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Josiah Royce — Twenty Years After

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Julius Seelye Bixler
Julius Seelye Bixler
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

‘Two hundred years from now,’ exclaimed William James, in one of his characteristically enthusiastic moods, ‘Harvard will be known as the place where Josiah Royce once taught.’ The approach of the twentieth anniversary of Royce's death is an appropriate time at which to inquire whether the prophecy — making allowances for the exaggeration of James's friendly generosity — is in a fair way toward being fulfilled. Has Royce's work so far stood the test of time? Or must we say that as the experimental interest bequeathed by James increases the calm assurance of Royce's philosophy must decrease? And with the growing seriousness which practical issues assume have we time or inclination left for speculations about the Absolute? Has not the war destroyed our faith in the world's reasonableness and forced us to take a less indulgently ‘idealistic’ and more frankly ‘realistic’ view?

Often we say this, but as often we are forced to remind ourselves that the ‘realism’ in which we take pride may have the virtue of looking the immediate facts squarely in the face, but may lack the sustained critical power which is eager to face other facts than those which are immediate. In that type of realism which is content to ‘take things as they come,’ there is a suggestion of an inability to see why they come as they do. As pluralists and empiricists, appealing to what we call ‘immediate experience’ for our data, we may say that our world is shot to pieces and that it cannot be put together again. But as philosophers and religious men we cannot leave the matter here and believe that we have seen through our problem or seen our job through.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , July 1936 , pp. 197 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1936

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References

1 Royce died September 14, 1916.

2 Barrett, Clifford (ed.). Contemporary Idealism in America, p. 300Google Scholar.

3 Santayana, George, Character and Opinion in the United States, p. 101Google Scholar.

4 Letters of William James, vol. II, p. 114Google Scholar.

5 Published as an article, The Eternal and the Practical, Philosophical Review, vol. XIII, pp. 116 ffGoogle Scholar.

Royce's early voluntarism has been commented on by ProfessorDewey, in a paper, Voluntarism in the Roycean Philosophy, Philosophical Review, vol. XXV, pp. 245 ff.Google Scholar, and has been treated more recently by ProfessorDykhuizen, George in an article, Royce's Early Philosophy of Religion, Journal of Religion, vol. XV, pp. 316 ffGoogle Scholar. Professor Howison regarded voluntarism as a later and undesirable development in Royce's thought. Referring to The World and the Individual, Howison wrote: ‘The nominal Voluntarism I am confident we may safely discount, as inconsistent with our thinker's idealistic view, so far as this is true. It of course savors of the general Elective Theory on which the present Harvard University system is founded, and … indicates the subtle influence that James's voluntaristic theory of the psychologic world of “perception” … exercised on our friend's thinking.’ (Philosophical Review, vol. XXV, p. 238.)

6 Paper on The Nature of Voluntary Progress published in Fugitive Essays, p. 112.

7 Ibid., p. 113.

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18 As Royce did describe it in The Problem of Christianity. It is interesting to note James's agreement with Royce as to the kind of connection required by idea and object and his own substitute for the Absolute in the form of a series of kinaesthetic motor sensations. Cf. James, Wm., Collected Essays and Reviews, p. 276Google Scholar; also The Meaning of Truth, p. 22 n.

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32 Ibid., p. 269.

33 Pp. 238–239.

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35 Cf. Lectures on Modern Idealism, p. 253.

36 The World and the Individual, vol. I, p. 130Google Scholar. Cf. Montague, W.P., ProfessorRoyce, 's Refutation of Realism, Philosophical Review, vol. XI, p. 53Google Scholar.

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42 Ibid., p. 280.

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44 Ibid., p. 201.

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46 Ibid., p. 156.

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48 Ibid., p. 252.

49 Cf. A. Nygren, Die Gültigkeit der religiösen Erfahrung.

50 Whitehead, A. N., Religion in the Making, p. 16Google Scholar.

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53 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 315–316.

54 Whitehead, A. N., Adventures of Ideas, p. 30Google Scholar.

55 Ibid., p. 41.