ROVICE, Josiah - Philosopher, b. 10 Nov. 1855 at Grass Valley (California) and d. 14 Sept. 1916 at Cambridge; professor at Harvard University. Besides Kant and Hegel, SCHOPENHAUER, ARTHUR (v.), James (v.), that is, German idealism and American pragmatism.
Of his numerous writings the most significant remain: *The World and the Individual* (2 vols., New York 1899–1901; Italian trans., Bari 1913–16); *The Philosophy of Loyalty* (New York 1903; Italian trans., Bari 1911); *The Problem of Christianity* (New York 1913; Italian trans., Florence 1924–25).
Under the influence of pragmatism (v.) Royce distinguishes between the “external meaning” and the “internal meaning” of an idea, whose truth does not consist in correspondence with an external reality but in the end (“internal meaning”) which it proposes to realize. The idea is an “instrument” of an end: more than an intellectual process, it is a volitional process, a will that seeks to realize itself. Yet the end of an idea must be considered in relation to the absolute end (of which every end is a moment), which can only be the act of an Absolute Consciousness or Infinite Will, in which all the ends or truths of finite consciousnesses are present (and preserved). This Consciousness therefore comprehends all particular subjects, implies the totality of time, and is an actual present inclusive of all moments of the temporal process. This Consciousness or God, for Royce, is the world itself, which is a “total individual,” in which the fragments of finite experience are reunited and our individualities completed and perfected. In God thus conceived there is room not only for time, but also for error, pain, defeat, etc., and together with them the correction and overcoming of all these limits and, consequently, the fulfillment and fullness of individual wills. The world, which is God Himself, is the realization, through us, of the perfection of God and, with it, of our own, inasmuch as in God the individual consciousnesses are preserved—unlike what F. H. Bradley (v.) had maintained.
Royce found it difficult to justify this preservation of finite subjects within so radically pantheistic a conception. He twice attempted the impossible task: first, in his youth, by means of G. Cantor’s and R. Dedekind’s theory of numbers (the Absolute—the World or God—is a self-representative system in which the multiplicity of individuals is preserved, who are one with Him inasmuch as He is structurally one—a single system—and at the same time infinite as the chain of realized ends); and subsequently by utilizing Peirce’s (v.) concept of interpretation as a third cognitive process (the other two being perception and thought). Interpretation involves three terms: the interpreter who interprets something to someone. Now, for Royce, the process of interpretation makes of the universe a realizable spiritual community. No individual in the world can be saved alone or find the truth alone; this is possible only in the universal community. This, according to Royce, would be the problem of Christianity, especially that of St. Paul (v.), in whom the Kingdom of Heaven is realized in the Church or communion of the faithful. Christian love means fidelity to the community, and fidelity to a freely chosen mission is the foundation of morality.
Evidently the communion of the faithful, the Church, and God in St. Paul and in Christianity have quite another sense than that given them by Royce in his pragmatistic-idealistic pantheism, which is their negation or antithesis. It suffices to recall that Royce points to the insurance system as the instrument for the realization of the “Great Community” (*The Hope of the Great Community*, New York 1916).