Josiah Royce

Josiah Royce (1855-1916) was an American philosopher, a pragmatist and absolute idealist, regarded as the founder of American idealism. Working within the Hegelian tradition, he tried to join the practical search for truth characteristic of pragmatism with an idealist view of the world. He is also remembered for his philosophy of loyalty and for his contributions to formal logic in the United States.

Born in Grass Valley, California, in 1855, he came from a family of English immigrants who had moved west during the gold rush. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where the geologist Joseph LeConte awakened his interest in philosophy. After a period in Germany, where he came under the influence of Hermann Lotze, he earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University in 1878. In 1882 he went to Harvard as a temporary replacement for William James, a friend and also a philosophical rival, and he stayed there until his death in 1916.

In his early years at Harvard he pursued a wide range of interests. He wrote a novel, investigated paranormal phenomena from a sceptical standpoint, and published literary criticism. In 1888 he suffered a nervous breakdown that temporarily kept him from his duties. His major works include The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885), The World and the Individual (1900-1901) and The Problem of Christianity (1913). He was also the only major American philosopher of his era to spend a significant part of his life on history, especially the history of the American West.

His central idea held that the outer world has real existence only as the knowledge of an ideal Knower, and that this Knower must be real rather than a mere hypothesis. In his later work he turned to community and loyalty, and he conceived of an Absolute that is personal and temporal, whose human counterpart is a will to interpret. His influence can be seen in the logic tradition at Harvard, shaped by students such as Clarence Irving Lewis, and in philosophers such as Brand Blanshard. Though he is now read less than Peirce or Dewey, he remains a key figure in American thought.