Jeffrey D., list,
For my part I don't have an opinion on whether Peirce should have paid
more attention to hermeneutics and genealogical thinking and should have
had a higher opinion of dialectics. Still, for what it's worth, I've
done a little text-searching in CP, W, and CN, and here are some results.
Peirce did pay attention to dialectics, since he read plenty of Kant,
Hegel, and classical philosophers. He didn't think highly of it. He's
less harsh about Hegel's dialectics than about Royce's and those of
unnamed others. I can't find him commenting on Kant's dialectics.
From "A Guess at the Riddle", Chapter 1, (1886-7)
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/guess/guess.htm , EP 1:256,
he says about Hegel :
[....] Finally Hegel's plan of evolving everything out of the
abstractest conception by a dialectical procedure, though far from
being so absurd as the experientialists think, but on the contrary
representing one of the indispensable parts of the course of
science, overlooks the weakness of individual man, who wants the
strength to wield such a weapon as that.
In a note added in 1893 (CP 5 Endnotes) to (CP 5.392) "The Fixation of
Ideas", Peirce classes Hegel's dialectic as belonging to the method of
inclinations, by which I think Peirce means the method of the _/a priori/_:
As for Hegel, who led Germany for a generation, he recognizes
clearly what he is about. He simply launches his boat into the
current of thought and allows himself to be carried wherever the
current leads. He himself calls his method _/dialectic/_, meaning
that a frank discussion of the difficulties to which any opinion
spontaneously gives rise will lead to modification after
modification until a tenable position is attained. This is a
distinct profession of faith in the method of inclinations.
His criticisms of dialectics sometimes run along the line that it
involves pretending to doubt. In Peirce's review (1885) of Josiah
Royce's _The Religious Aspect of Philosophy_, CP 8.45, W 5:229:
[....] The modern dialectician (if he will pardon a touch of
exaggeration) would have such a man say to himself, Now I am going
to be sceptical, but only provisionally so, in order to return to my
faith with renewed conviction! But the whole history of thought
shows that men cannot doubt at pleasure or merely because they find
they have no positive reason for the belief they already hold. [....]
On Socratic dialectic, in an unpublished version or outtake or the like
c.1900 of Peirce's review of Josiah Royce's _The World and the
Individual_, CP 8.110:
[....] For very seldom is anybody really convinced by the Socratic
style of dialectic. Rather point out to a man a new fact, or one
that he had overlooked; and then he himself, seeing it to be
pertinent, will straightway begin to revise his opinion. [....]
As to hermeneutics (and exegetics) I can't find any instances of the
string hermeneu or the name Dilthey in Peirce's writings. He mentions
Schleiermacher a few times in passing. The string exege appears a few
times in passing. So maybe Peirce paid little attention to that school
or approach.
I'm not sure what you mean by the 'genealogical' approach unless you
mean in a history-of-ideas sense, Peirce once wrote to Dewey that a
'genetic' approach to teaching a science makes sense in teaching some
fields but is detrimental in others.
Best, Ben
On 4/13/2014 11:10 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
List,
This chapter on the philosophy of science breaks with the established pattern
of following Peirce's architectonic. Given the centrality of scientific
inquiry in his philosophical theory, there is good reason to devote a separate
chapter to this topic. When I compare Peirce's view to those developed by
other major philosophers, I can't help but wonder if Peirce has drawn the
boundaries of philosophical theorizing too narrowly. In his phenomenological
theory and in his normative sciences, so much attention has been devoted to the
philosophical foundations of the scientific method, that one might wonder if he
has paid too little attention to the kinds of questions that figure prominently
in the philosophical theories developed by the likes of Plato, Aristotle,
Aquinas, Kant, Heidegger, and others.
With these kinds of concerns in mind, let me try to frame two questions.
Peirce is trying to model philosophical inquiry on the scientific method. In
turn, the scientific method is itself the main focus of his philosophical
inquiries. Has the single minded focus on scientific method come at too high a
price? Has it caused him to pay too little attention to other methods:
dialectical, genealogical, hermeneutic? Has it caused him to pay too little
attention to other kinds of philosophical questions about morality, art, and
the like?
--Jeff
Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354
________________________________________
From: Benjamin Udell [[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2014 8:46 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Fwd: [PEIRCE-L] RE: de Waal Seminar: Chapter 6, Philosophy of
Science
Jeffrey, Sam, Jeff K., list,
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