This essay examines the method and context that underlie Josiah Royce's The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (SMP). I locate this work among Royce's German influences, and I argue that SMP represents a considerable departure from his early Neo-Kantianism. In the concluding sections, I outline the ethical approach to historiography that Royce practices in SMP. Focusing on his polemic against Hans Vaihinger, I then draw from Royce some suggestions concerning how we should study and write the history of philosophy.

While acknowledging a certain affinity between his own thought and the Vedanta concept of a world-soul or universal spirit, Josiah Royce nevertheless locates this concept primarily in what he terms the Second Conception of Being—Mysticism. In his early magnum opus, The World and the Individual, Royce utilizes aspects of the Upanishads in order to flesh out his picture of the mystical understanding of and relationship to being. My primary concern in the present investigation is to introduce some nuance into Royce’s (...) conception of Indian thought, which may then serve to suggest similar possibilities for nuance for Royce’s conception of the Absolute. I will attempt to do in two primary ways: first, I will consider Royce’s use of Indian thought via the Upanishads in explicating his second historical conception of Being. I will then turn briefly to Emerson’s poem ‘Brahma’ and the Bhagavad Gita to see if a certain reversal that occurs in both places problematizes Royce’s depiction of the universal spirit in Indian thought as well as opens up new possibilities for Royce’s own Absolute. (shrink)

Koopman’s book revolves around the notion of transition, which he proposes is one of the central ideas of the pragmatist tradition but one which had not previously been fully articulated yet nevertheless shapes the pragmatist attitude in philosophy. Transition, according to Koopman, denotes “those temporal structures and historical shapes in virtue of which we get from here to there”. One of the consequences of transitionalism is the understanding of critique and inquiry as historical pro...

ABSTRACT : Alfred Fouillee's doctrine of ideas-forces approximates historically and intellectually William James’s theory of will. But Fouillee's criticism of pragmatism also has connections with Pierce's emphasis on the real and the analysis of concepts, and shows an influence of tychism approaching mysticism. -/- .

Martin Luther King’s primary emphasis was upon ‘beloved community,’ a phrase he borrowed from Royce, but an idea that he shared with St. Augustine. Theories of the state tend to focus upon division, in which one stratum dominates another or others. King’s context is the US in the segregated South—a region whose internal divisions sharply instantiate the idea of the state as an unequal hierarchy of dominance. King’s appeal was less to end black subjugation than to end subjugation as such. (...) Hence King was called by some a ‘dreamer,’ given his background commitment to equality and community, ideals taking marginal precedence over his foreground commitment to liberty and autonomy. This article explores the notion of ‘beloved community’ broadly and then specifically in Martin Luther King along with related notions in Howard Thurman and in Josiah Royce. (shrink)