Vincent Colapietro

The central preoccupation of Peirce and Polanyi was to undertake (in the words of the former) an inquiry into inquiry, one in which the defining features of our heuristic practices stood out in bold relief. But both thinkers were also concerned to bring into sharp focus the deep affinities between our theoretical pursuits and other shared practices. They were in effect sketching a portrait of the responsible inquirer and, by implication, that of the responsible agent more generally. This essay is, in structure, a series of études for how we might reconstruct that portrait, since there is no extended treatment in the writings of either author of these central figures (the agent and, in particular, the responsible inquirer). It is accordingly a preliminary study, though in some particulars a detailed one. Its ultimate aim is to join—and thereby to invite others to join—Peirce and Polanyi as inquirers into the very nature of inquiry itself.

The task of philosophy is examined in reference to the actual circumstances of academic philosophy, principally in the United States. The author challenges the still prevalent tendency to conceive academic philosophy as an affair split into two camps—most often identified as analytic and Continental philosophy. Moreover, he proposes a distinctive understanding of the dialectical approach to philosophical query, one attuned to the traditional character of the relevant alternatives and also to the ideological dimension of contemporary disputes, but not one necessarily undertaken for sake of resolving disagreements or achieving consensus. The very goals animating the process of working through substantive, methodological, and other differences (in a word, animating dialectic) are themselves critical foci of an ongoing process open not only to question but also alteration: the aims of query are being continuously transformed or redefined in course of this undertaking. In proposing this understanding of dialectic, he draws heavily on the examples of Richard J. Bernstein, John McCumber, and especially John E. Smith. Finally, the author offers an example of how such an approach can be effectively eliminated, even by an individual who in almost every other respect is an exemplary philosopher. If (as John Courtney Murray, S.J., asserts) civility “dies with the death of dialogue,” philosophy can live only by the continual renewal of genuine dialogueacross diverse traditions.

A. N. WHITEHEAD SUGGESTS philosophy is akin to poetry. Let me count the ways or, more exactly, identify four facets of this kinship. After touching upon these facets, I will in the second part of this paper focus directly on the relationship between being and articulation, regardless of the form in which being comes to expression. Then, in the third section, I offer Charles S. Peirce’s categoreal scheme as a compelling articulation of what are, arguably, the most ubiquitous and indeed basic features of being. Finally, the last section of this paper considers human beings precisely in their ongoing efforts to give adequate expression to human experience in its broadest reach and deepest import. Philosophers and poets alike struggle to speak in an intelligible, arresting, and acute voice: they would have their utterances stop us, so that we might discern more sharply and attentively the meanings in which we are enmeshed. On the part of both, one observes countless “attempts to escape our humanness,” but one also hears deliberate endeavors “[t]o speak humanly from the height or from the depth” of experience. The philosophical no less than the poetic voice has been a distinctively human voice in which a finite, fallible, and mortal animal has given arresting expression to the most telling disclosures of human experience. It is, accordingly, to the kinship between poetry and philosophy that I now turn.

ABSTRACT I consider Chauncey Wright's metaphor of the universe as so much “cosmic weather” and then Tim Ingold's characterization of the terrestrial zone (or medium) of human existence taking shape as a “weather world.” I also attempt to connect the metaphor at the root of Wright's cosmology with the nuanced account of the weather world (especially as a medium and “meshwork”) at the center of Ingold's anthropology. The upshot is a thoroughly pragmatic understanding of the lifeworld of human beings.

The aim of this article is to show how intimately connected Beth J. Singer's theory of operative rights is with her understanding of the deliberative process. I thus argue against Cynthia Gayman's effort to set in contrast Singer's theory of rights and Dewey's characteristic emphasis on reflective morality. Since I take the value of Singer's approach to be most evident in its relevance to the abortion debate as an ongoing deliberation, I question whether Mary Magada‐Ward sufficiently appreciates the dialogical and deliberative emphases of Singer's stance. My goal, however, is not so much to argue against either Gayman or Magada‐Ward as it is to argue for taking Singer's position even more seriously than either author does. In particular, I want to highlight the finely nuanced character of Singer's philosophical intervention in the debate regarding abortion, especially stressing certain features that Gayman and Magada‐Ward overlook.