Pragmatism

Abstract

In 1907, Charles Peirce attempted to write an article that would introduce his distinct variety of pragmatism to a general audience. He intended it initially for The Nation and later for The Atlantic Monthly, eventually producing more than five hundred handwritten sheets, but both ultimately declined to print any of it. Multiple preliminary drafts comprise the manuscripts that Richard Robin catalogued as R 319-322 and R 324, culminating in five major variants of R 318 as identified by the Peirce Edition Project and diagrammed by Priscila Borges (https://peirce.iupui.edu/resources/ms318_diag.pdf) with references to the page numbers assigned by the Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism. The second is unfinished, while extensive portions of the third through fifth appear in the Collected Papers (CP 5.11-13, 5.464-496, 1.560-562) and The Essential Peirce (EP 2:398-433), including the beginning that is common to all five. This is the completed first version as transcribed from the high-resolution digital images provided online by Houghton Library at Harvard University (https://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:fhcl.hough:12486126). It has never been published before and offers fresh insights into Peirce's thinking about semeiotic and pragmatism as it was evolving toward what he subsequently expressed in the lengthier and increasingly technical texts that scholars have thoroughly scrutinized. He even signed his name at the end, suggesting that he was fully satisfied with it at the time, although several illuminating quotations from a discarded draft are included here in footnotes. With minor exceptions, his original and sometimes idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation are preserved throughout.