Yes, But Not Quite

This book contends that Josiah Royce bequeathed to philosophy a novel idealism based on an ethics-religious insight. This insight became the basis for an idealistic personalism, wherein the Real is the personal and a metaphysics of community is the most appropriate approach to metaphysics for personal beings, especially in an often impersonal and technological intellectual climate. The first part of the book traces how Royce constructed his idealistic personalism in response to criticisms made by George Holmes Howson. That personalism is interpreted as an ethical and panentheistic one, somewhat akin to Charles Hartshorne's process philosophy. The second part investigates Royce's idealistic metaphysics in general and his ethics-religious insight in particular. In the course of these investigations, the author examines how Royce's ethics-religious insight could be strengthened by incorporating the philosophical theology of Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Emmanuel Levinas's ethical metaphysics. The author concludes by briefly exploring the possibility that Royce's progressive racial anti-essentialism is, in fact, a form of cultural, anti black racism and asks whether his cultural, anti black racism taints his ethics-religious insight.