This paper proposes an alternative perspective on the question of the relationship between German Idealism and American Pragmatism through attention to the philosophy of Josiah Royce. Despite being seen as a Hegelian, Royce declared himself a pragmatist. However, he also called his position Absolute Voluntarism. This paper suggests that the real issue between Idealism and Pragmatism is Intellectualism vs. Voluntarism. This distinction both parallels and cuts across the traditions of German Idealism and American Pragmatism, and promises to open up a (...) view broader than the traditional accounts of the qualified appreciation of Hegel seen in Peirce and Dewey, or the outright antipathy of James. With Peirce, we see that his continual call for Royce to study logic includes, or complements, his criticisms that Royce neglects Secondness. Regarding James, we see his influence on Royce is mediated also in their mutual study of Wundt’s voluntaristic psychology, which has its own roots in the pre-Kantian German Idealism of Leibniz. As for Dewey, he acknowledges Royce’s voluntarism, but rejects Royce’s claim that his Absolute Pragmatism/Voluntarism is pragmatism at all. Nonetheless, even if Royce failed to fuse his idealism and pragmatism, the very effort suggests he saw them as distinct enough to need fusion. (shrink)

A notable feature of classical American pragmatism is its close association with the birth of experimental psychology. In particular, William James’ work as a psychologist influenced, and was influenced by, his pragmatism. This paper seeks to support this reading of the relation between Jamesian psychology and pragmatism, particularly through his “Sentiment of Rationality” and the later contention that the true is the satisfactory. In addition, James’ insights are tested and expanded through reference to contemporary research on processing fluency, as well (...) as concepts of ecological rationality. (shrink)

The study of community is an integral part of pragmatist thought, as is the continual reminder to reconstruct and re-evaluate our theories in light of changing conditions. A contemporary, literal, and significant source of changing conditions is anthropogenic global climate change, conjoined with a general increase in concern for non-human life. Already, a great deal of work has been done on applying pragmatist conceptions and insights to these issues.1 However, other pragmatist resources remain to be marshaled. One such resource is (...) Josiah Royce’s philosophy of insurance, which, while primarily offered as a way of preventing international conflicts, also concerned the mitigation of natural calamities, such as.. (shrink)

A variety of commentators have explored the similarities between pragmatism and Thomas Reid’s Philosophy of Common Sense. Peirce himself claims his version of pragmatism either (loosely) is, or entails, a Critical Common-sensism, a blend of what is best in Kant and Reid. In this paper I argue for a neglected aspect of the relation between Peirce and Reid, and of each to common sense: linguistics. First, I summarize Peirce’s account of what distinguishes his common-sensism from Reid’s. Second, I argue for (...) the importance of appeals to linguistic universals by Reid as both a source for identifying common sense beliefs, and a basis for justifying them. While Peirce is occasionally tempted by such appeals, overall he is critical of appeals to language, especially as most Western philosophers have been familiar with a small set of (Indo-)European languages; say, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, and Latin. This leads to the third section, which concerns Peirce’s familiarity with major nineteenth century linguists, and his contention that the ‘peculiarity’ of Western European languages has impeded the development of logic and philosophy. In particular, I look at unpublished manuscripts where Peirce summarizes his own study of non-European languages, ranging from Arabic, to Ngarrindjeri, to Xhosa. Peirce was only an amateur linguist, and also aware of the challenges of doing cross-cultural linguistics through comparative grammar; e.g., the temptation to force unfamiliar languages onto the “Procrustean Bed of Aryan grammar” (CP 2.211). Nonetheless, this study left him suspicious of any claims of linguistic universals, and supported his anti-psychologism. That is, not only should logic and philosophy not be based upon psychology (at least as a special science), they should also be independent of linguistics. However, Peirce also advances something like the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that language determines, or at least conditions, thought. The question now becomes what is the nature of a philosophy of common sense, even a critical one, without a common language, or possibly no commonalities across languages? (shrink)

In his final years, Josiah Royce worked to develop his theories of community and interpretation in practical directions. In particular, he developed an account of insurance as a special community of interpretation, and proposed the creation of an international board of insurance as a deterrent for war. Rather than evaluating Royce’s policy recommendations, this paper explores how his conception of insurance clarifies his account of interpretation. For Royce, insurance provides the best model for communal interpretation thus far because an insurer (...) seeks to prevent loss in the face of risky action, in addition to adjudicating between competing claims. This paper concludes with some reflections on how the problem of moral hazard can inform a Roycean conception of philosophy. (shrink)

Perhaps most fundamentally, Josiah Royce was a philosopher of community. As he said in his remarks at the Walton Hotel: “My earliest recollections include a very frequent wonder as to what my elders meant when they said that this was a new community…I wondered, and gradually came to feel that part of my life’s business was to find out what all this wonder meant.”. A true pragmatist, Royce saw that finding out what this wonder meant also involved balancing and dissolving (...) dichotomies such as autonomy and docility or The World and the Individual. An educator, historian, logician, novelist, philosopher, psychologist, and theologian, Royce... (shrink)

during july 2020—eight months into the COVID-19 pandemic, and four months after the first US stay-at-home orders—a metaphorically viral quote misattributed to Dr. Anthony Fauci spread across social media: "I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people." This line encapsulated the frustration of those willing to sacrifice personal autonomy to limit the spread of COVID-19 and highlighted a consistent individualist tension in US culture.How consistent this tension is can be seen by tracing the (...) origin of the phrase; first, to the title of a June 2017 Huffington Post article by Kayla Chadwick. This article concerns the political debates leading up to the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts... (shrink)

I studied Royce a bit as an undergraduate, and in graduate school, I took a course that included readings from Race Questions. Memory was, and is, an abiding interest of mine, and so I focused on that element of Royce’s thought—specifically, the community of memory and of hope in his Problem of Christianity. I suppose I had a naïve sense of Royce’s racism at the time—something along these lines: “Of course, a nineteenth-century white man was racist, but he was not (...) a bad racist.” However, I was a Peirce scholar at heart, and so set Royce aside for years, except for pairing Philosophy of Loyalty with Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince in an ethical leadership course that I taught twice.In the interim, I moved to a... (shrink)