Vincent Colapietro

C. S. Peirce’s writings are instructive in a number of ways, not least of all for how they, in part despite themselves, assist us in conceiving what he was so strongly disposed to disparage, literary discourse. He possessed greater linguistic facility and deeper literary sensibility than he appreciated, though a militantly polemical identity helped to insure he left this facility undeveloped and this sensibility unacknowledged.2 For this and other reasons, a study of Peirce as a writer is worthwhile. It is likely to prove more fruitful than he would have expected. The present essay is only a preliminary study of what would need much...

ABSTRACT This article is an exploration of certain central features of the affective dimension of human lives. It moves from a consideration of moods, especially as these feature into several of Emerson's essays, to a consideration of sentiments, as they are treated by Peirce, and concludes with tones. At the center of this article, there is an attempt to bring into focus some of the most important connections among moods, sentiments, and tones. The ephemeral and variable character of moods is contrasted to the abiding and integrated character of sentiments in Peirce's sense. The article concludes with a discussion of tone in general and its bearing on democracy in particular. The topic of tone is first examined in light of James's “The Social Value of the College-Bred” and, then, in that of Duke Ellington's musical experiments in hitting upon the right sound, including the right tone. This is an ongoing experimental and improvisatory process in which “mistakes” are taken up and incorporated into the flow of the music or some other endeavor. “By their tone,” James insisted, “are all things human either lost or saved.” This text is dedicated to showing the contemporary relevance of James's claim.

Expressed in terms of his categories, Peirce criticized Hegel for having overlooked secondness, “not mere twoness [or duality] but active oppugnancy” (CP 8.291; emphasis omitted), “the sense of shock,” surprise, and especially struggle and conflict (CP 5.45). In particular, he judged his predecessor harshly for having neglected or, at least, downplayed the role secondness, especially in the form of experience, plays in the growth of knowledge. In Peirce’s judgment, then, Hegel’s emphasis on thirdness (mediation, conciliation, integration, and the overcoming of estrangement) tended to eclipse secondness (otherness, opposition, conflict, clash, and direct encounters with irreducible otherness). If one considers what Hegel actually wrote about both experience vis-à-vis reason and, more generally, the role of conflict in the generation of knowledge and indeed of much else, Peirce’s criticism hardly seems fair. My proximate purpose is, however, not so much to defend Hegel’s thought against Peirce’s charge as to show how close Hegel and Peirce are in their understanding of the relationship between experience and reason. Beyond this, my ultimate objective is to illuminate this relationship, by consideration of the nuanced, subtle manner in which these thinkers construe this relationship. That is, my main purpose is not hermeneutic or historical but philosophical. Becoming clearer about how Peirce stands to Hegel is not nearly as important as becoming clearer about how experience stands to reason. As it turns out, however, a philological comparison facilitates our philosophical task.

ABSTRACT This article elaborates a deceptively simple suggestion made by Hegel (philosophy is the activity of thinking things over). It relates Hegel's suggestion above all to Dewey's stress on looking back, looking around, and looking ahead. In this endeavor the article touches upon two seemingly contradictory facets of philosophical thought—the autonomy and heteronomy of such thought (on the one hand, the apparent capacity of philosophy not only to transcend its time and place but also to unfold according to its own immanent logic and, on the other hand, the manifest entanglement of philosophy with historical circumstances) (West 1989, 7–8). To a greater extent, however, the article focuses on the dramatic character of philosophical efforts to think things over, once again. The drive to think things over is frequently rooted in historical crises, in experiential conflicts. The actuality of philosophy cannot be adequately understood apart from such dramas and conflicts, ones taking place far outside the studies and classrooms of thinkers.

