A Community of Inquiry: Conversations between Classical American Philosophy and American Literature (review)

2009 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-191
Author(s):  
Nicolas Witschi
1984 ◽  
Vol 81 (11) ◽  
pp. 663-675
Author(s):  
John J. McDermott ◽  

Author(s):  
Robert W. Burch

Josiah Royce rose from a humble background in the California of the Gold Rush period to become Professor of the History of Philosophy at Harvard University and one of the most influential American philosophers of the so-called ‘period of classical American philosophy’ from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. He was also (along with F.H. Bradley) one of the two most important English-speaking philosophers of the period who defended philosophical idealism: the doctrine that in some sense or other all things either are minds or else are the contents of minds. Royce remained loyal to his own idealist commitments throughout his life, despite the fact that his friend and Harvard colleague William James was extremely hostile to idealism, and that his intellectual environment was increasingly dominated by the ‘pragmatism’ of which James was an outspoken champion. In later years, however, under the influence of another pragmatist, Charles S. Peirce, Royce gave the themes of his idealist thought a naturalistic social foundation rather than the abstract metaphysical foundation of his earliest writings. Royce’s entire corpus is perhaps best seen as representing a bridge from the German world of Neo-Kantianism and various varieties of philosophical idealism to the American world of pragmatism and of philosophical naturalism.


1988 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-140
Author(s):  
James Campbell ◽  

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document