RT Article
T1 Josiah Royce — Twenty Years After
JF Harvard theological review
VO 29
IS 3
SP 197
OP 224
A1 Bixler, Julius Seelye
LA English
PB Cambridge Univ. Press
YR 1936
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1784640239
AB ‘Two hundred years from now,’ exclaimed William James, in one of his characteristically enthusiastic moods, ‘Harvard will be known as the place where Josiah Royce once taught.’ The approach of the twentieth anniversary of Royce's death is an appropriate time at which to inquire whether the prophecy — making allowances for the exaggeration of James's friendly generosity — is in a fair way toward being fulfilled. Has Royce's work so far stood the test of time? Or must we say that as the experimental interest bequeathed by James increases the calm assurance of Royce's philosophy must decrease? And with the growing seriousness which practical issues assume have we time or inclination left for speculations about the Absolute? Has not the war destroyed our faith in the world's reasonableness and forced us to take a less indulgently ‘idealistic’ and more frankly ‘realistic’ view?Often we say this, but as often we are forced to remind ourselves that the ‘realism’ in which we take pride may have the virtue of looking the immediate facts squarely in the face, but may lack the sustained critical power which is eager to face other facts than those which are immediate. In that type of realism which is content to ‘take things as they come,’ there is a suggestion of an inability to see why they come as they do. As pluralists and empiricists, appealing to what we call ‘immediate experience’ for our data, we may say that our world is shot to pieces and that it cannot be put together again. But as philosophers and religious men we cannot leave the matter here and believe that we have seen through our problem or seen our job through.
DO 10.1017/S0017816000033320