## 1. Life



Royce was born November 20, 1855, in the remote mining town of Grass
Valley, California, to Josiah and Sarah Eleanor Bayliss Royce. Sarah
Royce was a devout Christian who headed a primary school in Grass
Valley. Royce's mother and older sisters directed his early
education. At age 11 he entered school in San Francisco. He graduated
from the newly established University of California in Oakland with a
B. A. degree in Classics in 1875. Royce then traveled to Germany to
study philosophy for one year, mastering the language and attending
lectures in Heidelberg, Leipzig, and Gottingen. On his return, he
entered the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where he
earned a Ph. D. in 1878.



He taught composition and literature at the University of California,
Berkeley from 1878-1882. During this time he published numerous
philosophical articles, as well as his *Primer of Logical
Analysis*. He married Katherine Head in 1880. The couple had three
children (Christopher 1882; Edward 1886; Stephen 1889) and remained
married until Josiah's death. Not content in California, so far
from the intellectual life of the East Coast, Royce sought help in
attaining a new post from his acquaintances there. In his later
ethical writings Royce would stress the centrality of action intended
to realize a sound ideal that one has freely embraced. When offered
the opportunity to replace William James during a one year sabbatical
at Harvard University, Royce acted: he accepted the offer of half of
James's salary, resigned his California appointment altogether,
and moved his wife and newborn son across the continent in the summer
of 1882.



In Cambridge, Royce commenced to work doggedly and in diverse areas.
In January 1883 he arrived at an insight that proved fundamental to
his philosophy: in order for our ordinary concepts of truth and error
to be meaningful, there must be an Absolute Knower, an actual infinite
mind that encompasses the totality of all actual truths and possible
errors. This insight formed the core of his first major philosophical
publication, The *Religious Aspect of Philosophy*, which
appeared in 1885. Royce received a permanent appointment as assistant
professor at Harvard in that same year. (During his three decades at
Harvard Royce would teach such notable students as T. S. Eliot, George
Santayana, and W. E. B. Du Bois.) He taught full time, gave many
public lectures, published his *History of California* in 1886,
and a novel in 1887. In 1888 he experienced a nervous breakdown, from
which he recovered after a sea voyage of some months'
duration.



Royce was appointed Professor of the History of Philosophy at Harvard
in 1892 and served as Chair of the Department of Philosophy from
1894-98. During these years Royce established himself as a
leading figure in American academic philosophy with his many reviews,
lectures and books, including *The Spirit of Modern Philosophy*
(1892) and *The Conception of God* (1895). In 1898 Royce
attended a series of lectures by Charles S. Peirce, "Reasoning
and the Logic of Things," which significantly influenced his
understanding of the relation between logic and metaphysics.



Royce delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of
Aberdeen in two series, the first in 1899 and the second the following
year. He regarded this as the opportunity to consolidate his years of
hard thought and study, so as to produce a definitive and original
statement of his metaphysics. The result was his two volume opus
*The World and the Individual* (1899-1901).



The Gifford Lectures marked a turning point in Royce's life and
thought. He had worked out his philosophical theories in minute
detail. His public reputation as a philosopher was sealed (Royce was
elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1902
and of the American Philosophical Association in 1903). The year 1900
apparently represented the culmination of his life's work. Royce
was only 45 years old, though, and this culmination proved also to be
a starting point for significant growth.



Reviews of *The World and the Individual* praised Royce's
philosophical acumen but raised significant objections to his
conclusions. Peirce, in particular, pointedly criticized Royce's
use of logic. Royce set out to reconsider his central arguments and,
at the same time, undertook an ambitious program of study in
mathematical logic. In his teaching and publications after 1900, two
philosophical strains came to the forefront. One was a growing
reliance on formal logical and mathematical concepts as the basis for
his metaphysical speculation (the first hint of this appears in the
"Supplementary Essay" to the first volume of *The World
and the Individual*). The second was an emphasis on philosophy as
a means to understand the concrete phenomena of life: the nature of
human society, of religious experience, of ethical action, of
suffering and the problem of evil.



After 1907 Royce's emphasis on the relevance of philosophy for
living took on a clear personal dimension. In that year Christopher,
who had come with Josiah and Katherine across the continent as a
newborn 25 years earlier, and who had graduated from Harvard at age
18, showed symptoms of severe depression and psychotic delusions. In
1908 his parents committed him to a state mental hospital with little
hope that he would recover. In August of 1910 William James died,
leaving Royce without his closest friend, neighbor and colleague. In
September of the same year Christopher Royce died of typhoid fever,
leaving Josiah and Katherine without their firstborn child. Royce had
earlier stated his philosophy in a somewhat abstract and formal way,
so that it might help him discover metaphysical truth. Perhaps under
the weight of these later sorrows, Royce returned to his system
seeking wisdom and understanding in addition to truth.



Although he by no means abandoned systematic and theoretical
philosophy, Royce began to write more about what today would be called
"practical" or "applied" philosophy. His major
work on ethics, *The Philosophy of Loyalty*, appeared in 1908.
Later he would address ethics in even more practical terms, not as a
philosophy but as an "art" of loyalty. He published a
collection of essays under the title *Race Questions,
Provincialism, and Other American Problems* in 1908; another
collection, entitled *William James and Other Essays on the
Philosophy of Life*, appeared in 1911. Four of the six essays in
*The Hope of the Great Community*, written in the last year of
his life and published posthumously in 1916, directly concerned global
politics and the Great War.



Royce and James had always disagreed deeply concerning the proper
understanding of religious phenomena in human life. When James
delivered the Gifford Lectures in 1901 and 1902, he directed many
arguments against Royce's idealism, though he did not there
target his friend by name. James's lectures, published as
*The Varieties of Religious Experience*, were a popular and
academic success. Royce believed that James, who had never been
regularly affiliated with an established church or religious
community, had in that work placed too much emphasis on the
extraordinary religious experiences of extraordinary individuals.
Royce's first education was into a strongly Protestant world
view, he always retained a respect for the conventions of organized
Christianity, and his writings exhibit a consistent and deep
familiarity with Scripture. He sought a philosophy of religion that
could help one understand and explain the phenomena of ordinary
religious faith as experienced by communities of ordinary people.
There was a deeper difference between them, as well, and it centered
on a metaphysical point. Royce's 1883 insight concerning the
Absolute was at bottom a religious insight. Contrary to the open-ended
pluralism and pragmatism of James, Royce was convinced that the object
and source of religious experience was an actual, infinite, and
superhuman being. Royce did not attempt to work out his religious
philosophy until after James's death, however. In 1911 Royce
finally composed the lectures that responded to James. These were
published in 1912 as *The Sources of Religious Insight*. It is
here that the theoretical and practical threads of his late thought
began to come together. Royce himself said of the *Sources*:
"It contains the whole of me in a brief compass"
(Clendenning 1970, 570).



In early 1912, Royce suffered a stroke. During his recovery, he
continued to explore the philosophy of religion outlined in the
*Sources*, with an eye toward adapting these ideas specifically
to Christianity. He also returned to Peirce's writings, seeking
the solution to certain nagging problems in his own metaphysics. He
found in Peirce's semeiotic, or theory of signs, the technical
tools he needed to address both issues at once. *The Problem of
Christianity* presents, in place of the earlier Absolute Knower,
the concept of an infinite community of interpretation guided by a
shared spirit of truth-seeking. This Universal Community, which
constitutes reality, develops greater understanding over time through
its members' continual development of the meaning of signs.
Within this framework Royce endeavored to reconcile and explain many
key Christian doctrines and experiences.



Though Royce lived only a few years beyond this late philosophical
breakthrough, his last period brought the true culmination and
flowering of his life's work. Besides *The Sources of
Religious Insight* and *The Problem of Christianity*,
notable available works include *The Hope of the Great
Community*, his last Harvard seminar on Metaphysics
(1915-16) and a series of lectures given at the University of
California at Berkeley. These lectures at his alma mater were to have
ended with a talk entitled "The Spirit of the Community."
When the Great War broke out, Royce set this manuscript aside and
sketched a practical proposal to use the economic power of insurance
to mediate hostilities among nations and hence reduce the attraction
of war in the future. *War and Insurance* (1914) was a daring
political and economic proposal on behalf of the Universal
Community.



Royce died on September 14, 1916. Though scholars now recognize the
originality and strength of his last works, he was unable to respond
to critics or to press his case for the last crucial innovations to
his philosophy. His reputation was eclipsed as other philosophers used
Royce's earlier writings as a foil in developing their own
doctrines of pragmatism, realism, empiricism, and logical analysis.
While scholars of American intellectual life have always acknowledged
the historical importance of Royce's influence, recent years
have brought a revival of interest in Royce's thought on its own
terms. Royce's work is proving especially fruitful for
theologians and philosophers interested in speculative philosophy and
metaphysics, practical and theoretical ethics, philosophy of religion,
and the philosophy of community.


