![]() ![]() This is a small point in favor of those who think pragmatism is, in some sense, an outgrowth of idealism, in that an offshoot might be dialectically re-absorbed by the whole. First, that, regardless of his success, Royce thought idealism and pragmatism could be unified. ![]() This may seem a contradictio in adiecto, but as James Cotton (1954: 11) argued “ the most important point in the work of Royce lies in the union between idealism and pragmatism in his thought.” This suggests at least two things. In particular, in his late masterwork The Problem of Christianity, Royce called his position Absolute Pragmatism. He engaged deeply with the thought of his Harvard colleague William James and with that of Charles Peirce, as well as with the history of philosophy and religion more broadly. Royce was one of the first four philosophy Ph.D’s from Johns Hopkins University, and trained in Germany in the 1870s. Civi (.)ĢWhat, then, might we say about the relation between idealism and pragmatism in light of these complications, as well as others not mentioned? 4 In this paper I propose one promising line of inquiry into this question: an examination of the philosophy of Josiah Royce. 4 To add three more: the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson and other transcendentalists, the U.S.1 On the other hand, we should expect some commonalities between each tradition due to mutual influence, though the preponderance of influence is probably from the German Idealists to the American Pragmatists simply because of timing, as exemplified by John Dewey’s “permanent Hegelian deposit.” 2 More broadly, we can see each tradition as motivated by similar concerns, such as reconceptualizing the human in light of the sceptical culmination of modern philosophy in David Hume and the success of the physical sciences. For example, the American William Torrey Harris, Brit Francis Herbert Bradley, and Italian Benedetto Croce, among others, continued and developed the tradition of German Idealism, while German-born Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller and Italian Giovanni Papini aligned themselves with American Pragmatism. I put the demonyms in parentheses because, while the founders and key proponents were German or American, each were international movements. This is obvious from the debates between Left and Right Wing Hegelians, or from Peirce’s famous re-christening of his position as pragmaticism, “ which is ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers” (CP 5.414). 3 “Modern Voluntarism is chiefly due, if I mistake not, to the effort escape the relentless conclusio (.)ġThe relation between (German) Idealism and (American) Pragmatism is complex, as both are better seen as traditions with their own internal tensions or even outright contradictions rather than fully-codified sets of doctrines.1 For example, John Herman Randall Jr., identifies at least four schools of American philosophical id (.).Nonetheless, even if Royce failed to fuse his idealism and pragmatism, the very effort suggests he saw them as distinct enough to need fusion. As for Dewey, he acknowledges Royce’s voluntarism, but rejects Royce’s claim that his Absolute Pragmatism/Voluntarism is pragmatism at all. Regarding James, we see his influence on Royce is mediated also in their mutual study of Wundt’s voluntaristic psychology, which has its own roots in the pre-Kantian German Idealism of Leibniz. With Peirce, we see that his continual call for Royce to study logic includes, or complements, his criticisms that Royce neglects Secondness. This distinction both parallels and cuts across the traditions of German Idealism and American Pragmatism, and promises to open up a view broader than the traditional accounts of the qualified appreciation of Hegel seen in Peirce and Dewey, or the outright antipathy of James. This paper suggests that the real issue between Idealism and Pragmatism is Intellectualism vs. However, he also called his position Absolute Voluntarism. ![]() Despite being seen as a Hegelian, Royce declared himself a pragmatist. ![]() This paper proposes an alternative perspective on the question of the relationship between German Idealism and American Pragmatism through attention to the philosophy of Josiah Royce. ![]()
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