JOSIAH  ROYCE:
  Brief Summary

Religious Problems and the Theory of Being:

- The problems of Being is best approached by starting with the question:
        What is an idea?
- An idea is: - an active response
   - purposive (it is meaningful; it “means to do” something, to reach its object)
   - partially already fulfilled (in the very having of the idea), but not fully
- Diagram, to be explained in class, showing how ideas become more
    determinate as they become more complete:
- An idea has (1) an internal meaning = a purpose (something it means to do)
                   (2) an apparently external meaning = an apparently external object

The Temporal and the Eternal:

- Here are some analogies Royce uses:
  time : action : : eternity : the significance of our actions
time : percepts & concepts : : eternity : interpretation
- We experience time as being: (a) whole (cf. the inclusive “present”);
    (b) serial (cf.the exclusive “present”);
    (c) directional (striving, purposive.)
  -NB: This is true both for our inner experience of time (perceptual time)
    and for our dealings with the apparently “external” world (conceptual time).
- (219) The self is a process of self-re-presentation, a recurrent process.
- The self in its entirety would be the whole, the entire world consciousness or
   world life.
- Although part of this whole seems “beyond” to a finite self, the whole would
   be consciously expressed as  a whole by the Absolute.
- How can this be?  Well, compare our own two-moded experience of
   successions.
- NB: math shows that a well-ordered infinite series, even though it is infinite, can
  form a whole.
- The human self has a two-fold nature:  as a temporal process and as part of an
   eternal system of facts.
- The “goal of life is the whole of life."

The Body and Its Members:
- Summary of what’s needed to have a community:  (1) distinct selves; (2) their
    ideal extensions, by each of them, into the past and future; (3) at least one
    common event.
-  (225) A self is a life that is interpreted and that interprets itself.
- A community is a body that tries to accomplish certain goals, by means of its
    deeds (the individual members’ deeds).
- (226) A community also requires social communication and common some past
    event.
- (228) Also need a common love, or a common consciousness of unity.
- (229) Consciousness of community is difficult in modern industrial life.
- (231) Need love of the community…and identification of self with neighbor.
 - Love is both  and emotion (a longing for a mystical blending) and cooperative
deeds
- (233) The source of loyalty, grace, is the divine, which enables us to "fall in love
    with the universe.”

The Will to Interpret:

- Man [sic] is the interpreting animal.  (And hence lives in communities.)
- Interpretation is a triadic cognitive process.  [It involves one interpreted, one
interpreting, and one receptive to the interpretation.]
- Interpretation is not perception, nor is it conception, nor is it the two of those
    added together.
- This can be seen by analyzing carefully what comparison involves—When, that
   is, comparison is made explicit and complete:

A B \ / | C

A & B are ideas; "leadings" (cf. James). C is mediation, a meditaing idea, something new.

- (238) What C provides is a “conspectus,” a unity of consciousness. And that
—unity of consciousness—is what is required for dealing with life, significance, reality, etc.  And, furthermore, that is also what James’s version of pragmatism leaves out.
- (240) In spite of what you might initially be thinking, interpretation can be exact.  Peirce’s account of deduction shows us how and why.
- On the other hand, James’s limiting of cognitive processes to perception and conception, does not have any room for a conspectus or unity of consciousness.

Loyalty to Loyalty, Truth and Reality:

- (251) [To employ the concept of truth in any way is to appeal, implicitly,
to a conscious world of experience that is “higher” than our minds, but of
which we are parts.]  (Cf. also p.257)
- (255) One truth transcending the empirical is this:  “Human experience,
as a totality of facts, exists.” Now, (a) who “verifies” this truth?  And (b)
if, as James says, verification means working successfully, then what
does “success” mean here?
- (257) Whenever you say “The facts are what they are; and the real
universe exposes our errors, and makes them errors,” you are appealing
to a “conspectus of experience, in which ours is included.”
 - To deny the reality of the whole truth is to reaffirm it.
 - Any special idea of mine can be wrong, yes—but to say that is a whole
    truth.
- So, truth-seeking = loyalty = seeking the Whole]

Loyalty and Religion:

- (258) Loyalty = the will to manifest the eternal unity of life (which is a conscious and superhuman unity) in the deeds of one’s individual self.
- (259-60) The real world is not independent of us; rather, it is: (a)of the nature of experience, in its content, . . . (b) with a structure that validates our active deeds.
- Furthermore, it is interpretable, in ideas, propositions, and conscious meanings...
- ... and it interprets (connects) our own fragmentary ideas and deeds.
- (260) The life of this conscious whole is the real world. (So the whole both is and knows the real.)
- (261) Error, on my part, is a fact for the world's conscious life. And this is a thesis which cannot be denied without self-contradiction. [After all, to deny a statement is to say that it is in error.]
- (262) How did we arrive at these considerations?  By asking whether or
not "the faith of the loyal" is "a pathetic fallacy."
- Royce here points out that that faith does at least meet both an ethical and a logical need (the logical need being the need to have some reality as referent in relation to which error is error).
- Furthermore, he adds, this faith is also the faith "that religion recognizes."
- (262) Religion is the interpretation of the eternal and of the spirit of loyalty [among us], through emotion and the "fitting use" of imagination.
- Religion has always been an effort to interpret and make use of the superhuman world.
- The difficult thing has been to make religion moral.
- (263) There's no sharp dividing line between the human and the superhuman. [Remember that for Royce, the human is a fragment of the superhuman.]
- (264) "Loyalty unifies your plan of life."
- (264) Any loyalty to a cause is a latent belief in the "superhuman" reality of the cause.
- This must begin (this latent belief) to become explicit when the process of "idealizing" the cause takes place.
- And that process occurs when we [realize that our cause is a"lost cause"--i.e., one which we cannot fully attain in our finite, human lives].
- This recognition that we cannot fully attain our cause leads to grief and imagination; and that tends to lead to religion.
- (265) The "world-life" [the life of the Absolute]... includes and completes our experience.
- (266) Rationally, says Royce, we must assert the truth of this view of the universe that he has argued for, as a general view of the universe--that is, we must assert that the universe is a conscious, personal, and meaningful life.
- However, as for any details, we must acknowledge that those, as they are expressed by one religion or another, are symbolic [and not something we are compelled to assert propositionally].