Josiah Royce - Absolutism and Temporalism

Absolutism and Temporalism

The “Absolute" Royce defended was quite different from the ideas of Hegel and Bradley. Royce’s Absolute is the ground and originator of community, a personal, temporal being who preserves the past in its entirety, sustains the full present by an act of interpretation, and anticipates every possibility in the future, infusing these possibilities with value as the ideal of community. The principal difference between Royce’s Absolute and the similar idea held by other thinkers is its temporal and personal character, and its interpretive activity. This divine activity Royce increasingly came to see in terms of the notion suggested by C.S. Peirce of “agapasm,” or “evolutionary love.” Royce believed that human beings do have experience of the Absolute in the irrevocability of each and every deed we do. To confront the way that our acts cannot be undone is to meet the Absolute in its temporal necessity. The philosophical idea of the Absolute is an inevitable hypothesis for a coherent system of thought, Royce argued, but for practical purposes and a meaningful ethical life, all human beings need is an on-going "will to interpret." The temporal ground of all acts of interpretation is "the Interpreter Spirit," which is another name for the Absolute, but a philosophical understanding of such a being is not required for successful interpretation and ethical life.