Royce’s pragmatic absolute idealism continues with his analysis of eternalism. Normally when we experience time there is a suc-cession of events such as from a to b with a passing over into b. When we hear for instance, a musical phrase, we see one note pass over to another, but at the same time, there is a present moment that lasts a very short period of time in which those notes are present to consciousness at once. The objection to this claim is that time lasts instantaneously. However, there is no way to figure what that is since an indivisible moment has no meaning for if the present moment of a spoken sentence is reduced to a single word the difficulty is not escaped since that word itself is a succession of sounds that are present to consciousness at once. The world is also in a sense temporal. However without any conflict with this, the entire world history is present to the abso-lute in an eternally present insight. In the same way that in the perceptual present, there is a succession of events that are simultaneously present, the entire world history occurs as a succession of events that are simultaneously present to the absolute. Thus change itself is unchangeable as everything is present to the absolute at once. The question now comes how to handle evolution, which seems to be devoid of rationality. However, this is less devoid of rationality than initially thought. Both mind and nature involve irrevocable processes to many of their phenomenon. Both mind and nature have parts that communicate in a sense with each other. But mainly, both mind and nature involve habits in which one series goes for some time and repeats itself later. Thus we see that evolution is a conscious process.
Royce’s pragmatism maintains that metaphysics as essentially an ethical discipline and can give no genuine ontological knowledge of the world, which leads to an issue regarding Royce’s eternalism, which seems to be a genuine ontological claim suggesting a static time sequence. 1 However, this is in line with Royce’s absolute idealism which is typically eternalist in nature, along with an immanent God and a differentiated community. Royce’s God, however, is in part theistic, although there is an immanent component. 2 Royce does not give proof that the world is eternal signifying his pragmatism. The main ethical problem with this theory is that it possible contradictrs free will. Free will and temporalism occur on the microscopic scale whereas eternalism occurs on the macroscopic scale, which is further explained in Royce’s later chapter and his chapter on free will. Temporalism should be seen as an illusion which is characteristic of British and American idealism. (give example of ethical implications of eternalism). So overall, I believe Royce’s eternalism should be read as a genuine ontological claim, with the added assumption that this claim is only seen within the context of his system for the purpose of ethical considerations, which cannot be proven over any other system. Royce is attempting to adapt absolute idealism to a pragmatic standpoint. How well he succeeded is another story, but I don’t think there is any evidence that he is a temporalist. (Revise)
There are two main areas of life: the world of nature and empirical facts, or the world of description, and the social world of mind and individuals or the world of appreciation. These two areas of life at first site appear to be sundered from each other, with the world of description operating according to rigid fixed rules and the world of appreciation which is a world of expression. Our belief in nature is inextricably linked to our belief in other men. The proof of the existence of fellow men is that they furnish us with the supplement to our own fragmentary meanings. Through time the individual learns to view others as falsely sundered from each other, but in fact they are all part of the unity of the absolute. All human purposes are thus related to our own. Society is seen to be an organism, which can be conceived only in terms of the fourth conception of Being. Nature at first site seems to be sundered from the world of appreciation since we develop rules that operate independently of mind and seem to hold invariant of space and time. However, when one comes to think about it, there is no way for the finite community to know this statement within their lifetime or future lifetimes. Thus the laws of nature are seen to be less sundered from mind than thought. We thus see the laws of nature as being social constructions. What happened was in the industrial arts, people made weapons and buildings and so forth and with time they extended these results to universal laws of nature, and these universal laws of nature are now seen as simply extensions of industrial art and are continuous with it. As such it gives us no indication of the true natre of things and is simply seen as a social construction.
The self has a meaning in each of the four historical conceptions of Being, which have been shown to be paradoxical in the first book. In Royce’s absolute idealism, the self takes on the role of the purpose it serves with respect to the community. The individual’s self is his task as a friend, worker, citizen, and so on, as contrasted with other people, which amounts to its relation to the absolute. The individual can never be aware of who he is, as he can never know his relation to the absolute. The individual can never know when his purpose is fulfilled or he has yet to find his purpose. Thus he must give unity to his aims and intend something definite in his life. So every individual is unique, but unique as it is related to the absolute with a dependence on other individuals. There is unity, but also differentiation. . . .The being goes about trying to reach self-expression. In order to do this, he attempts to act a certain way, and when this does not fulfill his purpose, he looks for some new object between objects that has already attracted attention. The individual then imitates this model and modifies his actions accordingly. The individual grows through this repeated imitation over time. Royce claims that evolution takes on this same process. However, everyone has the ability to overcome this evolutionary process and find their place in the absolute. The psychologist attempts to explain the self as a causal process subject to law just like the rest of nature. This seems to endanger this conception of self in which the self is a being of expression. You can attempt to explain the persons behavior causally. However, what the psychologist says only takes on heuristic value and should be assessed pragmatically, that is, it should be taken as only one possible interpretation as analyzed from a technical perspective
We now show how the world is moral. To be is to fulfill a purpose. The absolute is one and many: one because without unity, there is no finality of insight, and many because the interrelationship of contrasted expressions of the will is the way for the absolute to reach self-consciousness. . . . III An objection now arises in what sense the subject has the ability to act morally in Royce’s world. In answer, Royce replies that freedom is no less paradoxical in our idealism than occurs in the other three conceptions of Being. IV According to Royce, the subject acts according to the Ought in that they are striving to act in accordance with the absolute. However, it seems to always be possible to act counter to this Ought. Royce replies: all beings, everywhere, serve the absolute purpose in so far as they know that purpose, but everything serves the Ought to varying degrees. VI Thus even though whatever the individual does is in accordance with the absolute, the individual must make the decision as to what sort of accordance that will be.
Many believe there is an error in Royce’s reasoning in the first book when he transitions from the world as determinate negation to the world as conscious construction. However, this is less of a gap than prima facie thought and is made more clear throughout the second book. So the individual is left in a negative situation once he recognizes the impossibility of assigning an internal meaning to any external meaning. The other options would be to accept the Buddhist path in which the world is empty or an illusion, or to get on by trying to attach an internal meaning as closely as possible to the external meaning. . . . So it is ok to set up a new axiom at this point in order to construct a positive system and this axiom as the world as a constructive process is made more clear throughout the second book. There is no need for foundationalism in all philosophy. And this axiom is attempted to be shown to be the better alternative throughout the second book.
Idealism Studies 