## 2. Philosophy



Royce's early studies in Germany and at the Johns Hopkins
University concentrated on the development of post-Kantian idealism.
His philosophical work as a whole may be regarded as a committed
idealist's effort to understand the place of finite individuals
in an infinite universe, a theme that Royce captured most succinctly
in his Gifford Lectures title, "The World and the
Individual." This theme will serve as a touchstone in the
following survey of Royce's work in metaphysics and
epistemology, ethics and practical philosophy, religious philosophy,
and logic.


### 2.1 Metaphysics and Epistemology: Idealism and Interpretation



Royce announced the beginning of his professional career with a novel
defense of absolute idealism, "the argument from error."
Kant had introduced the notion of a "transcendental
argument" by asking what the world must be like in order for
knowledge of the world to be possible. In *The Religious Aspect of
Philosophy* Royce took the experience of error -- a
particularly compelling aspect of the phenomenon of knowing -- as
the starting point for his own transcendental argument. According to
the correspondence theory of knowledge an idea (or judgment) is true
if it correctly represents its object; error obtains when an idea does
not correctly represent its object. It is indisputable that finite
minds do sometimes entertain erroneous ideas. Royce pointed out that
in such a case the mind must contain an (erroneous) idea and its
(false) object, while simultaneously intending, or "pointing
toward," the idea's true object. If the mind is able to
intend the true object then that object is somehow available to the
mind. How can it be that the true object is in this way available to
the mind, but not known? Consider what happens in an ordinary example
of error: if I think that my keys are on the table, but later discover
that they are in my pocket, I do not conclude that my keys never
existed as the object of my thought. Rather, I focus on an idea that I
had all along -- that my keys do definitely exist somewhere. The
keys, their location, and all other facts about them are the true
object of an idea. At the moment when I discover that my keys are not
on the table, it becomes apparent that this true object was only
imperfectly available to me. The fact that such error does occur
indicated to Royce that the true object of any idea must exist, in a
fully determinate or absolute state, in some actual mind, or mind-like
entity, with which my own mind is or may be connected. From the
possibility of error, Royce concluded that there is an Absolute
Knower, a mind for which all thoughts do correspond correctly and
adequately to their true objects.



One objection to the argument from error is that another type of
objective reality, some other sort of being external to one's
finite mind, might explain the possibility of error just as well.
Royce took up this objection in the first volume of *The World and
the Individual*, which was subtitled "The Four Historical
Conceptions of Being." In this extended argument Royce critiqued
what he regarded as the main competing conceptions of objective
reality so as to strengthen his case for idealism. The first
conception of being Royce considered was *realism*, the view
that the world exists entirely independently of our thoughts or ideas
about it. The world is what it is, in short, without any reference to
our thoughts. While this view has great common-sense appeal and does
provide for an objectively existing sphere of being against which our
ideas can apparently be measured, Royce pointed out a fundamental
problem. Realism, so defined, introduces a radical metaphysical
dualism. Between my ideas, and a sphere of being that by definition
exists completely independent of those ideas, there is a gap that
cannot be bridged. Realism posits an objective realm that is utterly
independent and hence, strictly speaking, is utterly meaningless to
thought. The theory of *mysticism*, the second conception of
being Royce considered, likewise meets with problems. This view
maintains that the real is the ineffable immediate fact that is
present to the mind. Mysticism avoids the problem of an unbridgeable
gap between idea and reality by completely denying any such gap. The
difficulty here is that one cannot then distinguish between idea and
reality. If reality is in the end the immediate content of my idea,
then error in my idea of reality would simply appear to be impossible.
The third conception of being, which Royce identified with Kantian
*critical rationalism*, is presented as a correct but
incomplete view. Royce characterized critical rationalism as the view
that "What is, gives warrant to ideas, makes them true, and
enables us to define determinate, or valid, possible
experiences" (Royce 1899-1901 [1976, 266]). The real is
that which, in conforming to given universal structures or categories
of experience, is capable of validating certain ideas. The connection
between my ideas and an objectively existing sphere of being is
clearly established: my ideas and that sphere both conform to the same
categories of experience. The independence of objective reality, and
hence the possibility of error, is likewise preserved: I may form an
idea of a definite possible experience (e.g., that my keys are on the
table) but then discover that reality does not validate my idea (I can
in fact check the table surface and discover that my keys are not
there). The critical rationalist conception is inadequate, in
Royce's view, because it is restricted to describing the
universal forms and possibilities of experienced reality. It cannot in
Royce's view account for the concrete, actual individual facts
that impose themselves in experience. These are simply and
mysteriously "given" in the critical rationalist
theory.



Royce endeavored to extend and complete critical rationalism in his
explanation of the "*fourth conception of being*."
To say that an idea intends its object means more than that the idea
may be validated by a "possible experience." An idea in
this respect embodies a purpose: that its meaning shall be fulfilled
in experience. In Royce's view this requires a world that is
more than the abstract or merely hypothetical content posited by the
description of a possible experience. What is needed is a definite,
actual individual being that exists "in an absolutely final
form." Royce thus agreed with critical rationalism in saying
that a true idea is one that may be fulfilled or validated by a
possible experience. He argues further, though, that such a possible
experience requires the existence of an actual being (e.g., the
particular set of keys in my pocket) that is in principle capable of
being experienced. It is this being, the actual individual, and not
the mere possible experience of it, that is the object of knowledge
and "the essential nature of Being" (Royce
1899-1901, [1976, 348]). The "fourth conception of
being" detailed in *The World and the Individual*
provides the metaphysical background for the remainder of
Royce's thought. It presents a view of the totality of Being as
an actual Infinite Individual that is itself timeless, encompassing as
it does all valid past, present, and future possible experience of
fact. All finite beings, such as ourselves, are but fragments of this
Absolute Mind or eternal truth.



In his last period Royce embraced what may be called a hermeneutic
epistemology. While he still maintained the central notion that a true
idea correctly represents its object, he arrived at a new
understanding of the nature of representation. Earlier, he had rather
uncritically taken "representation" to be a
straightforward correspondence relation in which the idea merely
copied its object. Under the influence of Peirce's theory of
signs, however, Royce came to appreciate the creative, synthetic, and
selective aspects of representation. The new semiotic conception is
detailed in the chapter of *The Problem of Christianity*
entitled "Perception, Conception and Interpretation."
Knowledge is not at bottom merely the accurate and complete perception
of an object, as empiricism would have it. Nor is it the accurate and
complete conception of an idea, as rationalism maintains. Knowledge is
instead a process of interpretation: the true idea selects,
emphasizes, and re-presents those aspects of the object that will be
meaningfully fulfilled in subsequent experience. Royce's
"absolute pragmatism," like other versions of pragmatism,
thus offers an alternative to rationalism and empiricism.



This revised understanding of knowledge as interpretation prompted, if
it did not exactly require, a corresponding change in Royce's
notion of the Infinite Mind whose reality was established in the
argument from error. As long as knowledge is regarded as possessing
perceptions or conceptions that correspond to objects, the Infinite
Mind is naturally envisioned as something that "contains"
the totality of all perceptions or conceptions. If knowledge is
instead regarded as a process of interpretation, though, the Infinite
Mind may be regarded as the mind that carries this process forward.
Royce had long sought an explicitly non-Hegelian account of Absolute
Mind. In *The Problem of Christianity* he was finally able to
replace the old terminology of the Absolute with a description of an
infinite Community of Interpretation. This community is the totality
of all those minds capable of representing aspects of Being to one
another or to their future selves. Royce summarized the metaphysical
implications of this new view by saying "the real world is the
Community of Interpretation... If the interpretation is a
reality, and if it truly interprets the whole of reality, then the
community reaches its goal [i.e., a complete representation of Being],
and the real world includes its own interpreter" (Royce 1913
[2001, 339]). In this late period Royce remained firmly committed to
idealism. He renounced the notion that the Absolute is complete at any
actual time, though, and instead preferred to think of the possible
totality of all truth simply as the eternal.


### 2.2 Ethics and Practical Philosophy



That Royce's metaphysical solution to the problem of error was
of broad relevance for the rest of his philosophy is clear: "The
existence of error...must be explained as due to the same
conditions as those which make possible finite life, evil,
individuality, and conflict in general" (Robinson 123). Error is
possible, according to Royce, only if there is an infinite being for
which all intended objects could be realized. This Being (whether
conceived as Absolute Mind or the infinite Community of
Interpretation) also makes individual human life comprehensible.
Royce's considerable attention to speculative metaphysics is
complemented by his concern for the practical implications of that
metaphysics. The infinite manifests itself in the realm of individual
beings bound within the finite constraints of time and space. Ethics
and religion have their basis in this relation of the individual to
the infinite real world, a relation Royce characterized in terms of
loyalty.


