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The Absolute Idealism of Josiah Royce

Josiah Royce was born in California 1855, the son of so-called Forty Niners at a gold mining camp at Grass Valley California. As a child he often heard his elders say that “this was a new country”‘ Looking at the “vestiges left by the former diggings of miners” he wondered what this could mean and decided to devote his life to finding out. Later he actually wrote a history of California, and his philosophy owes much to his childhood pondering on this question.

Royce studied science and literature at the new University of California in San Francisco and on receiving his Ph.D. (after studying in Germany) he became a lecturer in the English department there. But though there are many literary references in his philosophy, it was to philosophy that he wished to devote himself. Thus he wrote to William James at Harvard that there was no philosopher within some thousand miles or so (how many are there in California now?) as a result of which James found Royce first a temporary, and then a permanent, job at Harvard. Mu

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What’s in a Name?

Royce Hall is named for the American objective idealist and pragmatist philosopher Josiah Royce, born in 1855 in Grass Valley, CA.

Royce graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1875, studied in Germany with Hermann Lotze and was the first of four people to earn a doctorate (in philosophy) from Johns Hopkins University, where he eventually taught. He went on to teach at Harvard University from 1882 to 1916.

In early adulthood Royce dabbled in a range of interests—he wrote a novel, investigated paranormal phenomena (as a skeptic), and published a significant body of literary criticism. But he distinguished himself as a historian and a philosopher. In a passionately written history of California published in 1886, Royce questioned the moral consequences of the American conquest of Mexican California. He stands out among academics of his time as the only major American philosopher who spent a significant period of his life studying and writing history.

Royce’s scholarly interests encompassed many different subjects, from psychology to ethics t

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Josiah Royce Collection
Ms. 29, Special Collections,
The Milton S. Eisenhower Library
of The Johns Hopkins University

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 Göttingen. 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. Th