The characteristic form of human action is an extemporaneous performance or improvisational exertion. An ordinary conversation (what C. S. Peirce calls “a wonderfully perfect kind of sign-functioning” [EP 2: 391]) provides us with an extremely useful model for understanding other forms of “unrehearsed intellectual adventure” (Oakeshott 1991: 490), not least of all jazz improvisation. But since our inquiry into this range of considerations turns on appealing to our experience as improvisational actors in the overlapping situations of everyday life, this appeal itself needs to be considered. Accordingly, the appeal to experience is here interrogated with the aid of what pragmatists but also perfectionists such as Stanley Cavell say about it. What Cavell asserts regarding checking one’s experience, as a way of rendering it trustworthy, is of the utmost critical importance for the present inquiry. After exploring what is entailed by an appeal to experience, when conjoined to what Cavell identifies as the task of checking one’s experience, the author turns to our quotidian experience as improvisational actors and, ultimately, to the rather singular achievements of jazz improvisers. In doing so, he hopes to illuminate the inherently creative dimension of human action, wherever it unfolds.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether there is any unified theory of mental phenomena in the writings of Charles Sanders Peirce. Our thesis is that we find in Peirce's semiotic approach to human consciousness a remarkably unified perspective. ;In order to understand Peirce's reflections on the nature of mind, it is necessary first to situate them in the larger context of his philosophical system. Thus, in the first chapter, we present an overview of his system of thought. In the second chapter, we examine Peirce's concept of sign-activity or what he called semiosis, since this constitutes for him the perspective from which all manifestations of mind must be interpreted. In order to be in a position to grasp Peirce's semiotic approach to mind, it is essential to have a basic understanding of his concept of semiosis. ;In the third chapter, we consider the way in which Peirce's critique of intuitionism cleared the way for his semiotic interpretation of mental phenomena. In the fourth chapter, we examine the particulars of Peirce's attempt to interpret the various modifications of human consciousness as instances of semiosis or sign-activity. ;This semiotic interpretation of mental phenomena is found in Peirce's early writings. But, as a result of later refinements and developments in his understanding of semiosis, Peirce's theory of mind undergoes corresponding refinements and developments. In the fifth and final chapter, we examine Peirce's mature formulation of his semiotic theory, a formulation which gives a prominent place to both habits and self-control.

No philosopher in the second half of the twentieth century or the opening decade of the twenty-first did more to recover the voice of philosophy in the conversation of humankind than John Edwin Smith (1921-2009). From The Social Infinite (1950), his landmark study of Josiah Royce, to "Niebuhr's Prophetic Voice" (2009), he has shown in compelling detail how philosophical reflection is relevant to contemporary life. Indeed, virtually all of the eventual developments within contemporary philosophy in recent decades worthy of our unqualified support (above all, the acknowledgment of history, the abiding importance of the religious dimension of human experience, the hermeneutic character of all our intellectual understandings, including those of experimental inquirers, the irreducibility of persons, the ubiquity of symbols, and the cutting edge of philosophical critique) were ones to which Smith was committed at the outset of his career. He not only anticipated these developments but also pointed the way forward beyond the stultifying impasses of so much contemporary thought. In particular, his conceptions of subjectivity, symbolization, interpretation, experience and philosophy itself provide invaluable resources for twisting free from our present impasses. The essays in this volume make the salience and implications of Smith's writings on these and other topics manifest. The authors assembled here bear eloquent witness to the wit of the man no less than the depth of the philosopher from whom they learned how to take up the urgent task of philosophical reflection in a world riven by seemingly intractable conflicts and characterized by mutual misunderstanding. John E. Smith was a widely learned man; he was also a deeply wise one. Hence, it should be no surprise that he aids us in creating ways to address such conflicts and to counter such misunderstanding.

John E. Smith has contributed to contemporary philosophy in primarily four distinct capacities; first, as a philosopher of religion and God; second, as an indefatigable defender of philosophical reflection in its classical sense ( a sense inclusive of, but not limited to, metaphysics); third, as a participant in the reconstruction of experience and reason so boldly inaugurated by Hegel then redically transformed by the classical American pragmatists, and significantly augmented by such thinkers as Josiah Royce, william Earnest Hocking, and Alfred North Whitehead; fourth, as an interpreter of philosophical texts and traditions (Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche no less than Charles Peirce, WIlliam James and John Dewey; German idealism as well as American; the Augustinian tradition no less than the pragmatic). Reason, Experience, and God provides an important and comprehensive look at the work of John E. Smith by collected essays which each address aspects of his life-long work. A response by John E. Smith himself draws a line of continuity between the pieces.