#### 2.2.1 The Philosophy of Loyalty



Near the end of *The Philosophy of Loyalty* Royce wrote:



> 
> Human life taken merely as it flows, viewed merely as it passes by in
> time and is gone, is indeed a lost river of experience that plunges
> down the mountains of youth and sinks in the deserts of age. Its
> significance comes solely through its relations to the air and the
> ocean and the great deeps of universal experience. For by such poor
> figures I may, in passing, symbolize that really rational relation of
> our personal experience to universal conscious
> experience....(Royce 1908 [1995, 179-80])
> 



Royce's ethics is rooted in his analysis of the conditions
necessary for an individual life to be meaningful. It is not enough
that one's actions merely conform to the strictures of
conventional morality -- a trained animal might well fulfill such
minimal conditions of morality. To lead a morally significant life,
one's actions must express a self-consciously asserted will.
They must contribute toward realizing a plan of life, a plan that is
itself unified by some freely chosen aim. Such an aim and its
corresponding plan of life could not easily be created by an
individual out of the chaos of conflicting personal desires and
impulses that we all encounter. Rather, such aims and plans are found
already largely formed in social experience: we come to consciousness
in a world that proffers countless well-defined causes and programs
for their accomplishment. These programs extend through time and
require the contributions of many individuals for their advancement.
When one judges a cause to be worthwhile and freely embraces such a
program, several momentous things happen. The individual's will
is focused and defined in terms of the shared cause. The individual
becomes allied with a community of others who are also committed to
the same cause. Finally, a morally significant commitment to the cause
and to the community develops. This commitment is what Royce calls
"loyalty." The moral life may be understood in terms of
the multiple loyalties that a person exhibits.



Just as the truth value of an idea is a matter of whether its intended
object is fulfilled in reality, the moral value of actions is a matter
of whether they are loyal, whether they tend to fulfill the
community's intended aim. Loyalty is a necessary condition for
moral validity; defined narrowly, as Royce preferred, loyalty may even
be a sufficient condition for moral validity. Royce's narrow
definition of loyalty, of "true loyalty," is intended to
rule out loyalty to morally evil causes and the communities that serve
them. Royce observed that the highest moral achievements throughout
history have involved individuals' loyalty to ideals that
promote the formation and expansion of communities of loyalty. Many of
the worst deeds have also involved a high degree of loyalty, but this
loyalty is directed exclusively to a particular group and is expressed
in the destruction of the conditions for others' loyal actions,
of those other persons, and even of one's own community and
cause. Royce generalized the difference between true loyalty and
vicious or "predatory" loyalty as follows:



> 
> a cause is good, not only for me, but for mankind, in so far as it is
> essentially a *loyalty to loyalty*, that is, an aid and a
> furtherance of loyalty in my fellows. It is an evil cause in so far
> as, despite the loyalty that it arouses in me, it is destructive of
> loyalty in the world of my fellows. (Royce 1908 [1995, 56])
> 



While every community hopes for the accomplishment of its central
cause, and sees that cause's fulfillment as its highest
achievement, Royce placed particularly high emphasis on the phenomenon
of loyalty to a lost cause. A lost cause is not in Royce's view
a hopeless cause, but rather one that cannot be fulfilled within the
actual lifetime of the community or any of its members. Many lost
causes are rightly lost, of course, and there is a problematic aspect
to Royce's use of this term. Royce's contemporaries would have
understood "the lost cause" as a reference to "the mythology of
pre-Civil War southern society," a romanticized view of the
Confederate States' defense of slavery and segregation in the
U.S. Civil War (Fischer 2012, 32). Royce identified military action as
an example of predatory loyalty, however, so his veiled reference to
the lost cause of the Confederacy is a very poor example of loyalty.
Besides such misguided "evil causes," though, there are a number of
legitimate causes that are, by this definition, "lost"
simply in virtue of their scope and magnitude. Such causes are not
hopeless, however. It is precisely these causes that establish ideals
capable of evoking our highest hope and moral commitment.



Chief among these are the universal causes of the full attainment of
truth, the complete determination of the nature of reality through
inquiry and interpretation, and of the establishment of universal
loyalty to loyalty itself. In practice, the formula of "loyalty
to loyalty" demands that one's moral and intellectual
sphere become ever broader and remain critical at all levels. All the
communities we actually know, those we inhabit and identify with, are
finite and to some degree "predatory" in Royce's
sense. This is clearly true of small social cliques, isolated
intellectual communities, parochial religious groups, self-interested
unions and corporations, local political movements, and other such
groups. Roycean loyalty requires one to scrutinze the aims and actions
of such communities and to work to reform their disloyal aspects. The
philosophy of loyalty calls us first of all, then, to create and
embrace more cosmopolitan and inclusionary communities. It should be
clear that this is only the first important step of an infinite
process aimed at realizing the ideal of universal loyalty. Any actual
community, whether it be the United Nations or a bickering family,
will in fact fall short of perfect loyalty. When it does so, each must
answer to the same critical scrutiny and calls for reform. There is no
expectation that these high ideals of perfect loyalty, truth and
reality will ever be fully realized. These "lost causes"
are indispensable, in Royce's view, as the source of absolute
norms for any community and its members.



Royce maintained that the logic of volition, pursued far enough,
compels us to embrace precisely these lost causes as our own. In the
course of his extended debate with James over the adequacy of
pragmatism as a doctrine, Royce came to accept many of James's
principles. One, inspired by James's well-known essay "The
Will to Believe," is that any philosophical view is at bottom an
expression of individual volition. Given the fact of our existence in
the world, we must first decide how we are to approach that world, and
then develop our philosophical theories accordingly. A second
principle that Royce adopted is the pragmatist view of truth: truth is
the property possessed by those ideas that succeed in the long run.
Royce's main disagreements with other versons of pragmatism
concern the way these two principles are typically understood. Royce
maintained that although there are several possible attitudes of the
will that one might adopt toward the world (including
Schopenhauer's "will to live" and its opposite,
resignation) only one -- loyalty to the ideal of an ultimate
truth -- is correct. The other possible attitudes of the will are
self-refuting. He accordingly referred to his own position as
"Absolute Voluntarism" (Royce 1913 [2001, 349]). Royce
offered a similar argument concerning the pragmatist notion of truth
(Royce 1913 [2001, 279]). Explicitly adopting one of Peirce's
concepts, Royce argues that to define truth using any conception of
"the long run" -- short of the ideal end of inquiry
-- is self-refuting. Given the apparent finality of this argument
(which is, again, a variation of the Argument from Error) Royce called
his position "Absolute Pragmatism."



Royce's philosophy of loyalty resembles existentialism in
certain respects. Notable among these are the notions that we come to
moral awareness in a world of already established aims and social
projects, that moral responsibility requires a self-conscious and
deliberate individual choice to embrace particular causes, and that
the highest forms of ethical conduct involve dedication and effort in
service of a cause that offers no promise of final success. Royce
differs from later existentialists such as Camus and Sartre, however,
in several important respects. Royce would not accept their notion
that human efforts are finally absurd, unfolding against a backdrop of
a meaningless and indifferent universe. On the contrary, Royce
maintained that the concepts of ultimate meaning and reality are
powerful and legitimate forces in our lives. With existentialism,
Royce recognized the very real chasms that separate one person's
feelings, thoughts, and will from another: the experience of another
may be inscrutable. At the same time, though, he insisted that we
acknowledge the equally important fact that in ordinary social life
minds frequently do work in concert. Groups of people often are
unified in feeling, thought, and will by something that transcends any
of the individuals present (Royce 1913 [2001, 239]).


#### 2.2.2 Theory of Community



Royce was one of the first American philosophers to recognize the
important challenge of Nietzsche's moral vision, which
celebrates those individuals who seek to exercise their autonomous
will to a "socially idealized" power. Such heroic
individualism, also associated with Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
and William James, proves unsatisfactory in Royce's view (Royce
1908 [1995, 41]). Their inspiring ethical visions are doomed to
ineffectiveness precisely because of their extreme individualism.
"There is only one way to be an ethical individual. That is to
choose your cause, and then to serve it, as the Samurai his feudal
chief, as the ideal knight of romantic story his lady, -- in the
spirit of all the loyal" (Royce 1908 [1995, 47]). These
particular examples are meant to illustrate the essentially social
character of loyalty in general: "My life means nothing, either
theoretically or practically, unless I am a member of a
community" (Royce 1913 [2001, 357]).



One of the more striking features of Royce's philosophy is its
emphasis on communities as being logically prior to individuals. As we
have seen, Royce considered the notions of truth and knowledge
unintelligible for the individual unless we posit an ultimate knower
of objective truth, the infinite community of minds. The notions of
personal identity and purpose are likewise unintelligible unless we
posit a community of persons that defines causes and establishes
social roles for those individuals to embrace. The concept of
community is thus central both to Royce's ethics and his
metaphysics. Not just any association or collection of individuals is
a community. Community can only exist where individual members are in
communication with one another so that there is, to some extent and in
some relevant respect, a congruence of feeling, thought, and will
among them. It is also necessary to consider the temporal dimensions
of community. "A community constituted by the fact that each of
its members accepts as a part of his own individual life and self the
same *past* events that each of his fellow-members accepts, may
be called a *community of memory*." Similarly, "A
community constituted by the fact that each of its members accepts, as
part of his own individual life and self, the same expected
*future* events that each of his fellows accepts, may be called
a *community of expectation* or...*a community of
hope*" (PC 248). These common past and future events, which
all members hold as identical parts of their own lives, are the basis
of their loyalty to the community.



