Josiah Royce in Focus

3. Royce’s Ethical Theory

3 Royce’s Ethical Theory This discussion of Royce’s ethical theory begins with his 1880 essay “Tests of Right and Wrong”1 and treats various expressions and refinements of his main ideas up and through his 1916 course on ethics, further exploring the continuity and flow of Royce’s thought as well as the interconnections among his various concerns—scientific, ethical, metaphysical, epistemic, social-political, and religious . The 1880 essay establishes several key themes: (1) Royce’s use of various methods, including the historical and the analytic, to deal with ethical issues; (2) his lifelong concern about various ethical conflicts: ethical realism–idealism; egoism-altruism; and autonomy-duty; (3) his sympathetic, yet critical, attitude toward ethical skepticism and ethical pessimism and an attempt to overcome their negatives; (4) his conviction that human beings desire unity and harmony; and (5) his refinement and continuation of the need for both self-development and moral action to extend one’s view temporally and socially, and thus to include the concerns of others in one’s ethical considerations. In discussing The Religious Aspect of Philosophy we will highlight another of Royce’s lifelong concerns, namely, to critically yet sympathetically assess naturalism and evolutionary ethics.2 Royce’s concerns are amazingly contemporary. The ethical conflicts remain with us today, particularly the ethical realism–idealism debate and the conflict Royce’s Ethical Theory 45 between deontological ethics (autonomy) and utilitarian ethics (social good). Royce’s treatment of these conflicts provides insight relevant to contemporary ethical discussions. Another example of this is his concern with ethical skepticism and ethical pessimism. The relevance of Royce’s ideas will be fully addressed in the final chapter. Further, “naturalism,” in a variety of forms, is common in contemporary philosophy , and naturalized ethics is very much the philosophical topic. Royce believed evolutionary thought had much to offer for understanding human experience and life, but believed it could not provide a ground for “ethical theory” nor for establishing “free will.” And in his writings on science and on the “uniformity of nature” he establishes excellent grounds to question the basic assumption of all these endeavors—the “truth” of a strictly deterministic position, supposedly a truth based on the physical sciences.3 Royce argued that it is social motives that lead us to postulate a uniform, predictable natural world. Man’s basic interest in nature, argues Royce, is to win control over it. Thus, “the uniformity of nature” is a socially useful notion. It reveals no absolute truth; it can never be fully verified in human experience.4 Royce’s insights on these issues will also be addressed in the final chapter. In his 1880 essay “Tests of Right and Wrong,” Royce distinguishes two methodological approaches to ethics: the historical and the analytic.5 The “historical” method, says Royce, studies the genesis and development of the moral ideas of men. The “analytic” method seeks to understand the moral as it is.6 Royce believes each method appropriate and necessary, and yet not quite adequate for developing an ethical theory. His own thought will draw on both but will supplement them. The central question addressed in the 1880 essay is, What is the ground of a distinction between right and wrong, a distinction assumed by the moral agent and the common world of moral action? In pursuing the question, Royce explores the nature of judgment and then of conduct. He concludes that an adequate account of judgment and conduct requires extension of self temporally and socially and a notion of “possible experience.” In 1885 in Religious Aspect, Royce continues to probe the question of the nature and ground of the distinction between right and wrong. Royce critically examines answers provided by the moral realist and the moral idealist. He finds both valuable but also inadequate and seeks to go beyond their insights in his search for an answer. In addition, Royce uses the analytic (phenomenological) method to explore the human experience of moral skepticism and argues that its accompanying desire is for harmonization of values.7 In this spirit Royce examines the history of ethical theory for adequacy of expression to human moral experience8 46 Josiah Royce in Focus Again, as the systematic bridge builder he is, Royce seeks to find kernels of wisdom in each theory and to harmonize them in a more adequate understanding of human ethical life. Royce presents extensive exploration of concepts of self, of moral agent...