Royce, Josiah (1855–1916)

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.

Hegel, Peirce, and Royce on the Concept of Essence

ABSTRACT: This article focuses on the role that Hegel’s concept of essence (Wesen) played in the thinking of Charles Sanders Peirce and Josiah Royce, two of the primary figures in the canon of classical American philosophy. It elaborates on Robert Stern’s discussion of Hegel and Peirce by claiming that the second book of Hegel’s Logic, entitled “The Doctrine of Essence,” can be understood as Hegel’s attempt to account for the experimental and turbulent character of human experience, a character that Peirce would term “Secondness.” While Pierce remained dissatisfied with Hegel’s relative neglect of Secondness, Peirce recognized the importance of this attempt in the yearly years of the twentieth century, with the help of the Josiah Royce’s detailed understanding of Hegel.