As discussed in connection with Royce's ethical theory, some
communities are defined by true loyalty, or adherence to a cause that
harmonizes with the universal ideal of "loyalty to
loyalty." He referred to such communities as "genuine
communities" or "communities of grace." Other
communities are defined by a vicious or predatory loyalty. These
degenerate "natural communities" tend toward the
destruction of others' causes and possibilities of loyalty.
Finally, beyond the actual communities that we directly encounter in
life there is the ideal "Beloved Community" of all those
who would be fully dedicated to the cause of loyalty, truth and
reality itself.



Royce stressed that the sharing of individuals' feelings,
thoughts, and wills that occurs in any community (including the
Beloved Community) should not be taken to imply a mystical blurring or
annihilation of personal identities. Individuals remain individuals,
but in forming a community they attain to a kind of second-order life
that extends beyond any of their individual lives. Where a number of
individuals' loyalty to a cause is coordinated in community over
time, Royce spoke non-figuratively of a super-human personality at
work: a genuine community is united by a guiding or
"interpreting spirit." The interpreting spirit may on
occasion be embodied by a single person such as a leader or other
exemplar, but this is not always the case.


### 2.3 Philosophy of Religion



Though his writings contain a great deal of insight that is relevant
for a strictly naturalistic philosophy, religious concerns figure
prominently from Royce's first major publication, *The
Religious Aspect of Philosophy*, to his last two, *The Sources
of Religious Insight* and *The Problem of Christianity*. As
has been indicated, the main focus of Royce's early work was
metaphysical. In *The World and the Individual* he plainly
identified the object of his inquiry as "the Individual of
Individuals, namely the Absolute, or God himself" (Royce
1899-1901, 1:40). Critics of Royce's early works admired
his metaphysical argumentation but found his conception of God
wanting. Peirce observed that the Absolute Mind bore little
resemblance to the God that people seek in churches -- it is not
the kind of being anyone would worship. James objected that if all our
errors and sorrows are in fact reconciled in the Absolute, then finite
persons would seem to be exonerated from ultimate responsibility for
their actions: they might as well enjoy a lifelong "moral
holiday." With *The Philosophy of Loyalty* Royce began to
devote more attention to the practical questions of ethics and the
philosophy of community. In his last works he drew upon the notion of
loyalty to explain the nature of religious experience in human
communities.



Royce stated that "the central and essential postulate" of
every religion is that "man needs to be saved" (Royce 1912
[2001, 8-9]). Salvation is necessary because of a combination of
two factors. The first is "the idea that there is some aim or
end of human life which is more important than all other aims."
The second is that "man as he now is, or as he naturally is, is
in great danger of so missing this highest aim as to render his whole
life a senseless failure" (Royce 1912 [2001, 12]). Salvation
comes in the form of guidance toward understanding and accomplishing
the highest aim of life, so far as we are able. Given the limitations
and fallibility of the human perspective, Royce maintained that this
guidance must come from some super-human or divine source. Religion is
the sphere of life in which finite human beings are able to get into
touch with this divine source of wisdom and guidance.



In *The Sources of Religious Insight* Royce considered and
rejected several common conceptions of religion before making his case
for a religion of loyalty. His discussion of natural *social
life* as a source of religious insight may be read as a critique
of the "Social Gospel" movement. His consideration of
*reason* is notable not for its familiar observation that
reason is inadequate to religious knowledge, but for his pragmatist
critique of the adequacy of mere reason even for scientific knowledge.
Finally, his careful consideration and rejection of
*individualism* in religion is a direct critique of the
Jamesean view of religious experience. Royce employed his familiar
dialectical method to make his case for religious insight through
participation in the loyal community, the "invisible
church" guided by a divine spirit and devoted to the highest
ideals of goodness. In the *Sources* Royce offered a view of
religion as common experience. It is "common" both in the
sense that it does not consist primarily of the kind of extraordinary
experiences that James emphasized, and in the sense that it is a
fundamentally social rather than individual experience of reality.


#### 2.3.1 Christianity



While the *Sources* concerns the nature of religious experience
in general, *The Problem of Christianity* focuses on the
question "In what sense, if any, can the modern man consistently
be, in creed, a Christian?" (Royce 1913 [2001, 62]).
Royce's answer actually rejects the sort of static concepts and
beliefs usually implied by devotion to specific creeds, including
those identified with Christianity. While his view pivots on the
Christian notion of divine incarnation, it is not the incarnation of
God in Jesus but rather the incarnation of the Spirit in the living
church that Royce emphasized: "the Church, rather than the
person of the founder, ought to be viewed as the central idea of
Christianity" (Royce 1913 [2001, 43]). The Christian
church's primary importance, for Royce, is as a paradigm of
community. He regarded the Pauline church as the best exemplar of a
graced community: at its best, the church strives to embody the
guiding Interpreter Spirit, so as to become a Universal Community of
Interpretation "whose life comprises and unifies all the social
varieties and all the social communities which...we know to be
real" (Royce 1913 [2001, 340]). Doctrines and creeds may change;
the particular institutions that identify themselves as churches may
or may not actually be communities of grace. What matters in the end
is the process of interpretation -- the process of communicating
and understanding one another in actual, imperfect, finite communities
of grace bound together by loyalty and striving toward the ultimate
and ideal Beloved Community.



Royce was critical of many historical churches because they had in his
view lost sight of the spirit that ought to guide them. At the same
time, he identified grace at work in many communities that were not
self-consciously religious. He had great respect for non-Christian
religions, paying especially careful attention to Buddhism (Royce took
the trouble to learn Sanskrit, and *The Problem of
Christianity* includes a very sympathetic presentation of
Buddhism). In the end, however, Royce was a philosopher who worked
within the intellectual context of Western Christianity. He maintained
that only the Christian model of the loyal community successfully
combines the true spirit of universal interpretation with an
appreciation of the "infinite worth" of the individual as
a unique member of the ideal Beloved Community, the Kingdom of Heaven
(Royce 1913 [2001, 193]).


#### 2.3.2 The Problem of Evil



The problem of evil is a persistent theme throughout Royce's
writings. He struggled with tragedy in his personal life and sought to
understand it better through philosophy. As an idealist he also had to
struggle with evil as a problem of metaphysics. Idealism maintains
that all deeds and events are ultimately taken up and reconciled in a
final perspective. This seems to suggest that the evil, sorrow, and
pain that run through human life are illusory -- or what seems
even less comprehensible, that our experience of suffering is somehow
good, that it is "all for the best." While some idealists
have accepted these apparent implications of their metaphysics, Royce
maintained that evil is a real fact of the world. He insisted that we
confront evil *as* evil and not regard it as a means to attain
a preordained but inscrutable Divine purpose. He sought to understand
evil philosophically. In seeking that understanding he was not content
to explain it away or to salve its effects by appealing to a clever
theodicy.



Royce embraced a theistic process metaphysics that recognizes evil as
a real force and suffering as an irreducible fact of experience. In
"The Problem of Job" Royce addressed the traditional
problem of evil: "Grant Job's own presupposition that God
is a being other than this world, that he is its external creator and
ruler, and then all solutions fail. God is either then cruel or
helpless, as regards all finite ill of the sort that Job
endures." If we consider that God is not a separate being, then
"When you suffer, *your sufferings are God's*
sufferings, not his external work, not his external penalty, not the
fruit of his neglect, but identically his own personal woe. In you God
himself suffers, precisely as you do, and has all your concern in
overcoming this grief." Grief is not "a physical means to
an external end," but rather "a logically necessary and
eternal constituent of the divine life" (McDermott 1969, 843).
Though Royce believed that events are collectively tending toward an
ultimate reconciliation in the eternal perspective of the Beloved
Community, they are not erased even in that ideal perspective. The
events of life (joyful and sorrowful alike) persist, both as
experiences of the individuals who undergo them and also as
God's own experiences.



Royce did not seek to explain away or lessen the reality of evil: it
is in his view a brute fact of being, an inevitable result of the
world's existence in time. Given the fact of evil, the most
important question concerns how we finite beings ought to respond to
it. His answer was that we should adopt the attitude of loyalty to
goodness and truth, which as real forces in the world are the
metaphysical opposite of evil. The loyal member of a genuine community
confronts evil and wills to overcome it through the very fact of
loyalty to its opposite. Evil can never be eradicated -- this is
another way of saying that loyalty to loyalty is a lost cause. Though
the *success* of this high cause lies in the unreachable
future, the *meaning* of our response is manifest in our
present lives.



