Yes, But Not Quite: Encountering Josiah Royce's Ethico-Religious Insight

A Young Scholar Interprets Josiah Royce

Josiah Royce (1855 -- 1916) was a leading figure in the "Golden Age of American philosophy" early in the Twentieth Century. This "Golden Age" is best remembered for its development of the philosophy of pragmatism; and Royce was for many years a colleague at Harvard of William James. Royce's thought went into eclipse after his death as it was found dated. His absolutistic idealism, rationalism, and religious approach to philosophy were not in the mainstream of American thought. Although Royce remains on the philosophical sidelines, a growing number of scholars and readers continue to study his books and find insights for their own thoughts.

Dwayne Tunstall is among the recent philosophers who have seriously engaged with Royce. Tunstall (b. 1979) received his graduate education at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale and currently is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Grand Valley State University, Michigan. Tunstall's "Yes, But not Quite: Encountering Josiah Royce's Ethico-Religious Insight" (2009) is his first book, and it is based on interests he developed and pursued during his graduate education. The book is published by Fordham University Press.

Together with other scholars, Tunstall has reread and rethought Royce to downplay the rationalism and absolutism for which his work has been marginalized. To simplify, Royce has often been seen as an Absolute Idealist who posits a single abstract idea, the Absolute, as including everthing that exists. Most philosophers have found no reason for thinking that there is such a thing as the Absolute. They have found the concept sterile and unhelpful and have concluded that it denies individuality to people and to particular things. Absolutistic philosophers typically do not rely on experience or observation to support their thought but instead rely on what they regard as logic and the force of argumentation. This form of extreme rationalism is also a difficult doctrine for most current philosophers to maintain.

Tunstall moves Royce away from absolute idealism and from rationalism by juxtaposing his work with that of an earlier American philosopher, George Howison (1834 -- 1916). Howison began as an early American follower of Hegel and Hegel's Absolute but soon moved away from this position to espouse another idealistic philosophical postion called personalism. Personalism is a philosophy difficult to pin down in Tunstall's account. Howison seems to think reality is spiritual, together with his fellow idealists. However, Howison is a pluralist, finding that each person is an irreducible entity, and that reality may be understood only through an understanding of a community of persons. Subsequent schools of personalism developed among theologians in Boston in the mid-20th Century and deeply influenced Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tunstall argues that Royce's idealism moved from absolutism and rationalism relatively early in his career as a result of a debate between Howison and Royce on the "conception of God" in 1895 in Berkeley. Howison severly attacked Royce for his absolutist monism and, for Tunstall, the criticism told. Royce, over the years, rethought the basis for his position. Instead of the alleged requirements of reason and logic, Royce located the source of his idealism in the human situation of finitude -- in the felt need for meaning, purpose, shared human experience, and transcendence, which could not be understood either through absolutistic idealism or through a hard-headed naturalistic philosophy. As modified, Royce's philosophy has strong ties to experiential philosophy (existentialism) or to American process philosophy, among other possibilities. For Tunstall, then Royce responded to Howison's criticisms by adopting much of Howison's position and reformulating and restating it with his own insights.

Tunstall's short book is in two parts. In the first part, Tunstall describes the Royce-Howison 1895 debate in the context of the works Royce had published before that time and then published thereafter. He finds that Royce's thought remains idealistic and religious, but that it becomes experientially based. In his latter works, Royce comes to emphasize the nature of human community, to counter an excessive view of the nature of individualism. Royce posits as an ideal the "Beloved Community", a concept which was later adopted by Dr. King. Royce also tended to see God as an ongoing growth of love and sympathy among people rather than as the all-powerful, omniscient being of traditional theology.

In the second part of the book, Tunstall compares his interpretation of Royce with other recent scholars. The question would be whether Royce saw his philosophy as more akin to pragmatism -- looking at consequences -- or to realism, with Tunstall opting for the latter interpretation. The book includes brief comparisons of Royce's thinking with that of Dr. King and of the Jewish philosopher Emanuel Levinas, with Tunstall concluding that Levinas' philosophy of interpersonality can be used to clarify and deepen Royce's insights. The book ends with a short, inconclusive consideration of Royce's attitudes towards race.

In its short compass, this book attempts to cover too much. On a personal level, the writing is often engaging. But the issues, arguments, and concepts need substantially more development. This is a good first book by a promising, enthusiastic young scholar on an important but neglected figure in American thought. I hope Tunstall may enjoy a productive career. I have enjoyed getting to know Royce's thought over the past several years, and Tunstall helped me understand the reasons for my interest in this philosopher.

Robin Friedman