Josiah Royce 1855 – 1916
Josiah Royce was an American philosopher and the principal American defender of objective idealism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A colleague of William James at Harvard, he engaged in lifelong dialogue with pragmatism while developing his own absolute idealism in The World and the Individual and his social philosophy in The Philosophy of Loyalty. His later writings on community, interpretation, and the beloved community anticipated themes of mid-century American thought, particularly in the work of his student C. I. Lewis.
Key facts
- Nationality
- American
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Pragmatism
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Josiah Royce:
“Loyalty is the willing and practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to a cause.”
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Attributed to Josiah Royce:
“We become individuals through our loyalties.”
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Attributed to Josiah Royce:
“The world is the embodiment of a spiritual order, the expression of an Absolute self.”
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Attributed to Josiah Royce:
“No one finds himself simply by trying to be himself.”
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Attributed to Josiah Royce:
“True community is built upon shared interpretation.”