Royce's powerful and original explanation of the doctrine of
atonement in *The Problem of Christianity* details how the
loyal community can best respond to human evil. The highest kind of
transgression in an ethics of loyalty is treason, or the willful
betrayal of one's own cause and the community of people who
serve it. The traitor is one who has freely embraced a cause and
joined with a community of grace in service of that cause, but who
then culpably commits some act that undermines the cause and the
community. Such a betrayal is but one step away from moral suicide: it
threatens to destroy the network of purposes and concrete social
relationships that define the traitor's self (Royce 1913 [2001,
162]). Atonement occurs when the traitor and the community are
reconciled, when they are both saved from the evil deed through some
act of the will.



Royce found traditional Christian accounts of atonement
unsatisfactory. They do not adequately explain how both the traitor
and the community are reconciled and saved in the human sphere. Much
less do they explain the mysterious details of how atonement
reconciles the sinner with God. The traitor who recognizes the
magnitude of what has been lost through the act of betrayal lives in a
state that Royce called "the hell of the irrevocable"
(Royce 1913 [2001, 162]). Royce sought an explanation of atonement
that acknowledges the irrevocable nature of a deed that has been done,
and which changes everything for the sinner and the community that has
been harmed. "Penal satisfaction" theories of atonement
simply do not speak to the sinner's situation: to be told that
an angry God demands repayment or retribution for the betrayal, and
that this price has been paid (by the violent death of Jesus Christ,
or by any other sacrifice) does not repair the sinner's own
devastated moral universe. The sinner "is dealing, not with the
'angry God' of a well-known theological tradition, but
with himself" (Royce 1913 [2001, 170-71]). Royce seeks a
theory that first makes sense of the immediate human aspect of
atonement. If one can be found, it may then be considered
theologically. A theory of "penal satisfaction," which
claims to answer theological questions, but remains meaningless or
mysterious in human terms, is simply unsatisfactory.



The concrete human evil of treason is that the traitor's loyalty
to the cause, and with it the moral relations that bound the community
together, have been broken and cannot be restored to their previous
state. "Moral theories" of atonement account for change in
the traitor's person but fail to explain how the "wounded
or shattered community" can be repaired (Royce 1913 [2001,
175]). Such theories, in Royce's account, explain that in
contemplating Christ's willing sacrifice of his own life for the
sake of the human community, the sinner experiences deep repentance
and develops a new capacity for love of the betrayed community. The
sinner's soul is purified and made better (Royce 1913 [2001,
172]). Such a process may bring the sinner to realize the hellish
magnitude of irrevocable treason. Royce pointed out, though, that such
a process by itself does nothing to reconcile the sinner to the
community or to repair that community. Such reconciliation and healing
requires something more than a change in the individual's
heart.



This brought Royce to consider theories of atonement that center upon
the community's act of forgiveness. Forgiveness, as an act of
the community and not the sinner, is clearly essential to atonement.
Moreover, it involves a recognition of human frailty -- not just
the moral frailty of the sinner in question, but that of all humans.
Forgiveness involves a recognition that anyone might commit such an
act, that the cause of perfect loyalty is a lost cause. Even when it
can occur, though, forgiveness does not restore the community to the
innocent state of harmony and "unscarred love" that
existed before the betrayal (Royce 1913 [2001, 177-78]).
Atonement moves the community and the traitor beyond the irrevocable
deed of betrayal. This cannot be done by an act of forgiveness that
returns the community and its relations to the way things were before.
"The way things were" is irrevocably gone.



In its human aspect atonement occurs through an interpretive act that
creates new relationships among the members, including the traitor,
together with a new understanding and fresh embracing of their
unifying cause. The act of atonement "can only be accomplished
by the community, or on behalf of the community, through some
steadfastly loyal servant who acts, so to speak, as the incarnation of
the spirit of the community itself" (Royce 1913 [2001, 180]).
This person acts as a mediating third party between the traitor and
the betrayed community. Things are not made the same as they were
before through atonement, but are in an important respect made better
-- precisely because of the unique circumstances created by the
original act of treason. Through the atoning act genuine community is
restored and all the individuals involved may emerge as wiser, more
resolved servants of their common cause. In this sense, Royce wrote,
"*The world, as transformed by this creative deed, is better
than it would have been had all else remained the same, but had that
deed of treason not been done at all*" (Royce 1913 [2001,
180]).



Royce indicated that this insight about the human aspect of atonement
provides the basis for a theological understanding of the atonement
involved in Christ's teachings and death. He did not himself
articulate the details of a theological doctrine of atonement,
however. He stated "the central postulate" of "the
highest form of human spirituality" as follows: "*No
baseness or cruelty of treason so deep or so tragic shall enter our
human world, but that loyal love shall be able in due time to oppose
to just that deed of treason its fitting deed of atonement*"
(Royce 1913 [2001, 186]). This postulate cannot be proved true, of
course, but human communities can assert it and act upon it as if it
were true. Christian doctrine, as Royce presents it, takes this same
postulate as "a report concerning the supernatural works of
Christ" (Royce 1913 [2001, 186]). In *The Problem of
Christianity* Royce had set out to answer the question "In
what sense, if any, can the modern man consistently be, in creed, a
Christian?" One form of his answer, based on this theory of
atonement, is that communities can and should act upon the faith that,
through the spirit of genuine community, atonement is always possible
as a response to human sin and evil.


### 2.4. Race



In 1908 Royce published a collection of essays entitled *Race
Questions, Provincialism, and Other American Problems*. The key
essay, "Race Questions and Prejudices," had appeared in
the *International Journal of Ethics* in 1906. This established
Royce as one of the most prominent white philosophers of his time to
address racial prejudice, drawing upon the leading ethnological
research of his day. Royce's philosophy enters debates about race in
another important way, as well. Martin Luther King, Jr. adapted
Royce's concept of the Beloved Community--which King had likely
learned through his mentor, Howard W. Thurman--as an important
rhetorical and visionary ideal for the U. S. civil rights movement
(Jensen and King 
 2017).[1]



This history suggested Royce's philosophy as a promising source for
contemporary dialogues about race and community. Scholars including
Jacquelyn Kegley and Shannon Sullivan have proposed models of
egalitarian, anti-racist Roycean "genuine communities" (See Kegley
1997, and Sullivan's introduction to Royce 1908 [2009].) Tommy J.
Curry has argued, however, that Royce's philosophy is tainted by
racist ideas: it does not have a progressive vision of social justice
or of resisting anti-Black racism (Curry 2018). The debate over racist
elements in Royce's philosophy has been
extensive.[2]
Beyond its implications for our appraisal and use of Royce's work, the
controversy illustrates the challenges contemporary scholars face when
confronting ugly facts about the historical figures they study. Here
we will survey the concerns that have been raised about apparent
anti-Black and colonial themes in Royce's work. Such a survey may help
outline considerations that are relevant for scholars addressing other
problematic figures.



It is common to dismiss objectionable features of a past
thinker's work under the excuse that "everyone is a
product of their times," and thus cannot be fairly judged for
embracing views and language that were then widely accepted. The
presumption is that we can excise the objectionable elements, while
still carrying the main ideas forward. On this view, we can excuse
the objectionable parts as something like incidental errors, which can
be corrected without affecting the substance of what was written. Such
elements should be identified and placed in context but, unlike mere
typographical errors, the offending material should be fully
acknowledged and not merely erased.



Royce's use of the phrase "lost cause" in explaining
the concept of loyalty can perhaps be treated in this manner. While
the phrase does carry the baggage of reference to a mythical vision of
the racist and sexist Confederacy (Fischer 2012, 32), it is not
restricted to that reference. People embrace many admirable
"lost causes," in the sense that their causes can never be
perfectly fulfilled. These communities and their causes can serve as
exemplars of Roycean loyalty; explicitly rejecting the problematic
Lost Cause of the Confederacy as one of these does not affect
Royce's
 point.[3]
That he chose "The Lost Cause" and the decision by Robert
E. Lee to defend the Confederacy as positive exemplars of loyalty can
be challenged on Royce's own principles--Royce elsewhere
explicitly rejected the "disastrous" association of
loyalty with warfare (1995 [1908], 7-8). The fact that he failed
to do so can be seen both as a useful warning to philosophers who fail
to be adequately critical of their own commitments, and as further
evidence that loyalty is a useful concept in understanding moral
commitments and where they can go wrong.



