The Conception of Immortality

Josiah Royce's Ingersoll Lecture

The Ingersoll Lectures on Human Immortality were established by a bequest in 1893 and are given annually at Harvard University. Many distinguished scholars have given the Ingersoll Lecture over the years, including the American philosopher Josiah Royce (1855 -- 1916) who gave his lecture early in the life of the series, in 1899. Royce was a professor of philosophy at Harvard for over 30 years and was a friend and colleague of William James who in 1897 also was the Ingersoll Lecturer. Royce's lecture was expanded and published in 1900 under the title "The Conception of Immortality".

Royce's lecture is a short, eloquent guide to his thinking at a key moment in his philosophical career. At the time of the lectures, Royce was in the middle of his Gifford Lectures, titled "The World and the Individual", a lengthy two-volume work which offers the fullest exposition of Royce's philosophy of absolute idealism. His Ingersoll Lecture draws heavily on this work and presents much of his thinking in a non-technical way. Royce's absolute idealism has few adherents in contemporary philosophy and it is worth noting at the outset some of Royce's teachings that give contemporary philosophers pause. As an absolute idealist, Royce held that reality was spiritual and that reality consisted of one unified thing (for want of a better term) the Absolute of which all individuals were a part. Royce also saw the Absolute and reality as rational in character. Finally, Royce did not take the "linguistic turn" that soon would come to dominate American and British philosophy. Royce saw language as partial at best and in his Ingersoll Lectures stressed that truth and reality were in significant part beyond language.

Royce takes only a few pages at the end of his lecture in discussing the theme of human immortality. During most of the lecture, Royce tries to develop the concept of individuality -- what it means to be an individual person -- and to relate this development to his concept of the Absolute. His understanding of immortality, Royce claims, follows from a proper understanding of the nature of individuality. In explaining the goal of his lecture, Royce says:

"What I want to show you is that the chief mystery of any man is precisely the mystery of his individual nature, i.e. of the mystery whereby he is this man and no other man. I want to show you that the only solution of this mystery lies in conceiving every man as so related to the world and to the very life of God that in order to be an individual at all a man has to be nearer to the Eternal than in our present life we are accustomed to observe." (16-17)

So in his lecture, Royce develops the concept of individuality as involving teleology -- a sense of purpose -- and as moving beyond the finite and partial world of sense to be directed towards the Absolute. Royce's philosophy has both a strong sense of individuality and a strong sense of absolutism. He believes that the finite individual that we see and describe is only part of the nature of each unique individual. Each person is connected to each other person in the Absolute. It is in that sense, as unique and as part of an Absolute that Royce finds the individual human person immortal. Royce finds it is impossible to be more specific about what this might mean.

Royce's lecture is complex and brief but it gives insight into his thinking. In places the lecture is hortatory and in places it is moving and eloquent. In particular, Royce develops his understanding of the individuality, uniqueness, and mystery of each person from a discussion of human love and of the mystery with which a lover tries to see and understand the beloved. He finds that the nature of human uniqueness is most clearly shown through "intimate human relationships". (51) When we are with a person we love and feel we know, we realize that person's individuality is beyond all our individual experiences of him or her and remains largely private and a mystery. Royce writes of the uniqueness of the beloved and of each person:

"The unique eludes us; yet we remain faithful to the ideal of it; and in spite of sense and of our merely abstract thinking, it becomes for us the most real thing in the actual world, although for us it is the elusive goal of an infinite quest." (71)

Royce proceeds to develop this ideal of uniqueness, best seen in human love, through the practice of science and knowledge to an Absolute beyond all finite activities and to a sense of individual immortality in the Absolute.

As with much of Royce, the power of this lecture lies more in its suggestions and frequent eloquence than in its argument. Royce's Ingersoll Lecture is worth reading for those interested in his thought and in philosophical and religious issues even for those who are far from Royce's own thought. It is also worth thinking about Royce's lecture as part of the still ongoing progression of the Ingersoll Lectures and about different ways of understanding the subject matter of this venerable series. Royce's "The Conception of Immortality" has been digitalized as part of an ongoing effort to provide an online edition of Royce's complete works. Thus it is easily accessible to an interested reader.

Robin Friedman