: While the work of such expositors as Max H. Fisch, James J. Liszka, Lucia Santaella, Anne Friedman, and Mats Bergman has helped bring into sharp focus why Peirce took the third branch of semiotic (speculative rhetoric) to be "the highest and most living branch of logic," more needs to be done to show the extent to which the least developed branch of his theory of signs is, at once, its potentially most fruitful and important. The author of this paper thus begins to trace out even more fully than these scholars have done the unfinished trajectory of Peirce's eventual realization of the importance of speculative rhetoric. In doing so, he is arguing for a shift from the formalist and taxonomic emphasis of so many commentators to a more thoroughly pragmaticist and "rhetorical" approach to interpreting Peirce's theory of signs.

This book features the full scope of Susan Petrilli's important work on signs, language, communication, and of meaning, interpretation, and understanding. Although readers are likely familiar with otherness, interpretation, identity, embodiment, ecological crisis, and ethical responsibility for the biosphere—Petrilli forges new paths where other theorists have not tread. This work of remarkable depth takes up intensely debated topics, exhibiting in their treatment of them what Petrilli admires—creativity and imagination. Petrilli presents a careful integration of divergent thinkers and diverse perspectives. While she abandons hope of attaining a final synthesis or an unqualifiedly comprehensive outlook, there remains a drive for coherence and detailed integration. The theory of identity being advocated in this book will provide the reader with an aid to appreciating the identity of the theorizing undertaken by Petrilli in her confrontation with an array of topics. Her theory differentiates itself from other offerings and, at the same time, is envisioned as a process of self-differentiation. Petrilli's contribution is at once historical and theoretical. It is historical in its recovery of major figures of language; it is theoretical in its articulation of a comprehensive framework. She expertly combines analytic precision and moral passion, theoretical imagination and political commitment.

There are various reasons for taking a second look at anything at all. One reason is to discern aspects which have been overlooked; another frequently related reason is to reappraise the value or relevance of whatever is being reconsidered. A thing might be deemed worthless or negligible because some feature or set of features has been overlooked. And this way of conceiving the thing might become so familiar, so entrenched, that it powerfully, because subtly, works against alternative conceptions. In certain intellectual circles, for example, the critiques of religion have become so familiar that the religious hypothesis is not a “living option.” As John Dewey noted, familiarity is more likely to breed credulity than contempt: We take the familiar conception, containing its implicit evaluation, as worthy of our belief, simply because it is familiar. Thus, a second look undertaken from a fresh perspective is ordinarily most promising; for it is most likely to bring into focus overlooked facets and unsuspected relevancies of familiar topics.

Relazione presentata al Seminario di Filosofia Teoretica nella primavera 2015.Given the topic of the given, it would be all too easy to become entangled in highly technical disputes about Wilfrid Sellars, John McDowell, and other authors regarding how to interpret and, then, assess, their critiques of “myth of the given.” Though I am dubious whether we could within the limits of this articlemove toward resolving any of these questions, such an engagement might nonetheless prove profitable. It would also likely prove to be invigorating, since wrestling with technical issues in a systematic manner carries a unique form of intellectual enjoyment for the properly trained philosopher. Even so, that is not my intention today. Rather my aim is simply to sketch, mostly in broad bold strokes, though to some extent also in minute, careful ones, what I take to be a pragmatist approach to this multifaceted controversy. In my judgment, much still depends upon coming to a deeper appreciation of one of the central lessons of the pragmatist movement: the recurrent need to articulate a more truly empirical understanding of human experience. Above all else, then, my reflections aim at deepening the contemporary appreciation of the pragmatist take on human experience.

From time to time, Peter H. Hare emphatically reminded me he was drawn to William James as a philosopher, not just a stylist. While Peter1 was throughout his life appreciative of James's efforts to articulate an ethics of belief (see, e.g., Hare 2003), he was skeptical of them in the context of religion. He felt compelled to hound the gods and their defenders (Hare and Madden 1969). Even so, the ethics of belief outlined and partly filled in by James provided Peter with crucial insights for developing a distinctive form of responsibilism2 (Hare 2003, 240).3In addition to the ethics of belief, James's reconstruction of experience provided, Peter argued, an invaluable resource for mounting an effective defense of..

This essay explores important intersections between the thought of John Dewey and Michel Foucault, with special attention to the distinction between emancipation versus practices of freedom. The complex relationship between these thinkers is, at once, complementary, divergent, and overlapping. The author however stresses the way in which both Dewey and Foucault portray situated subjects as improvisational actors implicated in unique situations, the meaning of which turns on the extemporaneous exertions of these implicated agents.