A much greater concern arises when it is clear that a figure embraced
objectionable views, acted upon them and included them as elements of
their philosophy. Curry and others have shown that Royce did embrace
several problematic positions. Royce was indeed ahead of many others
in rejecting biological or "scientific" racism, and with
it the view that ostensible "racial characteristics" are
fixed or essential. He instead embraced a form of cultural racism in
which white civilization, and especially Anglo-American
civilization,[4]
was considered superior to Black, Asian, and other racial/cultural
societies. Accordingly, Royce assumed that the ideal "beloved
community" would emerge from the Anglo-American culture of the
late 19th century, and would develop in a way that reflects
Anglo-American principles, values, and institutions. Royce maintained
that racial characteristics arise from environment and culture; under
different influences, then, different characteristics will
develop. This assumption led Royce to regard British colonialism as a
"civilizing" force rather than an oppressive one, and to
advocate for a similar imposition of civilizing administrative
measures in the American south. It led him to assume that foreigners
and non-white people ought to be assimilated into Anglo-American
communities; he did not entertain the possibility that they might
develop genuine communities built on their own history and
culture. Finally, it led him to advocate for a "wise
provincialism" in which different communities reflect the
distinctive culture and history of their members. Such a model does
acknowledge the importance of diversity and pluralism, but Royce seems
to have thought that this diversity would be constrained within the
core Anglo-American values and institutions to which everyone had
already been assimilated. This limited provincial diversity thus
apparently arose not from respect for the value of different cultures,
but from a need to maintain order by not appearing intolerably
oppressive (Curry 2018, 27).



We ought not to read Royce's rejection of scientific racism as a
complete rejection of racist ideas. We must recognize his praise of
colonialist models of governance, and his account of the way
communities ought to receive newcomers, as arising from racist
assumptions. It is necessary to acknowledge these problematic
assumptions in his work. Anyone who wishes to apply Royce's
philosophy to contemporary problems must understand why he included
these assumptions, and, if possible, avoid them in their own
thinking.



Finally, we must consider whether Royce's version of white
supremacist thinking is a necessary structural element in his
philosophy. Curry has established that to overlook these assumptions
is to present an inaccurate representation of what Royce actually
thought, and of why he thought it. It is not clear, however, that one
would need to retain any of these assumptions in developing a
contemporary theory of community, metaphysics, religion, or logic that
draws on Royce's work (Pratt 2014 and 2021). In principle it may
be possible to develop an anti-racist vision of community based on
Roycean principles (Tunstall 2021, 28-29; Jackson 2021,
68-70; Barnette 2021, 102-04). Royce conceived the Beloved
Community as an ideal unified around a common set of
loyalties. Racist, militaristic, nationalistic, and other
"predatory" loyalties would be eliminated in the
historical emergence of this community, and it would retain
contributions from many distinctive cultures (Jackson 2021,
63). Moving beyond Royce's unitary ideal, we might instead
envision a pluralist, multicultural world that contains many kinds of
beloved communities. Both visions are logically possible, but whether
either one is practically possible is not a question for
philosophy. This is a matter for people to work out the hard way, in
the complex world of history and politics, rather than in the
deliberately simplified realm of theory.


## 3. Logic



Royce understood logic as the science of order focused on
"problems regarding, *not* the methods by which a thinker
succeeds, nor yet the norms, but rather the *Forms*, the
*Categories*, the *Types of Order*, which characterize
any realm of objects" (Royce 1913a, 69). In a variety of work
beginning with *The World and The Individual* (1900) continuing
through the remainder of his life in published and unpublished papers,
Royce proposed a logical system with both formal and informal,
philosophical implications. He called his logic "System
\(\Sigma\)."


### 3.1 Elements of System \(\Sigma\)


#### 3.1.1 Modes of Action



The logic of \(\Sigma\) begins, according to Royce, with the
ontological claim that the terms of the logic "may be defined
as, 'certain possible modes of action that are open to any
rational being who can act at all, and who can also reflect upon his
own modes of possible action' " (1913a,
 130-1).[5]
 Hence the subject matter of logic is "objects" understood
not as fixed entities but as "modes of action." Note that
for Royce, a 'rational being' is a purposive being: that
is, an agent understood as something capable of action toward a
purpose. In *World and the Individual* he wrote: "At any
moment your ideas, in so far as they are rational, embody a
purpose" (1900, 441-2). "And so," he said
elsewhere, "the empirical world is a whole, a life fulfilling
the purposes of our ideas. It is that or it is nothing" (1900,
368). The logic that Royce proposed is therefore a logic of action
where actions are taken as purposive.



As an ontological starting point, modes of action should be understood
as "general" terms, in the sense proposed by C. S. Peirce.
Generals, for Peirce, are like habits in that they specify a general
state of affairs that can be realized in multiple different ways
(Peirce, 1931, 2:148). Generals stand in contrast to universals. While
universals are deductively complete categories, generals are emergent
categories where some particulars fit closely to the features
specified by the general concept and others less so. The category of
oak tree, for example, can be realized by a wide range of particular
oak trees from tall, full trees, to small, stunted trees, to trees
broken by ice and wind. Each is, in a general sense, an oak tree, but
each realizes the concept in a particular way. The concept of species
is likewise general in that a species includes marginal cases that are
not clearly in the category or clearly out of it. While it is tempting
(especially in the case of terms that are defined in a particular
field of inquiry) to suppose that categories are the nominal
constructs of inquirers, Peirce argued that generals are themselves
real (not nominal), so that natural kinds or categories are the
products of evolving and intersecting activities, and as such are as
much discovered as they are created for purposes of inquiry (Peirce,
8:12; Mayorga, 2007).



Modes of action are similarly general. Talk about the relation between
actions \(A\) and \(B\) is talk about
the relation between two general ways of acting. When \(A\)
is actually taken, then it is a particular token of
the type of action \(A\) and it stands in a distinctive
relation with other modes of action with which it is compatible and
still other modes of action with which it is not. By framing his logic
as a logic of modes of action, Royce could include both categories of
commonly understood actions (walking, talking, reading, judging), but
was also able to include any sort of persistent being by seeing a
being as a process involving distinctive characteristic actions in
relation to general categories or modes of action. An apple is a thing
that acts like an apple; a mountain is a thing that acts like a
mountain; a fine pinot noir is thing that acts like a fine pinot noir.
The power of this approach is that the objects of logic are
necessarily understood as ongoing activities that both close off
possibilities and open new ones with each action.


#### 3.1.2 Fundamental Operations



The primary operation in Royce's logic is the *exclusive
 disjunction*[6],
 an operation or possible operation that divides actions into two
"obverse" or incompatible categories where if one action
from a category is taken, it eliminates the possibility of taking an
action in the other. For example, an exclusive disjunction is present
when an agent selects a candidate on a ballot. To select the candidate
is to lose the option to choose another or to simply opt out of
voting. Put another way, actions are exclusively related when they are
incompatible, that is, they cannot be taken together. Royce's
logic is founded on the relation that expresses the operation of
judgment, that is, the selection by an agent of one alternative over
another where the alternatives are incompatible. System \(\Sigma\) is
a logic of modes of action and a logic of agency.



Exclusively-related actions also introduce the operation of
*negation*. When an action is negated, it is not taken (or is
excluded from the possibility of being taken). So, if action \(A\)
and action \(B\) are related by
exclusive disjunction, then if action \(A\) is taken,
action \(B\) is negated, \(\neg B\).



The exclusive relation that holds between incompatible actions also
provides a context for Royce's notion of *equivalence*
(Royce 1905, 391). An action, \(A\), is logically
equivalent to another action, \(B\), if and only if
they are compatible (one can be taken without excluding the other).
So, for example, if \(A\) and \(B\) are
compatible and \(B\) and \(\neg B\) are incompatible,
then \(A\) and \(\neg B\) are also incompatible. If so,
then \(A = B\). In the case of voting just mentioned, the three-term
relation (voting for candidate \(M\), voting for
someone else, and not voting at all) are together incompatible. If we
consider the first option, voting for \(M\), then the
other two options are equivalent because they equally eliminate voting
for \(M\) if one or the other is taken. Equivalence
then is relative to compatibility in a given situation defined by a
set of incompatible or "obverse" possibilities.



Exclusive disjunction and equivalence suggest two other basic
relations among actions: *symmetry and asymmetry* (Royce 1905,
379-385; 1913a, 97-100). Exclusive disjunctions are
symmetrical in that their order in relation to the disjunctive terms
does not matter. That is, if \(A\) or \(\neg A\) is an
exclusive disjunction, then \(\neg A\) or \(A\) is
also. Equivalence is also symmetrical in that if \(A\)
and \(B\) are equivalent, then \(B\) and
\(A\) are also equivalent. In either case, the actions
are not ordered with respect to each other. When actions are ordered
such that \(A\) is antecedent to \(B\)
(or vice versa), then the relation is asymmetrical.



In general, the process of ordering is a twofold transformation.
Possibilities of action emerge as symmetrical exclusive disjunctions
and are transformed into asymmetrical relations such that one action
is antecedent to the other. If \(A\) or \(B\)
is an exclusive disjunction, then taking action \(A\)
results in the negation of action \(B\),
such that \(\neg B\) is a consequence of the
antecedent taking of \(A\). The symmetrical exclusive
disjunction is transformed by the action of an agent into the
asymmetrical antecedent/consequent relation.


