heckuva url, but it is pastable:

http://books.google.com/books?id=RU1VZAvdK-oC&dq=josiah+royce&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=zFUiZadh6u&sig=EZyraBIAQJU51LUZZut6Fma8M_k&hl=en&ei=3WJAS4mfFYb8sQPKwcDFBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CA8Q6AEwATgU#v=onepage&q=&f=false


John Clendenning

Life and Thought of Josiah Royce


"Such battles belong to a realm where history blends with legend.  Cambridge
still echoes with stories of the debate between Royce and James -- one
rounding the pieces of experience into larger wholes, the other digging his
heels into the sands of fact.  On horsecars and street corners they
presented a spectacle of modern academic heroes, each frail in appearance,
yet massively equipped with intelligence and determined never to surrender.
Observers, respecting the sanctity of the argument, kept off at a safe
distance, but collected words and phrases for memoirs like relics left on a
battlefield.  On public occasions they carried each other's books into
lecture halls before delighted audiences, quoting bits of text, countering
with devastating rebuttal. Stil, though each labored to reduce the other's
theories to fantastic nonsense, theirs was really a lover's quarrel; they
had been friends for twenty years, and in the fullest possible sense, James
was chief among those,  outside his family, that Royce wholeheartedly loved.


-----------------------


Royce's alleged Hegelianism has been a vexing problem in the interpretation
of his philosophy.  To James, Hegelian suggest the prig, while to Peirce, it
meant an effort to cover the simple real problems of life with a blanket of
intellectualism.  In short, as a term loaded with unpleasant connotations,
Hegelian became another name for saintly pedantry, and being pinned with
such a label was a constant source of irritation for Royce,  From first to
last, in each of his major books, he labored to cast it off, but his
contemporaries, like many readers int he present day, ignored his denials.


"I think myself ill described as an Hegelian, just as I think myself ill
described as  Kantian, or a Spinozist, or a follower of Socrates."


Admitting that he had learned a good deal from Hegel, as from the others, he
objected to the tendency to classify all schools of absolute idealism as
Hegelian.


"Hegel", Royce felt assured, "would have despised me."


Royce felt that his philosophy should be described as "post-Kantian,
empirically modified, Idealism, somewhat influenced by Hegel, but also
influenced by Schopenhauer, with a dash of Fichte added."


If readers insist on calling Royce a Hegelian, they should, he said, add
some prefix like "Neo-", "Pseudo-","Semi-", "Hemi-", or even "Pleistocence-"


------------------------



For, Royce maintained, one becomes a moral individual by becoming aware of
aims and by choosing to serve them.  Loyalty, in short, allows a human being
to enter the world of value.  "Loyalty", he said, "involves the
self-conscious choice to give my life meaning as I alone can mean it.  By
choosing to be loyal I discover my moral worth, myself as moral being."


William James had argued that the philosopher cannot guide the moral life,
that no supreme good can direct the world of value.  Royce's answer to the
argument was that without loyalty, it is inconceivable that a person could
have a moral life.

--------------------------


So right there, John asks any fair reader - who is closer to Pirsig's MoQ?


James who disputes Quality as a metaphysical reality that can guide our head
or heart or hands?


Or Royce who asserts that its Absolutely necessary?
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