Practically "Saved": An Inquiry into the Foundations of Royce's Development

Abstract

Traditionally interpreted as an absolute idealist and therefore as an anomaly in his own milieu, Josiah Royce has been often mischaracterized over the course of this century. Attention has been overly focused on Royce's commitment to the epistemological Absolute of his middle writ ings.2 Royce's dialectically adversarial relationship with his best friend William James has had a tendency to exaggerate the differences between the two of them and to obscure the many deep philosophical commit ments they both shared. The purpose of this paper is to show that Royce's theology is mainly a consequence of his commitment to the Kantian project in philosophy and that he thus had more in common with the Harvard pragmatists than is commonly ascribed to him.3 While neo-Kantianism is usually interpreted as idealism (and for good reasons), there is a more practi cal side to the Kantian project. This strain runs from Immanuel Kant through nearly the entire pragmatic tradition and includes Royce as easily as it does James and Charles Sanders Peirce. Thus, as a by-prod uct, this paper will be a resource for a more inclusive and tightly knit view of the classical American philosophers. Primarily, however, this paper eventuates in a focus on the concept of salvation to illustrate that the primacy of Royce's thinking as a whole was based more deeply on his commitment to practical reason than on a commitment to any abso lutes. The progression of Royce's thought, as well as its theological culmination in his two-volume The Problem of Christianity, it will be argued, can be best explained by uncovering Royce's commitment to the priority of practical reason over speculative reason. This position