### 3.2 The Basic Relations of System \(\Sigma\)



Given exclusive disjunction, equivalence, symmetry, and asymmetry,
Royce proposed that such relations could be expressed as a single
ordering relation, the *obverse* or \(O\)-*relation*.[7]
 Represented '\(O(A \: B)\)', the \(O\)-relation
marks two possible courses or modes of
action, \(A\) and \(B\), and indicates
that these courses of action are incompatible: that is, \(O(A\: B)\)
can be read as the assertion that action A and action B cannot both be
taken or that if \(A\) is taken \(B\)
cannot be taken and vice versa. \(O\)-relations
simultaneously represent a state of affairs such that two possible
courses of action are available, one of which can be actualized and
the other excluded. \(O\)-relations are also such that,
in the course of things, one of the disjuncts must be taken. If
\(O(A\: B)\), then it is also the case that "neither" is
not an option in just the way that "neither" is not an
option for \(O(A \: \neg A)\). The \(O\)-relation can
include as many terms as are, when taken together, incompatible and,
regardless of the number of terms, they may still be reduced to the
dyad \(O(a \:\neg a)\). Taken as a set of incompatible actions, \(O(A
\: B)\) is an \(O\)-*collection* (Royce 1905,
390), as are \(O(A\: B\: C)\) and \(O(A\: B\: C\: \ldots \: n)\). Now
if \(A\) and \(B\) are incompatible (and
so then are \(\neg A\) and \(\neg B\)), it is also the case that
\(\neg A\) and \(B\) are compatible as are \(\neg B\)
and \(A\). These terms are then related by the
compatibility relation, equivalence, or the \(E\)-*relation*
(Royce 1905, 390-391) such
that \(E(\neg A\: B)\) and \(E(A \:\neg B)\).



Royce summarized the central ontological claims of his system this
way: "whatever else the world contains, if it only contains a
reasonable being who knows and intends his own acts, then this being
is aware of a certain relation, the relation between performing and
not performing any act which he considers in advance of action. And
thus relations amongst acts are in such wise necessary facts, that
whoever acts at all, or whoever, even in ideal, contemplates
*possible courses of action*, must regard at least some of
these relations as present in the realm of his conceived *modes of
action*" (1913a, 120-1. When Royce introduced the
formal system \(\Sigma\) in his 1905 paper, "The Relation of the
Principles of Logic to the Foundations of Geometry," he proposed
six "laws" to which \(O\)-collections must
conform. Restated, these six laws are as follows:


1. If \(O(\alpha )\) then \(O(\alpha \: \beta )\), whatever actions
\(b\) includes.
2. If \(\beta \) is a collection of elements that are all complements
of some other collection \(\delta \) and \(O(\beta)\), then
 \(O(\delta)\).[8]
3. There exists at least one element of \(\Sigma\).
4. If an element \(x\) of \(\Sigma\) exists, then \(y\) exists such
that \(x \ne y\).
5. If \(A \ne B\) (and so incompatible or \(O(A\: B)\)), then there
exists another element or action, \(C\), such that
\(E(A\: C)\) and \(E(B\: C)\) and \(O(A\: B\: C)\).
6. For some set of actions, \(\lambda\), and action \(A\)
such that \(O(\lambda \: A)\), there exists another
action \(B\) such that \(O(\lambda\: B)\) and that for
any element of \(\lambda\), such as \(1\_n\), \(O(A\: B\: 1\_n )\).



The six laws are offered by Royce as postulates, but they are intended
to provide both relational and ontological parameters for ordering.
The first two laws establish the existence of exclusive disjunctions
which are necessary for a world in which there are agents. Laws three
and four establish that the universe is such that it includes a
principle of generation or emergence--there is at least one
thing, and if there is one thing there are infinitely many
 more.[9]
 The fifth and sixth laws stipulate the constraints on emergent
actions. The fifth law establishes paradoxical objects that, while
compatible with two different incompatible objects, are not compatible
with these objects when taken together. Likewise, the sixth law
established that \(O\)-collections also generate new
objects or terms that extend the possibilities included in a given
O-collection. The six laws provide the generative landscape in which
agents emerge and operate. They also reinforce the idea that agency is
predicated on both selecting possibilities and losing them permanently
so that agency, whatever else it involves, entails both opportunity
and
 sacrifice.[10]



System \(\Sigma\) then is the process of transforming symmetrically
related possibilities to asymmetrical ordered action through the
negation of some possible action(s). In most general terms, this
allows us to think of \(O\)-relations as modal and
conditional. If the \(O\)-relation holds of actions \(A\)
and \(B\), then it is the case that if
\(A\) is negated (not taken or sacrificed) then \(B\)
follows. Rather than being a material conditional
\((\neg A \supset B)\), the antecedent and consequent are necessarily
related. If \(O(A\: B)\) then \(\Box (A \supset \neg B)\) and \(\Box
(\neg A \supset
 B)\).[11]
 Consequently, the dyadic \(O\)-relation, \(O(A\: B)\)
can also be represented as \(\Box (A \equiv \neg B)\) and so as \(\Box
(A \supset \neg B) \wedge \Box (B \supset \neg A)\). Given the
equivalence relation, it follows that \(B\) is
equivalent to \(\neg A\) and so can be substituted for \(B\)
so that \(O(A\: \neg A)\) and \(\Box (A \equiv \neg
\neg A)\). \(O\)-relations, however, are not limited to
dyadic relations. Consider three possible courses of action such that
taking any one requires the elimination of the other two courses of
action (for example, selecting one of three paths at a fork in the
road). This situation can be represented as \(O(A\: B\: C)\). Note
that if \(A\) is taken, then neither \(B\)
or \(C\) can be taken so that
together, \((B \lor C)\) is equivalent to \(\neg A\). Likewise, if \(B\)
is taken, then \((A \lor C)\) is equivalent to \(\neg
B\) and so on. So \(O(A\: B\: C)\) is also

 

\[ \Box [(A \equiv \neg (B \lor C)) \wedge (B \equiv \neg (A \lor C)) \wedge (C \equiv \neg (A \lor B))] \]


However, since the fifth law allows that every pair of incompatible
actions generates a third term making the initial dyadic \(O\)-relation
a triadic \(O\)-relation,
conditional relations require an additional relation that represents
both the compatibility of the resulting terms and the asymmetrical
order created. Royce proposes the F-relation for this purpose. An \(F\)-*relation*
(like the symmetrical \(E\)-relation)
represents the terms of the original \(O\)-relation
modified so that they are
 compatible.[12]
 It also adds an additional symbol (the vertical stroke) to mark the
place of the antecedent term that makes the \(F\)-relation
 asymmetrical.[13]



Consider \(O(a\: b)\) By the fifth law, \(O(a\: b)\) adds a third
term, \(c\), which is at once compatible with \(a\)
and \(b\) (that is, \(E(a\: c)\) and
\(E(b\: c)\)) and taken together with \(a\) and \(b\)
form \(O(a\: b\: c)\). This third element, following
the work of A.B. Kempe (1890), is "between" \(a\)
and \(b\). Royce (like Kempe) captures
this betweenness by requiring that the new third term be compatible
with both terms but not reducible to them. In effect, the fifth law
says that whenever two actions are incompatible, there exists an
action "between" the two that can, with a correct
transformation, order the obverse actions. Using Royce's
illustration, Figure 1 represents \(O(a\: b\: c)\) where \(c\)
is compatible with \(a\) and \(b\)
and the region where all three fields overlap, there
are no elements. Figure 2 represents \( F(\neg c | a\: b )\) where the
region \(\neg c\) overlaps, and so is compatible with, regions \(A\)
and \(B\).



![to be supplied](Figure1.png)

Figure 1. \(O (a\: b\: c)\)




![to be supplied](Figure2.png)

Figure 2. \(F (\neg c | a\: b)\)




As Royce explains, "The \(F\)-relation, so long
as 'obverses' or 'negatives' exist, follows
immediately from, and is equivalent to, an \(O\)-relation.
For, in the diagram [above] if \(s\)
is the total surface in which \(a\),
\(b\), and \(c\) are included, then when
'\(c\) is between \(a\) and \(b\),'
'\(a\), \(b\),
and \(\neg c\) (\(\neg c\) being the obverse of \(c\))
constitute an \(O\)-collection,'
or 'are in the \(O\)-relation' "
(Royce 1905, 387).



The \(O\)-relation is transformed into an \(F\)-relation
by negating one of the three terms,
selecting one term as the *antecedent* and another term as the
"*origin*." This is written as \(F (\neg A | B\:
C)\), where the term to the left of the vertical stroke is the
antecedent, and the two remaining terms are the consequent and the
action "in terms of which" the antecedent and consequent
are so ordered. The expression can be read: If \(A\) is
not taken then \(B\) follows with respect to \(C\).
"It is this origin, [\(C\)],"
Royce observes, "which gives
'sense' to the pair [\(A\: B\)] in the expression [\(A
\supset B\) with respect to \(C\)]" (1905,
407).



