The Relevance of Royce

Four On Four Originators of Transatlantic Phenomenology: Josiah Royce, Edmund Husserl, William Hocking, Winthrop Bell

The forthcoming publication of the 1914 dissertation of Winthrop Bell on the relevance of Josiah Royce's theory of knowledge to Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, a thesis directed by Husserl, calls our attention to a surprising network of historical relations that connect not only Royce and Husserl, but which further connect the golden ages of American philosophy at Harvard and of German phenomenology at Göttingen. The present chapter examines four principal figures in this transatlantic exchange of ideas, listed here in their order of arrival as scholars at Göttingen: Josiah Royce (1855-1916), Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), William Hocking (1873-1966), and Winthrop Bell (1884-1965).