[MD] Royce and the American Philosophical Movement

[John Carl]

Beware Bo!  More Royce!

My question to MD is do you see Pirsig fitting neatly into this movement as
described below?  I'm not familiar with the details of all the labeled
doctrines, but reading them with the MoQ in mind I find myself checking them
off one by one going, yep, yep, yep.....

I mean, I'm pretty sure the MoQ is a "constructionalist epistemology
stressing the changing character of our conceptual schemes".  It sure looks
like one to me.



>From Bruce Kuklick's Josiah Royce, An Intellectual Biography

"... we have been told that to trace the story of American thought is to
trace a peculiar version of experimental Anglo-American empiricism from
Peirce, to James to Dewey;
If we wish to examine a secondary theme, we may examine the Hegelian Royce
who stands outside this tradition, influence by German thought, the leading
expositor of a different philosophic style, absolute idealism.

This picture is wrong not merely in detail but in principle.  I have
indicated that the Cambridge pragmatists--Royce among them--were part of a
major philosophical movement.  Their pragmatism is a form of neo-Kantianism
which draws from a set of connected doctrines:

 A constructionalist epistemology stressing the changing character of our
conceptual schemes;

a commitment to a variety of voluntarism;

A Kantian concern with the nature of possible experience;

an adherence to the idealist principle that existence does not transcend
consciousness;

a distrust of traditional British empiricism;

a recognition of the importance of logic for philosophy;

a refusal to distinguish between questions of knowledge and of value;

an emphasis on the relation of philosophy to practical questions;

a desire to reconcile science and religion."