depiction of the universal spirit in Indian thought as well as opens up new possibilities for Royce’s own Absolute. (shrink)

The chapters, written by leading experts on American philosophy, reexamine Josiah Royce's work as a resource for contemporary thought. Themes include: metaphysics, phenomenology, logic; problems of individualism, loyalty, and community; practical matters of race, religious faith, and feminist epistemology, and Royce's place in the history of philosophy.

Josiah Royce (1855?-1916) has had a major influence on American intellectual life, both popular movements and cutting-edge thought, but his name often went unmentioned while his ideas marched forward. The leading American proponent of absolute idealism, Royce has come back into fashion in recent years. With several important new books appearing, the formation of a Josiah Royce Society, and the re-organization of the Royce papers at Harvard, the time is ripe for Time, Will, and Purpose. Randall Auxier delves into the (...) primary texts written by Royce. (shrink)

In his final years, Josiah Royce worked to develop his theories of community and interpretation in practical directions. In particular, he developed an account of insurance as a special community of interpretation, and proposed the creation of an international board of insurance as a deterrent for war. Rather than evaluating Royce’s policy recommendations, this paper explores how his conception of insurance clarifies his account of interpretation. For Royce, insurance provides the best model for communal interpretation thus far because an insurer (...) seeks to prevent loss in the face of risky action, in addition to adjudicating between competing claims. This paper concludes with some reflections on how the problem of moral hazard can inform a Roycean conception of philosophy. (shrink)

This essay examines the method and context that underlie Josiah Royce's The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (SMP). I locate this work among Royce's German influences, and I argue that SMP represents a considerable departure from his early Neo-Kantianism. In the concluding sections, I outline the ethical approach to historiography that Royce practices in SMP. Focusing on his polemic against Hans Vaihinger, I then draw from Royce some suggestions concerning how we should study and write the history of philosophy.

In what follows I will briefly address (1) Mahowald's work on Josiah Royce, (2) her advocacy for "cultural feminism" and its implications for American philosophy and work still to be done, (3) her promotion of a critical pragmatism and the need to provide a pragmatist critique not only of gender injustice but all forms of injustice, and (4) Mahowald's argument for the strategy of "standpoint theory," a strategy that offers great promise for future work in American philosophy.

Few American thinkers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were acquainted with Eastern traditions of thought. Early Transcendentalists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, were happy exceptions to this, with each showing passing familiarity of and an approving attitude toward the Bhagavad-Gita and other early Vedic texts. Other thinkers of the period, including Walt Whitman and Bronson Alcott, were influenced to varying degrees by Indian thought. Despite this limited fascination with the intellectual traditions of the East, rare (...) was the thinker who made an effort to encounter these texts on their own terms by learning the languages in which they were written. One notable exception .. (shrink)

The collection presents a variety of promising new directions in Royce scholarship from an international group of scholars, including historical reinterpretations, explorations of Royce's ethics of loyalty and religious philosophy, and contemporary applications of his ideas in psychology, the problem of reference, neo-pragmatism, and literary aesthetics.

Loyalty is central to the philosophies of Confucius and Josiah Royce. In the case of Confucius, we see this significance in the emphasis placed in the Analects on zhong (“loyalty,” “other-regard,” or “dutifulness”) and xiao (“filial piety” or “filiality”). In the case of Royce, we see this significance in the emphasis placed on loyalty in The Philosophy of Loyalty. Moreover, in Confucius's and Royce's interactions with disciples and students, we witness appreciable loyalty, to their students and to their respective philosophies. (...) This article compares the teachings—in thought and action—of Confucius and Royce, highlighting the significance of loyalty therein. (shrink)

Introduction : the treachery and ambivalence of loyalty -- Loyalty, justice, virtue : contemporary debates -- The nature of loyalty -- Loyalty to loyalty -- Learning loyalty -- Loyalty and community -- Disloyalty -- Loyalty, disaster, business : contemporary applications -- Conclusion : the need for loyalty.

As a virtue, loyalty has an ambiguous place in our thinking about moral judgments. We lauded the loyalty of firefighters who risked their lives to save others on 9/11 while condemning the loyalty of those who perpetrated the catastrophe. Responding to such uneasiness and confusion, Loyalty to Loyalty contributes to ongoing conversation about how we should respond to conflicts in loyalty in a pluralistic world. The lone philosopher to base an ethical theory on the virtue of loyalty is Josiah Royce. (...) Loyalty to Loyalty engages Royce's moral theory, revealing how loyalty, rather than being just one virtue among others, is central to living a genuinely moral and meaningful life. Mathew A. Foust shows how the theory of loyalty Royce advances can be brought to bear on issues such as the partiality/impartiality debate in ethical theory, the role of loyalty in liberatory struggle, and the ethics of whistleblowing and disaster response. (shrink)

