The Conception of God. Josiah Royce

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       Josiah Royce

      The Conception of God

      Philosophical Discussion concerning the Nature of the Divine Idea as a Demonstrable Reality

      Published by Good Press, 2020

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066430252

Table of Contents

       Introduction by the Editor

       I. The Conception of God: Address by Professor Royce

       II. Worth and Goodness as Marks of the Absolute: Criticism by Professor Mezes

       III. God, and Connected Problems, in the Light of Evolution: Remarks by Professor Le Conte

       IV. The City of God, and the True God as its Head: Comments by Professor Howison

       V. The Absolute and the Individual: Supplementary Essay by Professor Royce

      ​

      INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR

       Table of Contents

      The first volume of the projected Publications of the Philosophical Union of the University of California, delayed by unavoidable circumstances, here at length appears, as promised at the time of issuing the volume counted as second—Professor Watson’s Christianity and Idealism. It consists (1) of the documents of the public discussion held at the seat of the University in 1895, reprinted with only a very few trifling verbal alterations, and, in Article IV, two or three additional sentences; (2) of a new Supplementary Essay by Professor Royce, in which he developes his central doctrine in a more systematic way, discusses afresh the long-neglected question of Individuality, and, in conclusion, replies to his critics.

      The contents of the book very rightly take the form of a discussion, for discussion is the method of philosophy. Of the three chief objects upon which philosophy directs its search—God, Freedom, and Immortality—notable as also the essential objects of religion, this discussion, in its outset, aimed only at the first—the nature and the reality of God. But the feature of eminent interest in it is, that in the direct pursuit of its chosen problem it presently becomes even more engaged on the problem of Freedom, and cannot forego, either, the consideration of Immortality; so true it is that the attempt to conceive God, ​and to establish his existence, is futile apart from grappling with the other two connected ideals. The interest of the discussion at length unavoidably concentrates about the question of Freedom, and this turn in the pressure of the contest is what gives the debate its significance for the world of philosophy and of religion. One cannot but feel that this significance is marked, and for reasons that will in the sequel appear.

      On the initial question: Is the fundamental belief of religion valid—is a Personal God a reality? all the participants in the discussion are to be understood as distinctly intending to maintain the affirmative. But as soon as this question is deliberately apprehended, it becomes evident that no settlement of it can be reached until one decides what the word “God” veritably means, and also what “reality” or “existence” can rationally mean. Here, accordingly, the divergence among the participants begins. Very largely agreeing in an idealistic interpretation of what must constitute Reality if the word is to have any explicable meaning, they nevertheless soon expose a profound difference as to what Idealism requires when one comes to the question of the reality of spiritual beings—above all, of a being deserving to be called divine. Thence follows, of course, a like deep difference as to the nature and the conception of God himself. More specifically, these differences concern the following points:

      (1) Whether the novel method of proving God real, put forward by the leader of the discussion, and here given a fresh form, different from that in his ​Religions Aspect of Philosophy, is adequate to establish in the Absolute Reality a nature in the strict sense divine.

      (2) Whether the conception of God upon which the whole argument of the leader proceeds is in truth a conception of a Personal God.

      (3) Whether this conception is compatible with that autonomy of moral action which mankind in its fully enlightened civilisation, and especially under the Christian consciousness, has come to appreciate as the vital principle of all personality.

      On the first matter, Professor Mezes and Professor Howison differ with Professor Royce. Professor Le Conte declines any critical opinion upon it, though he prefers, and offers, an entirely different argument for the reality of a Personal God.

      On the second point, the extreme division is between Professor Royce on the one side (apparently supported by his pupil, Professor Mezes), and Professor Howison on the other. Here, the question disputed being in fact the question of an Immanent God as against a God distinct from his creation, Professor Le Conte offers a mediating theory, based on the doctrine of Cosmic Evolution, by which he would conjoin the conception of God as immanent in Nature with the conception of man as eventually a literally free intelligence: through the process of evolution, operated by the God indwelling in it, the human being is at length completely extricated from Nature, hence becomes strictly self-active, and thus intrinsically immortal. To this proposal for reconciling an Immanent God with a Personal God—the ​test of personality being the possession by God of a World of Persons, all really free, with whom he shares in moral relations, acknowledging Rights in them, and Duties towards them—Professor Howison demurs, urging that no such World of Freedom can arise out of a process of natural evolution, as this is always a process of efficient causation, and so works by a vis a tergo, whose law is necessitation.

      On the third question, which is thus brought strongly to the front, the divergence between Professor Howison and Professor Royce comes out at its sharpest. Here, Professor Howison maintains there is a chasm, incapable of closure, between the immanence of God, even as Professor Royce conceives this, and the real personality, the moral autonomy, of created minds. Professor Royce, in rejoinder, contends there is no such chasm, that a Divine Self-Consciousness continuously inclusive of our consciousness is demanded if a knowable God is to be proved, and that its existence is not only compatible with the existence of included conscious Selves, but directly provides for them, imparts to them as its own members its own freedom, and thus gives them all the autonomy permissible in a world that is moral. In this difference, it may be presumed that Professor Mezes and Professor Le Conte side tacitly with Professor Royce; though Professor Le Conte, of course, would only do so with the reservation that the reconciliation of the dispute must be sought in his theory of evolution. Professor Royce, however, pursues his object by another path, more purely in the region of idealistic psychology, and ​devotes his Supplementary Essay, in its main purpose, to a systematic investigation of the nature and the source of Individuation. He seeks in this way to show how Personality, conceived as self-conscious individuality, flows directly and even solely from his conception of God, when the essential implications of this are developed. Here Professor Howison’s contention is, that this theory of the Person, making the single Self nothing but an identical part of the unifying Divine Will (as Professor