Royce, Josiah (1855–1916), born in California, graduated from the state university (1875), was an advanced student in Germany and at Johns Hopkins, and became an instructor of English at his alma mater (1878–82). Although the remainder of his life was spent as a professor of philosophy at Harvard, his deep feeling for his native background is exhibited in
California …A Study of American Character (1886) and his only novel,
The Feud of Oakfield Creek (1887), treating the same conflict that is central to Frank Norris's
The Octopus. Brought to Harvard by William James, he at first believed himself in complete accord with James's philosophy, but, though they remained friendly, they soon split on philosophic ideas. James's
Will To Believe referred to specific human minds, whereas Royce considered consciousness to be a universal principle; James was a pluralist, believing God only one of many, Royce was a monist, affirming the essential, necessary oneness of things.
The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885) first postulates a goodness at the heart of things that “satisfies the highest moral needs,” and then proceeds to prove that there is an absolute or universal knower affirming judgments and experiencing objects transcending man's limitations.
The Conception of God (1897) sustains the autonomy of the individual in face of this absolute, by contending that the absolute Will is distributed among human beings for independent use. His lectures at the University of Aberdeen were published as
The World and the Individual (2 vols., 1900–1901), which first analyzes other philosophies and argues for an idealism in which reality is the possession solely of an all‐enveloping mind, and then applies this to practical matters on the same basis developed in
The Conception of God. He accounts for sin in the individual by contending that the highest value of the world lies in a moral conflict and victory, and that what is sinful in the finite view is in the higher view accepted as giving the necessary resistance to the moral will. After 1900 Royce became more interested in technical logic and the application of his philosophy to specific contemporary moral issues.
The Philosophy of Loyalty (1908) contends that individual salvation lies in loyalty to a cause, supplemented by “loyalty to loyalty,” and these ideas are further propounded in
The Problem of Christianity (2 vols., 1913), lectures delivered at Oxford. His emphasis on the problem of loyalty and belief that knowledge is a social affair, resulting from a community of interpretation, was applied to the moral issues of World War I in
The Hope of the Great Community (1916). Among his many other works, the most popular was
The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892), which brilliantly examines the whole field, with particular attention to such German idealists as Fichte, to whom his beliefs were indebted.
