The problem of Christianity Author:Josiah Royce Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE XII THE WILL TO INTERPRET WE have seen some of the contrasts whereby the three cognitive processes : Perception, Conception, and Interpretation, ar... more »e distinguished from one another. Our next task is to become better acquainted with the work and the value of Interpretation. In this undertaking we shall be guided by the special problems to which our lectures are devoted. The metaphysical inquiry concerning the nature and the reality of the community is still our leading topic. To this topic whatever we shall have to say about interpretation is everywhere subordinate. But, since, if I am right, interpretation is indeed a fundamental cognitive process, we shall need still further to illustrate its nature and its principal forms. Every apparent digression from our main path will quicklylead us back to our central issues. Interpretation is, once for all, the main business of philosophy. The present lecture will include two stages of movement towards our goal. First, we shall study the elementary psychology of the process of interpretation. Secondly, we shall portray the ideal that guides a truth-loving interpreter. The first of these inquiries will concern topics which are both familiar and neglected. The second part of our lecture will throw light upon the ethical problems with which our study of the Christian ideas has made us acquainted. At the close of the lecture our preparation for an outline of the metaphysics of interpretation will be completed. I have called interpretation an essentially social cognitive process; and such, in fact, it is. Man is an animal that interprets; and therefore man lives in communities, and depends upon them for insight and for salvation. But the elementary psychological forms in which interpretation appears find a place in our ...« less