[MD] Josiah Royce

[Ant McWatt]

John,
 
Thank you very much for the overview of Royce and especially for the biographical details about his friendship with William James.
 
> The ignorance of Royce's philosophy is something I find very surprising
> and even shocking. I myself came to him by the most unusual route. I was
> helping my wife in a mural art class, paint a mural in the Grass Valley
> Library named after Royce and so I got curious about him and started
> reading up a bit. His similiarrty to PIrsig struck me so hard that it
> drove me back to MD to discuss and see if I was right in my initial
> impression of the similarity of their views. What piqued my interest, was
> reading Royce early in his career where he comes to the conclusion of the
> fundamentalness of values through the path of extreme skepticism. His
> strongest early influences was Schopenhauer and it was from the depths of
> that skepticism, that he asked himself the question "what is error"? Much
> as Pirsig's inquiry into Quality led him to the MoQ, Royce's realization of
> the utter unquestionable existence of error led him to Absolute Idealism
> and all that followed.
>
> Right away, when I joined MD, I was pointed (I think it was by Matt ...
> thanks Matt!) to Pirsig's critique of British Idealism host on your site
> (thanks Ant!) and came at the end to Pirsig's enthusiasm over FH Bradley,
> the other Famous proponent of Absolute Idealism in the late 9   century.
 
John, I was recently taking a look at Pirsig's commentary on Frederick Copleston's 'History of Philosophy' 
 
(found at: http://robertpirsig.org/Copleston.htm) 
 
in order to follow up a reference that Tuukka made in one of his recent posts.  And yes, it is interesting to read what Pirsig says about Bradley (especially in the first sentence in the second paragraph pasted below): 
 
'It has really 
                          been a shock to see how close Bradley is to the MOQ. 
                          Both he and the MOQ are expressing what Aldous Huxley 
                          called "The Perennial Philosophy," which is 
                          perennial, I believe, because it happens to be true. 
                          Bradley has given an excellent description of what the 
                          MOQ calls Dynamic Quality and an excellent rational 
                          justification for its intellectual acceptance.  It and 
                          the MOQ can be spliced together with no difficulty into 
                          a broader explanation of the same thing.'
 
 
 'A singular difference 
                          is that the MOQ says the Absolute is of value, a point 
                          Bradley may have thought so obvious it didn't need mentioning. 
                          The MOQ says that this value is not a property of the 
                          Absolute, it is the Absolute itself, and is a much better 
                          name for the Absolute than "Absolute."  Rhetorically, 
                          the word "absolute" conveys nothing except 
                          rigidity and permanence and authoritarianism and remoteness.  
                          "Quality," on the other hand conveys flexibility, 
                          impermanence, here-and-now-ness and freedom.  And it 
                          is a word everyone knows and loves and understands—even 
                          butcher shops that take pride in their product.   Beyond 
                          that the term, “value,” paves the way for an explanation 
                          of evolution that did not occur to Bradley.  He apparently 
                          avoided discussing the world of appearances except to 
                          emphasize the need to transcend it.  The MOQ returns 
                          to this world of appearances and shows how to understand 
                          these appearances in a more constructive way.'



Unfortunately, Bradley's primary work on metaphysics (Appearance and Reality) is not very inspiring or exciting.  No road trips or bar ladies!  His writings on relations (between things) in particular must be one of the most mind numbing passages of Victorian prose that you can find.  It's not necessarily wrong; it's just boring and obscure.  I don't know if Royce (with his version of Absolute Idealism) came any closer to the MOQ than Bradley but I have a feeling for anyone to have written a proto-MOQ before Pirsig they would have also had to start with the problem of defining value.  It wouldn't be impossible to have a different starting point but knowing how the mind works in being only able to analyse a relatively small "teacup" of experience, the problem of how to define value could easily be overlooked while constructing a new metaphysics from the ground up.
 
Philosophers such as Bradley and Royce were largely responding to and improving on established philosophers and metaphysical frameworks.  As their predecessors (such as Hume, Kant and Hegel) had different starting points from Pirsig (e.g. Kant was responding to Hume), the issue of value/s wouldn't be foremost in their minds.  And without dealing with values properly (which I think Pirsig has done), many of these of 8tth, 9tth and 0tth century philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition would consequently be trapped by some form of Cartesian Dualism.  Having said that, I would speculate that the American pragmatists (such as Royce and James) come out of this better than most.
 
Anyway, maybe the most interesting question that now arises is that while Pirsig was fortunate to stumble on the problem of defining value as his metaphysical starting point, what has his metaphysics (i.e. the MOQ) not taken account of properly?   
 
> That gave me enough affirmation to believe I was on the right track, but
> ever since, none of the intellectuals around here have seen fit to grant
> the slightest interest in the subject, except for Marsha, and so I spend
> my time these days discussing my passion on lilasquad.
>
> For a more erudite introduction, Dr. Kara Barnette speaks at length on
> Royce and some on James here <http://www.mefeedia.com/watch/995713>>>, in
> one of my favorite vids on the net.

 
Yes, I've watched this right through.  It's always nice to watch someone who is enthusiastic about their subject.  As with yourself, it's interesting to note that Dr Barnette was rather fortunate to discover Royce.  In her case by having a lecturer with this relatively rare interest.  Dr Barnette lengthy discussion on how Royce viewed traitors reminded me of the chapter in LILA about the Brujo in Zuni (to summarise: For Royce, traitors are people who betray a community they were part of but become disloyal to it for a higher purpose.  Sometimes such "virtuous traitors" are necessary to move on a particular social group/community so shouldn't be viewed as a completely negative thing).  There are also some interesting asides in Dr Barnette's talk about truth and error.  I suspect Royce's views on these could be incorporated in the MOQ without any problem.

 
> Thanks for your time and interest, Dr. McWatt,
 
My pleasure John.
 
Best wishes,
 
Ant
 
 
 
 
 
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