While \(O\)-relations are indeterminate as to outcome,
since the terms are symmetrically related, F-relations mark the
selection of possible courses of action and so establish the linear,
asymmetrical relations of agential action. Royce concludes:
"Wherever a linear series is in question, wherever an origin of
coordinates is employed, wherever 'cause and effect,'
'ground and consequence,' orientation in space or
direction of tendency in time are in question, the dyadic asymmetrical
relations involved are essentially the same as the relation here
symbolized by [\(p \supset q\) with respect to \(y\)]"
(1905, 407).



The conditionals that result from the initial \(O\)-collection
include \(\neg A \supset B\) with respect
to \(C\), \(\neg B \supset A\) with respect to \(C\),
\(\neg C \supset A\) with respect to \(B\),
and so on. Since \(O\)-relations are
symmetrical, there are as many alternative "courses" of
action as there are possibilities of negation and selection of
antecedents and origins. Since the conditionals are possibilities,
they could also be represented "\(\Diamond (\neg C \supset B)\),
\(A\)" where \(A\) represents a
shared propositional
 parameter.[14]
 "It is now possible," Royce concludes, "to point
out that the elements of \(\Sigma\) possess the properties of a system
of logical classes, or of entities to which the ordinary algebra of
logic applies" (1905, 427). The resulting conditionals operate
in a system that is like a relevant possible world logic were the
truth of the conditional is dependent on its truth assignment through
the propositional parameter that orders antecedent and consequent.
However, Royce cautions against reliance on logics that are primarily
interested in conditional relations. Such interest is a result of our
"intellectual habits" but "in several respects
inferior to the more direct expression in terms of \(O\)-relations.
... When, in fact, we attempt to
describe the relations of the system \(\Sigma\) merely in terms of the
antecedent-consequent relation, we not only limit ourselves to an
arbitrary choice of origin, but miss the power to survey at a glance
relations of more than a dyadic, or triadic character"
(381-2).


### 3.3 Modal Logic of Agency



As an idealist philosopher, Royce entered the study of logic (with
other idealists of his time) interested in the operations of the will
and the formalization of judgment. The central operation in judgment
is the selection of one alternative and the rejection of others. In
the debates about the central logical operations that emerged in the
1890s and early 20th century, realist philosophers argued
against founding logic on the basic relation that emerges in
judgments. Rather, they argued in favor of using the inclusive
disjunction as the starting point. The reason given for this
alternative was that the inclusive disjunction provided a better model
for the logic of burgeoning empirical science in two ways. First, it
began with objects already in existence that can be put in relation to
other already existing objects. Second, the exclusive disjunction
requires the recognition of objects that do not exist in the ordinary
sense (negated objects, for example). When the debates ended with the
start of World War One, the realist logicians held the field and
Royce's alternative (and the work of other idealist logicians)
faded from view.



Royce's development of system \(\Sigma\) occurred before modal
logic was formalized. While Royce uses the language of necessity and
possibility in his discussion of logic, his system has no formal place
for it. In fact, his student, C. I. Lewis, seeing the need to account
for modal operators in understanding the conditionals of logic,
proposed the first modal system in 1918, two years after Royce's
death. Lewis's introduction of the strict conditional as a means
of correcting Russell and Whitehead's material conditional
system required the introduction of modal operators to serve, in
effect, as the parameter needed to connect the antecedent and
consequent of conditionals (Pratt 2007).



Royce's project was framed as one fundamentally concerned with
action as he observed in a 1906 paper. "[T]he fundamental
logical relations," he wrote, "are characteristic not only
of our world of thought, but also of our world of action. For
will-acts involve acceptance and refusal, affirmation and negation, a
consciousness of consequences, a facing of alternatives, a union of
various acts in one act; so that the logic of action is in form
precisely the same as the logic of abstract thought" (1906,
100). From this perspective, Royce observed in an unpublished lecture
from 1905, "There is a fundamental relation which may be called
the logical relation par excellence. It is the relation between
'yes' and 'no', the relation which
characterizes two mutually exclusive alternatives, that together
exhaust all the possibilities. It is the relation that one faces, when
one has a choice to make. It is also the relation that obtains between
any logical class and the negative of that class" (1905a, 6).
The \(O\)-relation then marks both necessity and
possibility (that is, it marks a necessary relation between
'yes' and 'no' and it exhausts the
possibilities). As I observed earlier, the \(O\)-relation
can be captured in modern modal logic by
representing it as the conjunction of two conditionals such that
\(O(A\: B)\) is \(\Box (A \equiv \neg B)\). Although not founded as a
modal logic, system \(\Sigma\) is modal in its operations and so
potentially formalizable in modal terms.


### 3.4 Royce's Logic and Formal Mathematics



Royce was deeply interested in the developing theories of logic,
mathematics, and geometry in the 1890s and early 1900s. While he had a
lifelong interest in logic and mathematics, it was not until 1898,
when he attended a series of lectures by C. S. Peirce titled
*Reasoning and the Logic of Things* (1898 [1992]), that he
undertook a thorough study of the work of Cantor, Dedekind, Klein,
Cayley and Kempe. Royce regarded Peirce's lectures as
"epoch marking," as he noted in a letter to James (1970,
422), in part because new mathematical theory gave him a way to
address a central criticism of his metaphysics.



In the years immediately prior to the Peirce lectures, Royce's
metaphysical views had been sharply criticized on the grounds that his
concept of the Absolute had made individuals unreal, subsumed by the
whole (Howison in Royce 1897, 98-9). Royce countered the
criticism, by arguing that the Absolute was a system that was composed
of real individuals (2000, 297, 314-5). Royce, however, was
unable to provide a compelling formal argument for the possibility of
a system in which the parts of a whole could also be distinct, a view
rejected with a well-known argument of F. H. Bradley (Royce 1959,
477-485). Peirce's 1898 lecture included a case for his
then-current conception of continuity (he proposed several) in which
the unified whole was a logical consequence of a universe of discrete
individuals (Moore 2007), that is, where "we have now reached a
multitude so vast that the individuals of such a collection melt into
one another and lose their distinct identities" (Peirce 1898
[1992, 159]). In making his case, Peirce called on resources from
Boole, Cantor, Dedekind and Kempe among others. By 1900, Royce offered
his own version of continuity, the concept of an infinite,
self-representative system. Published as a lengthy
"supplementary essay" to *The World and
Individual*, First Series, and framed as an answer to Bradley,
Royce aimed to provide a proof that a single infinite system could
contain multitudes of distinct individuals.



By 1901, Royce had begun to reframe his metaphysics in terms of the
*Erlanger Programm*, devised by Klein (1893) as a means of
classifying different geometries by identifying what is invariant
across transformations in each system. Klein demonstrated that the
invariants of projective geometry could be captured in a set of
postulates that would also hold for Euclidean and other non-Euclidean
geometries each of which included the invariants of projective
geometry and additional invariants (Bell, 1940, 442-448). Royce
argued that Kempe's system, and Royce's own System
\(\Sigma\), were defined by abstract postulates that would be
necessary for any system of order whatever including projective
geometry. In unpublished notes from 1901, Royce explicitly attributed
the source of his discussion to the *Erlanger Programm* and
argued that invariants of the sort identified by Kempe are illustrated
in projective geometry, "just" land transactions,
"Kant's moral world," musical performance, and
selves. For Royce, the invariants of geometry and so findings based
upon their analysis could directly inform the analysis of other
ordering processes (1901, 96-110).



The publication of "The Relation of the Principles of Logic to
the Foundations of Geometry" (1905) and "An Extension of
the Algebra of Logic" (1913b) were significant works of pure
mathematics but were also intended to illustrate invariants across
transformations of all sorts. Burch (2011) has left open the question
of how Royce's work in mathematical logic is related to his
general philosophical project, but has argued that Royce nevertheless
made a significant contribution to mathematical logic by developing
the concept of a Boolean Ring and an algebra identical to the system
devised at about the same time by Russian logician, Ivan Ivanovich
Zhegalkin, renowned as "the 'father' of the Russian
school of logic" (231). Central to the Boolean Ring operations
and to the larger System \(\Sigma\) is Royce's development of
the operation of symmetric difference (discussed elsewhere as the \(O\)-relation),
which is also viewed as one of
Royce's major contributions by later reviewers, Burton and
Leblanc (1952). While Burch suggests the possibility of a full
exposition of System \(\Sigma\), apart from Royce's own there is
currently no such treatment available. Burch also discusses
Royce's work in philosophical logic in the introduction to a
paper by Royce addressing Russell's paradox as presented in
Russell's 1903 *The Principles of Logic*. This paper,
Burch argues, both demonstrates Royce's familiarity with
developments in modern logic at the time and presents an alternative
resolution of the paradox similar to Frege's response while also
offering a non-foundational set theory (1987). Other important
assessments of Royce's work in mathematics and logic include
early reviews by Sheffer (1908), De Laguna (1906), and C. I. Lewis
(1916), and more recent assessments in papers by Crouch (2011) and
Scanlan (2011).