Lectures on Modern Idealism

Royce's Aspects Of Post-Kantian Idealism

Josiah Royce (1855 -- 1916) was an American idealist philosopher who studied in Germany in his youth and was heavily influenced by German idealism. Although Royce's idealism is largely rejected in contemporary American philosophy, there is much to be learned from his work and from Royce's relationship to his contemporaries, William James, Charles Peirce, and John Dewey. I wanted to read this book, "Lectures on Modern Idealism" in part due to the upcoming centenary of Royce's death. The book is based on a series of ten lectures Royce delivered in 1906 at Johns Hopkins University under the title "Aspects of Post-Kantian Idealism." The lectures were unpublished during Royce's life, but Royce had written a note stating that they were "worth publishing". In 1919, Royce's student, the philosopher Jacob Loewenberg (1882 -- 1969), edited and published these lectures as the first of a volume of Royce's posthumous works. This was a wise decision as these lectures deserve to be preserved and read. Loewenberg's own introduction to these lectures, written in light of Royce's strong support for the allies and condemnation of Germany in WW I, is also worth reading.

Royce developed his own philosophical idealism over his life, and he was also a careful student of the history of philosophy. Early in his career, in 1892, Royce published a book, "The Spirit of Modern Philosophy" in which he explored aspects of the history of philosophy between Spinoza and Schopenhauer and also presented philosophical ideas of his own. Royce wrote in an engaging, non-technical style, full of biographical information and other asides, for lay readers. The 1906 lectures published in this book are more limited in scope in that they begin with Kant and focus on Hegel. The lectures were intended for an audience with a substantial background in philosophy and explore their subject matter with considerably more depth, difficulty, and technical detail than do the 1892 lectures. Royce, for the most part, limits the lectures to an exposition of the thought of the idealist philosophers he considers. Only in the final lecture does Royce suggest his own development of the idealist position. With respect to the goal of the lecture series, Royce states:

"My purpose will be to help you look at the world, for a time, with the eyes of some one or another of the representative idealists; and to show, by illustrations, why it was that these men viewed things as they did. The early idealists of our post-Kantian period often seem, to the novice, to resemble, according to Hegel's well-known phrase, men who had resolved to try to walk about on their heads. I want to help you to see why these men thought it worth while to view the world in this inverted way."

Royce succeeds admirably in his goal in explaining some of the considerations that led German philosophers from Kant to Hegel to think as they did. The book is thought through from the inside. Some of the discussions in this book bring idealism to life. In particular, Royce devotes two of his ten chapters to Hegel's "Phenomenology of Mind". His discussion captures the human fascination of the work and its many insights into individuals and cultures buried in its murky prose.

The first two of the lectures discuss Kant and his first Critique. The pivotal third lecture discusses how tensions in Kant's Critique led to the development of the critical idealist teachings about the Absolute and about the dialectical method. Two lectures are devoted to Schelling and four to Hegel. Of the Hegel lectures, two explore the Phenomenology while the remaining two discuss developments in Hegel's latter writings. Royce offers his own brief thoughts on the value and development of idealism in the final lecture, in which he sketches a theory of interpretation that is developed further in a later book, "The Problem of Christianity." Thus, these "Lectures on Modern Idealism" also are valuable for those readers interested in the development of Royce's thought. In explaining some of the reasons for the decline of idealism, Royce offers important comments on the nature of philosophical thinking. He says, for example, in commenting on the rigidity in idealistic thinking after Hegel:

"Hardly anything in fact is more injurious to the life of scholarship in general, and especially of philosophy, than the too strict and definite organization of schools of investigation. The life of academic scholarship depends upon individual liberty. And above all does the life of philosophy demand the initiative of the individual teacher as well as that of the individual pupil. A philosophy merely accepted from another man and not thought out for one's self is as dead as a mere catalogue of possible opinions. Philosophical formulas merely repeated upon the credit of a master's authority lose the very meaning which made the master authoritative."

The book emphasizes throughout the communal character of idealism. This position is important for many reasons, not the least of which is the tendency to solipsism with which idealism is often charged. When I studied philosophy at college many years ago, German philosophy following Kant was not much taught. Royce's book offers a excellent exposition of Kant and his idealistic successors which explains these thinkers in their own terms. The book is also valuable for understanding Royce and his relationship to both idealism and to American pragmatism. This book is an important work of a still unduly neglected American thinker. This is a newly published offprint edition and the quality of the print and text is good.

Robin Friedman