Greetings one and all,
My name is John, and I've been lurking in the back of the class for a while with nothing much to contribute... till now. The catalyst was successfully concluding a mural in the children's section of the Grass Valley Library as part of a community college class. Discussion about the next project ensued, which would be the upstairs big people's section of the library and it popped into my head that some attention ought to be paid to the guy the library was named after, who I didn't know anything about - one Josiah Royce. Well I figured I oughta check him out, since it was my idea and all and I found out he was a philosopher. I like philosophers, so I looked deeper. First I read the very good introduction by John K. Roth which explained Royce and some of the reasons for his obscurity. What I found in the intro that made me want to read more: "Put another way, we need to become constructive metaphysical thinkers. Moreover, if this is the case, we may gain valuable instruction by studying philosophers who have tried to carry out this task before. Royce is such a figure. If one thing shines through his writings, it is the desire to see things whole and the courage to strive for an interpretation of existence that affirms the fundamental intelligibility, meaningfulness, and goodness of human life and gives guidance for our moral striving. ... we cannot simply reinstate Royce's philosophy as the one that we need now. Too much has happened to allow that. In addition, to try to do so would be contrary to Royce's spirit, for he was convinced that each age must think and interpret reality for itself." As I started to read him, I was grabbed immediately by what started it all for Royce was in following the skeptics all the way and then hitting upon one kernel, one fulcrum point, just like when Phaedrus asked himself, What is quality? Royce asked, What is error? Please allow me to quote the paragraph that so grabbed my attention, and tell me what you think... " So we did make the effort, and , in the last chapter, we sketched a result that seemed nearly within our reach. An unexpected result this, because it springs from the very heart of skepticism itself. We doubted to the last extremity. We let everything go, and then all of a sudden we seemed to find that we could not lose one priceless treasure, try as we would. Our wildest doubt assumed this, namely that error is possible. And so our wildest doubt assumed the actual existence of those conditions that make error possible. T*he conditions that determine the logical possibility of error must themselves be absolute truth , *that was the treasure that remained to us amid all our doubts." Again quoting the intro: "Error cannot exist in a vacuum, and by clarifying both its nature and the conditions that ground its possibility, Royce believes that reliable insights into the structure of reality itself can be obtained." Quality exists AND you know what it is. Thanks for the opportunity to butt in, John Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
