The Conception of Immortality

An American post-Kantian Idealist philosopher, Royce was born in California, later attending University of California, but made his mark in Massachusetts, later teaching at Harvard University. Home schooled by his vigorous mother, he developed an intellectual intensity that surpassed many of his peers and which was later recognized by a paid fellowship for graduate studies in Germany. Sympathetic to German Idealism and religion, he wrote his first notable work on the theory of the Absolute in The Religious Aspect of Philosophy. His ethics, a little less abstract, was expressed in The Philosophy of Loyalty and amounted to the precept, "Be loyal."