Yes, But Not Quite: Encountering Josiah Royce's Ethico-Religious Insight

2. Haunted by Howison’s Criticism: The Birth of Royce’s Late Philosophy

two haunted by howison’s criticism: the birth of royce’s late philosophy How did this prolonged debate with Howison motivate Royce to drift away from his earlier apparent absolute idealism? W. H. Werkmeister contends that the 1895 Union debate had undoubtedly much to do with the progressive modification of [Royce’s original] position. Royce’s reply to his critics [in the ‘‘Supplementary Essay’’ appended to the 1897 version of The Conception of God], as well as his subsequent Gifford Lectures [these lectures were published as The World and the Individual], show clearly the new emphasis. Some years later, in The Philosophy of Loyalty, Royce strikes a still different note and begins a line of argumentation which leads ultimately, in The Problem of Christianity , to the formulation of a philosophy of life which in many respects is strikingly similar to the philosophy of Howison; for Royce’s conception of the ‘‘Beloved Community’’ at least parallels Howison’s idea of an ‘‘Eternal Republic’’ of spirits.1 One could say, then, as W. H. Werkmeister does in A History of Philosophical Ideas in America: {  } haunted by howison’s criticism  Royce is at first occupied exclusively with the cognitive side of human experience. In time, however, the emphasis shifts. Will and purpose are projected ever more strongly into the foreground , while the philosopher’s interest in cognition recedes. Royce himself once said that his ‘‘deepest motives and problems’’ have always ‘‘centered about the Idea of the Community;’’ his writings, on the other hand, show that this idea has only gradually come to clear consciousness in his writings.2 Royce’s initial response to Howison’s criticism of his conception of God, and by extension his entire idealism, is in his classic essay ‘‘The Problem of Job’’ in Studies of Good and Evil (1898).3 Indeed, I claim that in this essay Royce sets the foundation for all of his subsequent philosophy, because it is the first essay in which his ethico-religious insight ceases to be in the background and illuminates his entire philosophy , breathing new life into the ‘‘dry bones’’ of his absolute idealism. Royce had thought of his philosophy as one whose concept referred to the vitality of our lived religious and ethical experiences. Unfortunately, he did not articulate this well in The Religious Aspect of Philosophy. Many critics, including William James and, of course, Howison, thought that he had mummified ethico-religious life in an abstract Absolute and imprisoned it in the sepulcher of Hegelian dialectics . While sailing to Australia and New Zealand for several months in 1888 under orders from his doctor to alleviate his depression, Royce wrote to William James: I have largely straightened out the big metaphysical tangle about continuity, freedom, and the world-formula, which, as you remember , I had aboard with me when I started, and I am ready to amuse you with a metaphysical speculation of a very simple, but, as now seems to me, of a very expansive nature, which does more to make the dry bones of my ‘‘Universal Thought’’ live than any prophesying that I have heretofore had the fortune to do. The fields of speculation are very wide and romantic, after all, and great is the fun of bringing down new game. I must live to tell you about this new specimen, at any rate. But I despair of describing it to you in this letter. I must wait until we meet.4  josiah royce’s personalism This means that I do not think that Royce’s distinction between ‘‘appreciation’’ and ‘‘description’’ in The Spirit of Modern Philosophy was the insight that breathed life into the dry bones of his philosophy, as John Clendenning does;5 it served only as a gusty wind that swayed the trees in an already blooming oasis. Even though he had already moved beyond his apparent absolute idealism of The Religious Aspect of Philosophy by 1888, he did not even realize that he had stumbled upon an experiential and existential idealism—a relational protoprocess philosophy. At the 1895 Union debate, his new idealism encountered its first major attack from one of the most committed and innovative idealists in America, George Holmes Howison. Immediately afterward, Royce sought to reformulate his idealism to secure the irreducible individuality of human persons while emphasizing their ontological dependence to some absolute experience. Whether Royce realized it or not, ‘‘The Problem of Job’’ is the blueprint of...