Abstract
A very likely reason for the tendency to regard idealism and pragmatism as incompatible is the “absolutism” which the former generally espouses. The pragmatist frequently finds any notion of an Absolute unacceptable because it supposedly closes the door to other possibilities. Instead of any absolute monistic system, the typical pragmatist wants a healthy pluralism, which might provide him with a never-ending fund of workable, practical theories. No system, least of all an absolutistic system, could (supposedly) do this. A treatment of Royce’s notion of the Absolute is therefore much in order at this point, for Royce definitely retains his doctrine of the Absolute along with the pragmatic element that we find developing in his philosophy. It is the aim of this chapter to discover how he does this.
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Notes
FE, 345.
Ibid.
FE, 346.
E.g., Vol. 54, “Fragments of Ph.D. Thesis…,” I.a.45: “how wide the gulf is between believing that we know and knowing.”
Cf. FE, 360.
FE, 358–359.
FE, 359.
FE, 363.
Cf. Chapter II, section B, supra.
Vol. 55, “The Critical Theory of Knowledge,” 5.
Use of capitals follows the general usage of Royce, although he himself is not utterly consistent on the point. Whatever substantives refer to the Absolute or God are capitalized, but personal pronouns referring to the same are not. Substantives which indicate man’s partial involvement in the Absolute are never capitalized.
Primer of Logical Analysis…, MS Copy, preserved at Houghton Library of Harvard University, 18.
Vol. 55, “1878 Notes,” 8.
Ibid., 10. Cf. Aristotle’s “basic premises” as he describes these in Posterior Analytics 1, 2.
Josiah Royce, “The Intention of the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, being an Investigation in the Dept. of Greek Theology (B.A. Thesis, University of California, 1875),” Bulletin of the University of California, June, 1875, 17. (In the original text the word after “believed” is is, but since the context suggests that this is a typographical or printer’s error, this is changed to in to make for more fluent reading.)
Cf. Vol. 79, “Reality and Consciousness,” 8.
Cf. Ibid., 3–5.
FE, 336–337.
FE, 337.
Ibid.
FE, 337–338.
FE, 363. Cf. 338.
In RAP Royce makes an interesting point of identifying “absolute” and “real” in applying these terms to the distinction between truth and error: “[W]hen we here talk of an ‘absolute’ distinction between truth and error, we mean merely a ‘real’ distinction between truth and error. And this real distinction the fiercest partisan of relativity admits; for does he not after all argue for relativity against ‘absolutists,’ holding that he is really right, and they really wrong.” (376)
Cf. Vol. 79, “Of the Will…,” 9, 27, 41–2.
Vol. 80, “Some Illustrations…,” 47.
Josiah Royce, “Mind and Reality,” Mind 7 (1882), 51. Hereafter, M&R.
Cf. Ibid, and with Thayer’s description of pragmatism as necessarily involving the notion of possibilities as traits of reality (426).
Cf. M&R, 51–52. Note use of subjunctive in text: “This absolute experience, to which all facts would exhibit themselves in their connexion as uniformly subject to fixed law, is conceived as ‘possible.’ ”
M&R, 53.
Ibid.
M&R, 37.
FE, 346. Moreover, as Royce points out in an early article, even intuition cannot furnish us with proof positive in regard to the existence of the Absolute. Cf. Vol. 60, “Reality and Consciousness,” 43, 44: “We do not look for any intuition of the Absolute, for any revelation internally of a reality that is at the same time and in the same sense external; we seek only for the simplest and most consistent expression of the assumptions of our thoughts, hoping not to make them appear to be anything but assumptions. To do otherwise is to make gods with our own hands for the sake of worshipping them.”
Cf. Vol. 79, “Reality and Consciousness,” 6.
E.g. M&R, 39: “Our hypothesis is not pantheistic or theistic.”
Vol. 60, “Reality and Consciousness,” 38.
M&R, 54.
RAP, 433.
Cf. RAP, 134.
RAP, 442.
Cf. RAP, 176.
Note that diversity is essential to real harmony; else it reduces to unison or uniformity.
RAP, 175. (Italics in text.)
RAP, 140–141.
Cf. RAP, 201.
RAP, 211.
Recalling that Royce’s philosophy is essentially a philosophy of religion, consider the following: “The essence of Religion is therefore faith in the actual power of just and charitable deeds to render him happy who lives in constant performance of them, and faith consequently in a Power that secures the moral ordering of the universe. Whatever sect supports these principles, is a religious sect, whatever its other articles of faith. Whatever sect opposes them is truly atheistic, however outspoken its confessional orthodoxy.” (Vol. 55, “Fragment about Dec. 1877,” 46)
RAP, 217.
RAP, 217–218.
RAP, 218.
For an excellent treatment of Royce’s moral philosophy, see Peter Fuss, The Moral Philosophy of Josiah Royce (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965).
Cf. RAP, 455. Also, cf. RAP, 252–283. Royce here refutes theistic positions other than his own; e.g., a monism not founded on experience, dualism — which is ultimately self-contradictory, and the “halting half Theism of the empirical Design Argument.” (279)
RAP, 455.
Ibid.
RAP, 453, 452. Cf. 455, where the pantheistic strain of Royce’s thought is even more manifest: “As the evil impulse is to the good man so is the evil will of the wicked man to the life of God, in which he is an element.”
RAP, 454. (Italics in text.) Note the future subjunctive and cf. Peirce’s fondness for same.
Cf. Ibid.
Cf. RAP, 382.
RAP, 381.
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© 1972 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Mahowald, M.B. (1972). His Notion of the Absolute. In: An Idealistic Pragmatism. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2736-6_4
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