Peirce's Retrospectives on his Phenomenological Quest

Abstract

The late Joseph Ransdell’s advocacy for a “unitary interpretation” of the work of C.S. Peirce found expression in a 1989 paper where he declared Peirce’s 1867 essay “On a New List of Categories” to be “the basic text for that part of his philosophy which he called ‘phenomenology’.” Several of Peirce’s later writings comment retrospectively on the process of inquiry which produced that 1867 paper and eventually developed into the science which he named “phenomenology” in 1902. Some of these later texts are arguably as “basic” to an understanding of Peircean phenomenology as the 1867 essay itself. An examination of these retrospective texts, together with some of Peirce’s late writings on phaneroscopy, will support Ransdell’s claim that Peirce rightly considered his own life’s work to be “fundamentally self-consistent throughout,” but will also clarify and modify Ransdell’s assertions about Peirce’s 1867 essay, his phenomenology, and their roles in his philosophical system.