Charles S. Peirce's Evolutionary Philosophy (review)

Abstract

682 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:4 OCTOBER t994 the Aristotelian project;5 and (3) Hegel as a philosopher of language, the philosopher who, anticipating Davidson's betterment of Quine's project, did that project better still. This third Hegel is McCumber's. To make his case, McCumber does not attempt what a thoroughgoing argument for his interpretation--clearly impossible in a book of this length--would entail: a consecutive study of the "moments" in Hegel's system. Instead he gives a sequence of four "analyses" of putatively Hegelian positions. They are: (t) "Truth as Systematicity," in which he cogendy argues that Hegel is not an "assertionist," that is, one for whom assertables, sentences or propositions, rather than, e.g., names, are the elementary units for systematizing; (2) "Dialectics," in which, deploying an elaborate symbolism for "moves" (that are mentioned but never used by McCumber)--for "conjunction," "disjunction," "explication," "abbreviation," "reflection," "counter'reflection," "full mediation ," "partial mediation," "transition," "immediation," and "introduction" (13233 )--he argues that"the dialectic moves by regrouping markers" (132), but in a way that seems completely arbitrary. This arbitrariness is then allegedly accounted for in (3) "A Philosophy of Words," in which he engages in his most intensive Auseinandersazung with a Hegelian text (Encyc/oped/aw167 451-64, "Die Vorstellung," and its transition to w167 46568 , "Das Denken"). Here he invokes Hegel's much-discussede elimination (in w463) of the dimension of Bedeutung (meaning) to legitimate the free "regrouping of markers" required by what he again and again hails as the most significant accomplishment of his book, his rewriting of, and therewith improvement upon, Hegel's "systematicdialectics." The final stage of his argument for Hegel as a philosopher of language is given in (4) "The Dynamics of Philosophical Expression," in which he provides a sustained commentar ), on Hegel's treatment of "Das Objekt" (Encyc/oped/a w167 194-212). Though this reviewer did not find McCumber's reinterpretation of Hegel as a philosopher of language compelling, the book will nevertheless commend itself to the attention of Hegel scholars for its superior erudition and for its systematic elimination of spurious contenders to the position of determining Hegel's systematic project. K. R. Dovz Purchase College, The State University of New York Carl R. Hausman. Charles S. Peirce's Evolutionary Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xvii + 23o. Cloth, $49.95This is an excellent study of a philosopher whose originality, sophistication, and scope entide him to be considered nothing short of first-rank. But a first-hand and finegrained understanding of his wridngs (beyond several widely known essays such as sWell known representatives of this interpretation include NicolaiHartmann, G. R. G. Mure, J. Glenn Gray, and--most recendy and completely (though uncited by McCumber)--Alfredo Ferrarin, Hegelimet~ete diArirtotele(Pisa: ETS Editrice, 199o). eMcCumber's command of the Hegel literature (esp. in the wridngs of Josef Simon and Theodor Bodammer) is most impressive at this point, whether or not one finds his own arguments persuasive. BOOK REVXrWS 683 "The Fixation of Belief" and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear") is still limited to a somewhat smaller number of specialists. Carl R. Hausman's Charles S. Peirce's EvolutionaH Philosophy, however, is ideally constructed to win a wider hearing for Peirce's complex vision, especially since this study challenges, from a Peircean perspective, some of the most important figures in contemporary American philosophy. In the concluding chapter, the author directly contests the views of Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty regarding their outright denial or, at best, inadequate recognition of the extralinguistic constraints on interpretation and inquiry. He concludes this critique and, in fact, the book itself by affirming that Peirce's "evolutionary realism is a picture that is a uniquely human way of looking toward the extrahuman" (225)Thus Peirce's evolutionary realism is an instance of metaphysical realism, but an instance with a human face (to borrow the expression which Putnam uses for his very different doctrine of internal realism). While fully acknowledging that the view from here and now is a historically fated perspective, proponents of this doctrine do not conclude that the only viewpoint attainable at present is a hermetically sealed perspecfive...