Two of Josiah Royce's lectures in Lectures on Modern Idealism concern the work of F. W. J. Schelling, the "poetic seer of splendid metaphysical visions" whom Royce considered "the prince of the romanticists."1 These lectures are titled "The Dialectical Method in Schelling" and "Schelling's Transcendental Idealism." In the former, Royce remarks that "there are two simple ways to avoid all dialectical complications. One is an easy way, viz., not to think at all. The other is a prudent way, viz., not (...) to confess your thoughts."2 But, Royce insists, philosophers (and Schelling, notably) attempt to "confess their contradictions, to live through them, and so, if may be, to get beyond them."3 In his second treatment of .. (shrink)

The philosophical ramifications of modern science—physical, biological, and formal and mathematical—figure centrally in Royce's philosophy. Even the most cursory of glances at his corpus reveals a systematic and deep engagement with many of the leading developments in nineteenth-century science, from the nebular hypothesis, or evolution in both its Darwinian and Spencerian forms, to the work of Cantor and Dedekind. It would perhaps not be going too far to suggest that, from his first to last writings, the development of Royce's philosophy (...) is in no small measure driven by an attempt to come to terms with these developments. And yet, while this has received some attention from the scholarly community, it remains an .. (shrink)

Abstract: This essay traces the relationship between Hegel and some common portrayals of modern philosophy in the nineteenth century. I explain much of the rationale behind the neo-Kantian narrative of modern philosophy, and argue that the common division of modern philosophers into rationalists and empiricists executed a principally anti-Hegelian agenda. I then trace some failed attempts by anglophone philosophers to reconcile Hegel with the neo-Kantian history, in the interest of explaining Hegel’s subsequent unpopularity in England and America. Finally, I argue (...) that recent attempts to read Hegel in Kantian terms often rest on a misguided appropriation of an anti-Hegelian historical narrative. (shrink)

Dear Mr. Royce,"In what magazine was your article on the book of Job published . . . ?"At first glance, the answer to this question seems rather simple: Josiah Royce published "The Problem of Job" in the sixth issue of The New World in 1897, and later made very slight revisions to the article when he selected it as the lead chapter in his Studies of Good and Evil, published with Appleton and Company in 1898. Within weeks of the note (...) from Cabot, Royce must have directed his student in finding the article since Cabot writes another letter describing the way in which the short piece affected him. Describing "The Problem of Job," Cabot writes to Royce that "whenever you write of optimism and pessimism you strike .. (shrink)

This article raises questions about what it means to be a diverse academic community and about why such diversity is worth struggling to achieve. The controversial arguments of Walter Benn Michaels are critically examined as a stimulus and prelude to considering the more constructive perspectives supplied by Amartya Sen and Josiah Royce. Royce's early 20th century philosophical writings, in particular, are evaluated as resources for thinking about the ideal nature of a college or university community in the 21st century.

In the first decades of the twentieth century new realistic tendencies arose in the United States as a reaction to the idealism dominating American academia. The foremost idealist at that time was Josiah Royce and the first realistic tendency against his idealism was directed by Ralph B. Perry and William P. Montague. In 1910 they promoted the manifesto of the American new realism.In this paper I offer an analysis of the debate that led to the birth of the new realism: (...) it will provide a different perspective on the history of American philosophy and will open new reflections on the impact of the debate.In this debate “reality” was faced as an epistemological issue rather than an ontological one: the origin of this trend was an ambiguity in Royce’s work. Although initially new realists moved on the ground prepared by Royce, later they attempted to release the notion of reality from epistemology and to return it to metaphysics, claiming the priority of logic in both fields. However, the trend was definitively established by Clarence I. Lewis - a student of Royce and Perry at Harvard - who considered reality as the problem of the categories we use to speak correctly about our experience of the world. He established the rule that would be followed by the next generation of philosophers. (shrink)

Herr Royce ist doch ein bedeutender Denker und darf nur als solcher behandelt werden.("Royce is an important thinker, and may only be treated as such.")Scholars of pragmatism and of phenomenology have observed striking similarities between Josiah Royce and Edmund Husserl, foundational thinkers at the origins of two major philosophical movements whose effects are still strongly felt in the present day—Royce being considered a central founder of American pragmatic idealism, and Husserl of modern German phenomenology. Other scholars have noted striking similarities (...) between Royce's thought and that of the broader circle of phenomenology.2Can we discover in these relations definitive historical influences, rather than .. (shrink)

One of the merits of Royce’s writings is that Royce has set his sights high. The expanded edition of Race Questions, Provincialism, and Other American Problems, edited by Scott L. Pratt and Shannon Sullivan, is no exception to this rule. In pointing the way to “social salvation,” the shorter “Provincialism”—one of the essays added to the originals to form the expanded edition—captures the overarching purpose of the book and of much of Royce’s philosophy. The essays address different moral problems, but (...) they share the common goal of promoting what is arguably the highest ideal of civilized human life. Yet the republication of a philosophy book after an extended period of neglect raises the concern that .. (shrink)