ROYCE (Josiah).
Sources of Religious Insight.
A series of seven lectures representing Royce’s most sustained engagement with his friend and colleague William James on the proper understanding of religious phenomena in human life. ‘Royce believed that James, who had never been regularly affiliated with an established church or religious community, had in that work placed too much emphasis on the extraordinary religious experiences of extraordinary individuals. Royce sought a philosophy of religion that could help one understand and explain the phenomena of ordinary religious faith as experienced by communities of ordinary people’ (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
‘Josiah Royce (1855–1916) was the leading American proponent of absolute idealism, the metaphysical view (also maintained by Hegel and F.H. Bradley) that all aspects of reality, including those we experience as disconnected or contradictory, are ultimately unified in the thought of a single all-encompassing consciousness. Royce also made original contributions in ethics, philosophy of community, philosophy of religion and logic’ (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
