Abstract
Pragmatism and idealism are sometimes considered contradictory philosophies. Such consideration is well founded if one sees pluralism as essential to pragmatism, and identifies idealism with a closed monistic system. This need not be the case, however. That pragmatism is compatible with idealism will be shown in the course of this study. The exemplar of their compatibility, through his doctrine of pragmatic idealism or absolute pragmatism, is Josiah Royce.
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References
For specific references in the works of these men cited by Royce, see Josiah Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1885), 362. Hereafter we abbreviate this to RAP.
Josiah Royce, Unpublished Roycean Manuscript Folios, reserved at Widener Library Archives, Harvard University, Vol. 52, “Introduction to Paper on Problem of Job,” 3. Hereafter, references to these unpublished manuscripts of Royce will be given merely by volume number, with page and title as these occur in the original text.
RAP, 362.
Cf. Ibid.
Cf. RAP, 359.
The argument, as Royce recounts it, runs as follows: “The substance of our whole reasoning about the nature of error amounted to the result that in and of itself alone, no single judgment is or can be an error. Only as actually included in a higher thought, that gives to the first its completed object, and compares it therewith, is the first thought an error …. The higher thought is the whole truth, of which the error is by itself an incomplete fragment. Now… there is no stopping-place short of an Infinite Thought.” RAP, 431.
Cf. RAP, 362.
RAP, 364, 365. (Italics mine.)
RAP, 365.
Ibid.
Cf. RAP. 366.
Cf. RAP, 368.
Cf. RAP, 378–379.
RAP, 379.
Josiah Royce, The Problem of Christianity, with Introduction by John E. Smith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968; originally published in two volumes by The Macmillan Company, 1913), 349. Hereafter, PC.
Ibid.
RAP, 434.
In many places, but see, e.g., Josiah Royce, The World and the Individual, First Series (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1959; an unaltered republication of the First Edition published by The Macmillan Company, 1899), 24. Hereafter, WI I.
WI I, 23 ff.
RAP, xi.
RAP, x.
See Daniel S. Robinson (ed.), Royce’s Logical Essays (Dubuque: William C. Brown Company, 1951). Also, the text that Royce wrote for his English students at Berkeley is an early instance of his interest in logic as a tool for philosophizing; this was his Primer of Logical Analysis for the Use of Composition Students (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft, 1881).
E.g., The Feud of Oakfield Creek: A Novel of California Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1887). Royce earned his baccalaureate in English at the University of California in 1875, and taught English there from 1878 until 1882 after receiving his doctorate from Johns Hopkins. Most of Royce’s literary works belong to this earlier period, prior to his gaining sure foothold in the philosophical milieu of Harvard.
“The Contribution of Professor Royce to Christian Thought,” Harvard Theological Review 8(1915), 1.
Cf. Robert Roth, S. J., American Religious Philosophy (new York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1967), 12.
Cf. Josiah Royce, The Sources of Religious Insight (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914), 3, 4. Hereafter, SRI.
Josiah Royce, William James and Other Essays on the Philosophy of Life (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1912), viii. Hereafter, WJO.
SRI, 8, 9.
SRI, 12. (In the original the entire text is italicized except for the first sentence.)
Cf. SRI, 13 ff.
SRI, 5, 6.
SRI, 28, 29.
Cf. SRI, 277.
SRI, 280.
See Ch. VI, XI, and XII of RAP. These considerations are developed further in Chapter III of Part One.
See WI I, Lecture II-VIII. An explication of these Roycean notions is given in Chapter VI of Part Two.
SRI, 24.
Cf. SRI, 6.
Cf. SRI, 29.
SRI, 79. Cf. SRI, 48.
SRI, 75.
SRI, 86.
SRI, 91.
Cf. SRI, 124, 137.
Cf. SRI, 158, 109.
SRI, 197. (Royce’s understanding of the term “superhuman” is given subsequently in Ch.X, Part Three.)
SRI, 201.
SRI, 240.
Ibid.
SRI, 262. Cf. 197 and other places.
SRI, 292.
SRI, 19.
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© 1972 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Mahowald, M.B. (1972). Propaedeutic to a Study of Royce. In: An Idealistic Pragmatism. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2736-6_1
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