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Josiah Royce

Josiah Royce Biography

Philosopher

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“If I ever say, “I have undone that deed,” I shall be both a fool and a liar. Counsel me, if you will, to forget that deed. Counsel me to do good deeds without number to set over against that treason. Counsel me to be cheerful . . . Counsel me to plunge into Lethe. All such counsel may be, in its way and time, good. Only do not counsel me “to get rid of” just that sin. That, so far as the real facts are concerned, cannot be done. For I am, and to the end of endless time shall remain, the doer of that wilfully traitorous deed. Whatever other value I may get, that value I retain forever. My guilt is as enduring as time.”

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Book:The Problem of Christianity
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“Philosophers have actually devoted themselves, in the main, neither to perceiving the world, nor to spinning webs of conceptual theory, but to interpreting the meaning of the civilizations which they have represented, and to attempting the interpretation of whatever minds in the universe, human or divine, they believed to be real.”

WorldMindHumansRealUniverseDivineTheoryCivilizationPhilosophicalPhilosopherInterpretationBeing RealDevotedAttemptingSpinningInterpreting
Book:Josiah Royce: Selected Writings
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“Only the more uncompromising of the mystics still seek for knowledge in a silent land of absolute intuition, where the intellect finally lays down its conceptual tools, and rests from its pragmatic labors, while its works do not follow it, but are simply forgotten, and are as if they never had been.”

IfsStillsLandLaborToolsAbsolutesLaysSilentForgottenIntuitionIntellectPragmaticUncompromising
Book:The Problem of Christianity: The real world and the Christian ideas
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“If usually the "present age" is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as thehistory of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”

IfsYearsMayLongStillsAgePleasureStudyCenturyCivilizationThousandLong TimeHundredUnityThousand YearsGeologyExtending
Book:The Philosophy of Josiah Royce
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“A self is, by its very essence, a being with a past. One must look lengthwise backwards in the stream of time in order to see theself, or its shadow, now moving with the stream, now eddying in the currents from bank to bank of its channel, and now strenuously straining onwards in the pursuit of its chosen good.”

LooksSelfPastMovingOrderShadowEssenceCurrentsPursuitChosenStreamsBackwards
Book:Josiah Royce: Selected Writings
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“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.”

ThinkingWorldRealGoalUniqueIdealsInfiniteIndividualityFaithfulAbstractSpiteQuestsReal ThingsElusiveEludeElude UsAbstract Thinking
Book:The Religious Philosophy of Josiah Royce; Edited, with an Introductory Essay, by Stuart Gerry Brown
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“Man you can define; but the true essence of any man, say, for instance, of Abraham Lincoln, remains the endlessly elusive and mysterious object of the biographer's interest, of the historian's comments, of popular legend, and of patriotic devotion.”

MenInterestObjectsEssenceRemainsIndividualityDevotionInstanceMysteriousPatrioticCommentHistorianLegendsAbrahamElusiveBiographers
Book:The Religious Philosophy of Josiah Royce; Edited, with an Introductory Essay, by Stuart Gerry Brown
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“This preparatory sort of idealism is the one that, as I just suggested, Berkeley made prominent, and, after a fashion familiar. I must state it in my own way, although one in vain seeks to attain novelty in illustrating so frequently described a view.”

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Book:The Spirit of Modern Philosophy: An Essay in the Form of Lectures
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“We seek true individuality and the true individuals. But we find them not. For lo, we mortals see what our poor eyes can see; and they, the true individuals, - they belong not to this world of our merely human sense and thought.”

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Book:The Religious Philosophy of Josiah Royce; Edited, with an Introductory Essay, by Stuart Gerry Brown
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“But you are alone. Yet I never tell what you are. And if your face lights up my world as no other can - well, this feeling too, when viewed as the mere psychologist has to view it, appears to be simply what all the other friends report about their friends.”

IfsWorldWellsFeelingsLightFacesViewsMereReportsYour FacePsychologistLight Up
Book:The Religious Philosophy of Josiah Royce; Edited, with an Introductory Essay, by Stuart Gerry Brown
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“The lonely wanderer, who watches by the seashore the waves that roll between him and his home, talks of cruel facts, material barriers that, just because they are material, and not ideal, shall be the irresistible foes of his longing heart.”

HeartFactsHomeWatchesSeaMaterialsIdealsLonelyLongingWaveBarriersFoeIrresistibleWanderersSeashore
Book:The Spirit of Modern Philosophy: An Essay in the Form of Lectures
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“That this individual life of all of us is not something limited in its temporal expression to the life that now we experience, follows from the very fact that here nothing final or individual is found expressed.”

FactsFoundIndividualExpressionFinalsIndividual Life
Book:The Religious Philosophy of Josiah Royce; Edited, with an Introductory Essay, by Stuart Gerry Brown
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