Kelly A. Parker and Krzysztof Piotr Skowronski, ed. Josiah Royce for the Twenty-First Century: Historical, Ethical, and Religious Interpretations. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2012. 330 pp. Hardcover ISBN 978-0-7391-7336-7.

Abstract

Kelly A. Parker and Krzysztof Piotr Skowronski, ed. Royce for Twenty-First Century: Historical, Ethical, and Religious Interpretations. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2012. 330 pp. Hardcover ISBN 978-0-7391-7336-7.Although he has often been relegated to fringe status among figures constitutive of American philosophical tradition, in recent years there has been a renewal of scholarly attention to Royce's thought. Royce for Twenty-First Century is one of latest testaments to this resurgence of interest in The essays of this volume are collected Fourth Annual Conference on American and European Values held in Opole, Poland in 2008. The conference was co-organized by John Lachs, Kelly Parker, Jason Bell, and Krzysztof Piotr Skowronski. Parker and Skowronski serve as editors of collection, which reflects rather open-ended nature of theme of conference: Josiah Royce. Contributors are diverse, representing international interest in Royce younger scholars to more established. Diverse, too, are contributions, organized in these headings: Reinterpretations, Ethics: Interpretations of Loyalty, Religious Philosophy, and Contemporary Implications. Readers new to Royce will find, in content of these essays, a number of engaging entrees into his corpus. Readers already acquainted with Royce, including those who have worked very closely on his thought, will almost certainly find something in pages of this volume that will provoke further interaction with Royce's ideas. Consequently, I recommend this volume of interesting and well-written engagements of Royce's philosophy to all readers with any level of interest in Royce.Readers of this journal may be particularly interested in implications of title: What does volume offer to those interested in contemporary pragmatism, in application of pragmatist to problems of (to quote title of volume) the twenty-first century? In introduction to volume, Parker holds that Royce's has potential for sharpening and refining contemporary versions of pragmatism and appears poised to emerge as an influential voice in what is admittedly only a nascent post-pragmatist, post-analytic, and post-Continental style of thought (Parker and Skowronski, 3). What is more, in looking back at Royce, we follow Royce's lead, as he used philosophical past to develop innovative concepts that are startlingly relevant a century later (Parker and Skowronski, 7). In short, if we revisit Royce's attempts to deal with philosophical problems of his day, we may be led in new and fruitful directions as we grapple with philosophical problems of our own time.Explicit spelling out of contemporary relevance of these engagements with Royce is most conspicuously absent, though perhaps least surprisingly so, in Part I, Historical Reinterpretations. In a shortened version of a chapter of his Time, Will, and Purpose: Living Ideas Philosophy of Royce,1 Randall E. Auxier examines Royce's theory of individuality and how individuals both experience and exist. Auxier argues that Royce's theory of individuality is more complex and nuanced than has been understood in interpretive literature, and seeks to remedy this deficiency. Focusing on notion of uniqueness in Royce's thought, Auxier traces its meaning from psychological individuality, through phenomenological individuality, and, employing ethical imperatives Royce embraces, through moral philosophy and up to borders of metaphysics (Auxier, 42). One gains a sense for comprehensiveness intended in Auxier's fuller study.Marc M. Anderson examines Royce's argument regarding conditions for possibility of error (first articulated in The Religious Aspect of Philosophy), holding that Royce's argument arises out of a Kantian framework. In fact, Anderson describes argument as Royce's bid to update Kant, making a transition world of moral postulation to one of scientific postulation (Anderson, 49). …