Josiah Royce in Focus (review)

Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley’s book, Josiah Royce in Focus, is a new contribution to the field of Royce scholarship and American Philosophy. This book is a compelling continuation of Kegley’s endeavor to make one of North America’s most versatile philosophical minds accessible to new generations of scholars and readers. The book is multi-dimensional. Kegley is interested in highlighting the versatility of Royce’s philosophical genius by focusing on his contributions to diverse areas of philosophy. She pays special attention to the recuperation of oft-neglected works of Royce such as his work in psychology. Along with an analysis of central ideas and themes in Royce’s philosophy, Kegley also takes on the more daunting task of arguing for Royce’s relevance for contemporary America and the global community as a whole.

A particularly interesting aspect of the book is that it begins with identifying certain key aspects of Royce’s temperament as manifest in his everyday life. It then goes on to show the ways in which Royce’s philosophical ideas and his very idea of “philosophy” seem to be reflections of his personality. In her earlier works, Kegley has argued for looking at Royce as a public philosopher in the sense of an individual who actually “walked the talk” (1). She expands on this characterization in this book by drawing our attention to two other dimensions of Royce’s personality and philosophical methodology, namely, Royce as building bridges across diverse ideas and disciplines (2), and Royce as a “frontiersman” (3).

As a bridge-builder, Royce was interested in building bridges not only between different philosophical standpoints as is evident from his engagement with different philosophical traditions, but also between philosophy and other disciplines. He actively carried on this task through teaching and writing, in hopes of arriving at, what Kegley calls, a “synoptic vision” (20). The chapter on “The Self,” for instance, provides an analysis of Royce’s contribution to psychology. Kegley identifies Royce as being a forerunner of phenomenology, at least in the way in which the tradition manifests itself in the writings of philosophers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and demonstrates how Royce’s view of the self both rejects and incorporates aspects of Cartesianism and Humean empiricism. She sees Royce’s social psychology as offering a viable and sometimes improved alternative to Freudian and Jamesian psychology, and as bearing the seeds of a gesture theory of social consciousness and self-consciousness. Again, in the chapter on “Royce’s Ethical Theory,” Kegley articulates plausible ways in which Royce’s insights on ethics can be potentially helpful in bridging the philosophical divide between moral realism and idealism, egoism and altruism, the analytic and historical approaches to ethics, etc. According to Kegley, Royce’s ethics of loyalty and his notion of moral insight are key elements, among others, in facilitating such reconciliations.

A commitment to the basic ideals of “loyalty,” rethought in a Roycean way, allows Royce himself to be both rooted in and to transcend the rigid boundaries of any one philosophical tradition and, for that matter, any one discipline at the same time. This way of doing philosophy with a certain openness and generosity of mind is beautifully captured by Kegley’s repeated characterization of Royce as a “frontiersman” (3)—a term that Royce himself uses to characterize a “philosopher,” and to which Douglas Anderson draws our attention when he speaks of a “frontier attitude” (3) in Royce. For the philosopher as a frontiersman, Kegley notes, wandering in the search for answers and constant and fearless questioning lie at the heart of doing philosophy. She writes: “Royce saw life as a task, an ethical undertaking, requiring adventure, humor, courage, perseverance, and deep reflection” (4). “Philosophy,” thus conceived, has no place for dogma and must remain forever unfinished.

Kegley notes the ways in which Royce radicalizes our perspective on religion and the connection between religion and philosophy in the chapter on “Religious Insight, the Spirit of Community, and the Reality of Evil.” Royce connects religious insight with moral insight and what...