[MD] Royce's Absolute

[david buchanan]

The SEP article on Royce opens like this...

Josiah Royce (1855-1916) was the leading American proponent of absolute idealism, the metaphysical view (also maintained by G. W. F. Hegel and F. H. Bradley) that all aspects of reality, including those we experience as disconnected or contradictory, are ultimately unified in the thought of a single all-encompassing consciousness. ...Royce's friendly but longstanding dispute with William James, known as "The Battle of the Absolute," deeply influenced both philosophers' thought. In his later works, Royce reconceived his metaphysics as an "absolute pragmatism" grounded in semiotics. This view dispenses with the Absolute Mind of previous idealism and instead characterizes reality as a universe of ideas or signs which occur in a process of being interpreted by an infinite community of minds. These minds, and the community they constitute, may themselves be understood as signs. Royce's ethics, philosophy of community, philosophy of religion, and logic reflect this metaphysical position.

Let pick out the what seems like the main thing. Royce was the leading proponent of the view that all aspects of reality are ultimately unified in the thought of a single all-embracing consciousness. That all-embracing consciousness is the same "Absolute" that Hegel and Bradley maintained. In his later works, Royce's Absolute Mind is replaced by an infinite community of minds. His pragmatic absolutism is grounded in semiotics and characterizes reality as signs and ideas. The community of minds that interpret this universe of signs and ideas are themselves signs and ideas.

How's that? Something to chew on, eh? 		 	   		  
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