Vincent Colapietro

: 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

: The author of this paper explores a central strand in the complex relationship between Peirce and Kant. He argues, against Kant (especially as reconstructed by Christine Korsgaard), that the practical identity of the self-critical agent who undertakes a Critic of reason (as Peirce insisted upon translating this expression) needs to be conceived in substantive, not purely formal, terms. Thus, insofar as there is a reflexive turn in Peirce, it is quite far from the transcendental turn taken by Immanuel Kant. The identity of the being devoted to redefining the bounds of reason (for the drawing of such bounds is always a historically situated and motivated undertaking) is not that of a disembodied, rational will giving laws to itself. Nor is it that of a being whose passions and especially sentiments are heteronomous determinations of the deliberative agency in question. Rather the identity of this being is that of a somatic, social, and historical agent whose very autonomy not only traces its origin to heteronomy but also ineluctably involves an identification with what, time and again, emerges as other than this agent. A strong claim is made regarding human identity being practical identity (practical identity being understood here as the singular shape acquired by a human being in the complex course of its practical involvements, its participation in the array of practices in and through which such a being carries out its life). An equally strong claim is made regarding the upshot of Peirce's decisive movement beyond Kant's transcendental project: this movement unquestionably drives toward a compelling account of human agency

George Santayana was not only a poet but also a philosopher whose style, concerns, and even positions drew in his own time and continues to draw in ours the attention of poets and, more broadly, literary authors. He was, in short, a poet's philosopher. In so characterizing Santayana, however, there is no slight of his strictly philosophical achievement. The philosophical finesse with which he treated complex topics is, indeed, nowhere more evident than in his rigorous analysis of poetic utterance. The author of this essay explores Santayana's nuanced account of poetic utterance and, then, interprets Santayana's own literary accomplishments, including his philosophical writings, in light of this account. Given the attention which Angus Kerr-Lawson has paid to the rhetorical strategies and literary qualities of this singular philosopher, it is fitting to contribute such an essay to an issue in his honor.

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.

Habit plays a central role in Peirce's pragmatic account of human signification. What he means by meaning is, hence, fully intelligible only in reference to the role he accords to habit in this account. While the main focus of Peirce's critical attention is, especially in the mature articulation of his thoroughgoing pragmatism, upon deliberately acquired habits, it is reasonable to suggest that often his concern is actually with something broader in one sense and narrower in another than individual or isolated habits. Any given disposition to act in certain ways in certain circumstances is taken by him to be an integral part of more or less integrated dispositions to act, feel, and even imagine: it is not taken to be operative apart from these other habits. In this sense, then, his concern is primarily with such integrated dispositions, not isolated habits. Thus, it is broader than the inattentive reader is likely to suspect. But, since those deliberately cultivated dispositions of rational agents that are at the center of Peirce's concerns are ones specifiable only in reference to some human practice such as experimental inquiry or everyday conversations, religious worship or artistic innovation, these dispositions are appropriately taken to be not simply habits in any way whatsoever but primarily habits to act in a competent or expert manner. More simply put, these deliberately cultivated dispositions are, in many instances, best conceived as competencies or expertise. While not all habits equip agents with expert or even competent ways of addressing the shifting demands of experiential situations (that is, while not all habits are instances of competence or expertise), all cases of competence and expertise are, at bottom, more or less harmoniously integrated clusters of flexible, nuanced, and alterable habits. Accordingly, any account of Peirce's conception of habit, especially as it pertains to his pragmatic theory of meaning, must bring into sharper focus the complex relationship among habits, competence, and expertise than Peirce and even his most imaginative expositors have done thus far. The aim of this paper is to push our investigation of the Peircean notion of human habituation in precisely this direction. Against an evolutionary background, the historical foreground of historically evolved and evolving practices will be sketched. Habits in their guise as competencies and expertise will then be seen in the context of such practices, with equal emphasis on initiation into a practice and the open-ended process of acquiring ever more refined expertise.

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.

One criticism of pragmatism, forcefully articulated by Stanley Cavell, is that pragmatism fails to deal with mourning, understood in the psychoanalytic sense as grief-work (Trauerarbeit). Such work would seemingly be as pertinent to philosophical investigations (especially ones conducted by pragmatists) as to psychoanalytic explorations. Finding such themes as mourning and loss in R. W. Emerson's writings, Cavell warns against assimilating Emerson's voice to that of American pragmatism, especially Dewey's instrumentalism, for such assimilation risks the loss or repression of Emerson's voice in not only professional philosophy but also American culture. While granting Emerson's distinctive voice, this essay argues that the way Cavell insists on differences problematically represses recognition of the Emersonian strains in Dewey's own philosophical voice. In doing so, Cavell falsely flattens the resounding depth of Dewey's philosophical voice and narrows the expansive range of pragmatic intelligence. But Dewey all too often lends himself to such a misreading, for his writings at once repress and embody the strains of a distinctively Emersonian voice.

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.

Among his other contributions to advancing our understanding of classical American pragmatism and, in particular, Charles S. Peirce, none is more worthy of our attention than Richard S. Robin's characteristically painstaking attempt to address the puzzle of Peirce's "Proof" of pragmaticism.1 In this as in so many other respects,2 he shows himself to be, in effect, the student of Max H. Fisch (see especially 1986, chapter 19).3 There are hermeneutical traditions as well as philosophical ones and often the former are integral parts of the latter. This is certainly the case regarding pragmatism. A deeper or better understanding of the inaugural figures in this philosophical movement is taken, by the interpreters of..

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 ..

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.