The World and the Individual: Gifford Lectures Delivered before the University of Aberdeen, in Two Volumes: First Series - The Four Historical Conceptions of Being; Second Series - Nature, Man, and the Moral Order
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1901. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good / No Jacket. Item #2332307
2nd printing of volume 1, first edition, first printing of volume 2. Hinges just beginning to weaken, ink gift note on front endpaper of first volume, front free endpaper of second volume removed.
xvi, 588, [2]; xx, [2], 480 pp. 8vo. Brown cloth, gilt titles and triple rule, top edge gilt. Royce founded American idealism, and published many works on philosophy and history. In this work he conceptualizes the individual by saying 'to be is to be uniquely related to a whole,' but also that the idealization of our inner purposes enables us to connect them with the purposes of others in a larger whole of which we have no immediate experience: "the real world of our Idealism has to be viewed by us men as a temporal order [in which] purposes are fulfilled, or where finite internal meanings reach their final expression and attain unity with external meanings." Royce was a "versatile Idealist philosopher and teacher whose emphasis on individuality and will, rather than intellect, strongly influenced 20th-century philosophy in the United States... Considering himself an absolute Idealist and borrowing from the works of Hegel, Royce stressed the unity of human thought with the external world. His doctrines were centred on his view of absolute truth, and he declared that everyone must be in agreement with his assertion that such a truth exists, because even those skeptics who would deny this truth automatically affirm it. To deny absolute truth would be to affirm that some 'truthful' statements are possible, and thus the skeptic is caught in a self-contradictory attitude toward the possible existence of 'truth.' Royce's Idealism also extended to religion, the basis of which he conceived to be human loyalty. This 'religion of loyalty' was supplemented by an ethical system that showed his emphasis on the human will. In his words, the highest good would be achieved by 'the willing and practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to a cause.' Like the British Idealist F.H. Bradley, whose views resembled his own, Royce enhanced the reputation of European Idealists in his own country. Both men taught a monistic Idealism and helped raise the intellectual standards for philosophical treatment of human problems. Royce's contributions to psychology, social ethics, literary criticism, history, and metaphysics established him as a thinker of widely diverse talents." - Encyclopedia Britannica
Price: $750.00