- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Acknowledgements
- Preface to the Fordham University Press Edition
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Bibliographic Abbreviations
- Editor's Note on the Text
- Part I An Autobiographical Sketch
- 1 Words of Professor Royce at the Walton Hotel at Philadelphia December 29,1915
- Part II The American Context
- 2 The Struggle for Order: Self-Government, Good-Humor and Violence in the Mines
- 3 An Episode of Early California Life: The Squatter Riot of 1850 in Sacramento
- 4 The Settlers at Oakfield Creek
- 5 The Pacific Coast: A Psychological Study of the Relations of Climate and Civilization
- 6 William James and the Philosophy of Life
- Part III The European Background
- 7 Shelley and the Revolution
- 8 Pessimism and Modern Thought
- 9 The Rediscovery of the Inner Life: From Spinoza to Kant
- 10 The Concept of the Absolute and the Dialectical Method
- Part IV Religious Questions
- 11 The Possibility of Error
- 12 The Conception of God Address by Professor Royce
- 13 Immortality
- 14 Monotheism
- Part V The World and the Individual
- 15 Self-Consciousness, Social Consciousness and Nature
- 16 The Religious Problems and the Theory of Being
- 17 The Internal and External Meaning of Ideas
- 18 The Fourth Conception of Being
- 19 The Linkage of Facts
- 20 The Temporal and the Eternal
- American Philosophy Series Douglas R. Anderson and Jude Jones, series editors
The Fourth Conception of Being
The Fourth Conception of Being
- Chapter:
- (p.543) 18 The Fourth Conception of Being
- Source:
- The Basic Writings of Josiah Royce, Volume I
- Author(s):
- John J. McDermott
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
This chapter, taken from Josiah Royce's Gifford Lectures of 1899, continues the development of the conception of Being which began in the previous lecture. Specifically, it synthesizes all the three former conceptions into a Fourth Conception, which can be summarized as, “Only the Self which is your world is your completely integrated Self, the totality of the life that at this instant you fragmentarily grasp. Your present defect is a matter of the mere form of your consciousness at this instant. Were your eyes at this instant open to your own meaning, your life as a whole would be spread before you as a single and unique life, for which no other could be substituted without a less determinate expression of just your individual will. Now this complete life of yours, is. Only such completion can be. Being can possess no other nature than this.”
Keywords: being, self, Josiah Royce, life, defect, consciousness
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Acknowledgements
- Preface to the Fordham University Press Edition
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Bibliographic Abbreviations
- Editor's Note on the Text
- Part I An Autobiographical Sketch
- 1 Words of Professor Royce at the Walton Hotel at Philadelphia December 29,1915
- Part II The American Context
- 2 The Struggle for Order: Self-Government, Good-Humor and Violence in the Mines
- 3 An Episode of Early California Life: The Squatter Riot of 1850 in Sacramento
- 4 The Settlers at Oakfield Creek
- 5 The Pacific Coast: A Psychological Study of the Relations of Climate and Civilization
- 6 William James and the Philosophy of Life
- Part III The European Background
- 7 Shelley and the Revolution
- 8 Pessimism and Modern Thought
- 9 The Rediscovery of the Inner Life: From Spinoza to Kant
- 10 The Concept of the Absolute and the Dialectical Method
- Part IV Religious Questions
- 11 The Possibility of Error
- 12 The Conception of God Address by Professor Royce
- 13 Immortality
- 14 Monotheism
- Part V The World and the Individual
- 15 Self-Consciousness, Social Consciousness and Nature
- 16 The Religious Problems and the Theory of Being
- 17 The Internal and External Meaning of Ideas
- 18 The Fourth Conception of Being
- 19 The Linkage of Facts
- 20 The Temporal and the Eternal
- American Philosophy Series Douglas R. Anderson and Jude Jones, series editors
