An Introduction to Peirce’s Philosophy by James Feibleman

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 371 is merely assimilative, and no fresh contribution) , and to analyzing the function of word-symbols in literature as prerequisites to the esthetic experience but as not in themselves constituting that experience. It is in the second of these that Dr. Hospers offers his clearest and most original thinking. It must be said, however, that on the whole Dr. Hospers' thought suffers seriously from certain a priori judgments on fundamental issues, from inadequate acquaintance with traditional interpretations of his subject matter, and from a prejudicial rigidity of philosophical outlook which invariably causes him to stop short of, and substitute vague and rhetorical phrases for, a real coming-to-grips with his problem. It is to be doubted that the book will serve as an advance in explication even for the constrained philosophical position to which he is unquestioningly committed. Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C. wALTER KERR. An Introduction to Peirce's Philosophy. By JAMES FEmLEMAN. New York: Harper, 1946. Pp. 508. I The name of Charles S. Peirce is usually met in historical prefaces to pragmatism and symbolic logic. It can be said of him what has been said of Bergson: that he died with many admirers but not one disciple. But like Bergson, Peirce dug a deep groove through the generation following him. In fact, his tradition has been positively continued while JJergson lives not in word but in the general spirit of revolt against Positivism which he mustered. Fragments of Peirce's thought appear in the pragmatism of James; the instrumentalism of Dewey; mathematical logic; semiotic; and logical positivism, especially in the formulations of Von Neurath. Thus Peirce's influence, unlike that of Bacon who also stood at the gateway to a new age, is much more than a name. Indeed, no American thinker has had so vast, so varied, and so unheralded an influence. Symbolically enough, as if to emphasize the critical position of Peirce, his life overlapped the turn of the present century (1889-1914). Those who have been accustomed to find portions of Peirce's thought displayed here and there throughout modern philosophy are often unaware that behind these scattered surfaces lies the firm heart-beat of a complete philosophical system. Peirce the logician and Peirce the pragmatist were not aspects of a split personality. They were the connective tissue of an organic world view. Yet this synthesis, because of historical circumstances, has remained unstudied and, for the most part, unknown. Indeed, during 87~ BOOK REVIEWS his life-time, Peirce did not publish a single philosophical book. The standard encyclopedia of his thought has been the Collected Papers, published in 1931 and, because it is a six-volume work, it is available more for specialists' consultation than for systematic reading. It is the great merit of Mr. Feibleman's book to have disengaged the underlying system of one of America's seminal minds and to have revealed a native genius in American philosophy whose originality and synthetic force stand without peer. n Peirce's thought is represented as the fruit of five positive historical influences: the philosophy of Kant, the lessons of empirical science, the realism and voluntarism of Duns Scotus, the dynamism of Darwin, and the revolt against Descartes. Like Kant, Peirce discloses, by his conception of logic, the architectonic of his whole system. Metaphysics, Peirce held, would be " shaky and insecure," unless it were founded on logic. But Kant had confined his categories to the subjective order, whereas Peirce insisted that logic must be founded on experience, thus possessing objective references. It was as a logician, reacting against Kantian subjectivism toward a noetic realism, that Peirce was led to pragmatism. In his lifetime, Peirce was much more successful as a scientist than as a professional philosopher. He had first-hand experience in both ma~hematics and the empirical sciences. When he came to explore the locus of scientific values, he was once more impelled to a statement of realism. He perceived that only on such a philosophy could the separate sciences operate. The. exemplar -of this realism, which is perhaps the primary concern of Peirce's thought, was found in Duns Scotus. The formalism of Scotus enabled Peirce to...