Josiah Royce was born November 20, 1855, in the remote mining town of Grass Valley, California, to Josiah and Sarah Eleanor Bayliss Royce. His mother was a devout Christian and head of a primary school in Grass Valley. After being educated by his mother and older sisters, at the age of eleven Royce entered school in San Francisco.
He received his B.A. in Classics from the University of California in 1875. He spent a year in Germany, where he attended philosophy lectures in Heidelberg, Leipzig, and Göttingen, mastered the language and came to admire Hermann Lotze. In
1878, the new Johns Hopkins University awarded him one of its first four doctorates, in philosophy. He then taught composition and literature at the University of California from 1878-1882, publishing a number of philosophical articles and Primer of Logical Analysis. He married Katherine Head in 1880; the couple had three sons.
In California, Royce felt isolated from the intellectual life of the East Coast, and sought an academic post there. Through the recommendation of William James, Royce's friend and philosophical antagonist, he was offered the opportunity to replace James when he took a one year sabbatical at Harvard University. Royce accepted the position at half of James’ salary, and in
1882, brought his wife and new-born son across the continent to Cambridge. There, he began to develop his interests in several areas. In 1885, he published his first major philosophical work, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, proposing that in order for ordinary concepts of truth and error to have meaning, there must be an actual infinite mind, an Absolute Knower, that encompasses all truths and all possible errors. The same year, he received a permanent appointment as assistant professor at Harvard, where he continued to teach for thirty years; among his students were T.S. Eliot, George Santayana, and W.E.B. Du Bois.
California 6-7
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