Dear Gary and list
Your quote made me think of John of the Cross famous poem of the dark night
describing the mystical union. http://www.ewtn.com/library/SOURCES/DARK-JC.TXT
. I have italicized the places where the a-personal in the union is described
though the poem is within the frames of Christianity, which John managed to
stay within but Eckhart was kicked out from after his death.
STANZAS OF THE SOUL
1. One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
-- ah, the sheer grace! --
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.
2. In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
-- ah, the sheer grace! --
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.
3. On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.
4. This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
-- him I knew so well --
there in a place where no one appeared.
5. O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.
6. Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.
7. When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.
8. I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.
Best
Søren
Fra: Benjamin Udell [mailto:[email protected]]
Sendt: 21. maj 2014 20:18
Til: [email protected]
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and
religion: text 1
Quick followup on "L 482" or whatever it really is:
Douglas R. Anderson quotes Peirce's whole letter to John W. Brown on pages
15-16 in Chapter 1 in _Strands of System_ and adds, "MS, Fisch Collection"
http://books.google.com/books?id=jc5r7WoNEE8C&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=%22Peirce%22+%22John+W.+Brown%22&source=bl&ots=1aP337-t1e&sig=9mtD-IDxK7zpfD9NvbojyNy4IZ0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rt18U8_sGsXisATup4BI&ved=0CEAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=%22Peirce%22%20%22John%20W.%20Brown%22&f=false
There's a chapter end note 11 indicated but I can't access the page with its
text in Google Preview.
Best, Ben
On 5/21/2014 1:49 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
Gary F., Stephen, all,
The full text of Peirce's letter of April 24, 1892 to the Reverend John W.
Brown is at
http://www.unav.es/gep/LetterJBrown.html
at the website of the Grupo de Estudios Peirceanos. G.E.P. also has images of
the letter, beginning at:
http://www.unav.es/gep/1Brown.html
The quote about speculation and experience is in the 1898 lectures, CP 1.655
[CP 1.655, QUOTE] If, walking in a garden on a dark night, you were suddenly to
hear the voice of your sister crying to you to rescue her from a villain, would
you stop to reason out the metaphysical question of whether it were possible
for one mind to cause material waves of sound and for another mind to perceive
them? If you did, the problem might probably occupy the remainder of your days.
In the same way, if a man undergoes any religious experience and hears the call
of his Saviour, for him to halt till he has adjusted a philosophical difficulty
would seem to be an analogous sort of thing, whether you call it stupid or
whether you call it disgusting. If on the other hand, a man has had no
religious experience, then any religion not an affectation is as yet impossible
for him; and the only worthy course is to wait quietly till such experience
comes. No amount of speculation can take the place of experience. [END QUOTE,
FONT ENLARGEMENT ADDED]
Compare this passage from the 1892 letter:
[QUOTE] But this time - I was not thinking of St. Thomas and his doubts either
- no sooner had I got into the church than I seemed to receive the direct
permission of the Master to come. Still, I said to myself, I must not go to the
communion without further reflection! I must go home & duly prepare myself
before I venture. But, when the instant came, I found myself carried up to the
altar rail, almost without my own volition. I am perfectly sure that it was
right. Anyway, I could not help it. [END QUOTE]
The passage from the 1898 lecture seems connected with his 1903 remark that
"experience is our only teacher," as you say, Gary F., but it also seems to
harken back to the 1892 letter. In the 1898 passage I've enlarged the line
that seems to allude to the passage that I quoted from the 1892 letter. On the
other hand, for my part, I'm unsure what broader conclusions about Peirce's
thought's longer-term development can be drawn from all this. Brent does seem
speculative about this.
Still, Peirce's _Monist_ Metaphysical series does take a more religiously
suggestive turn after April 1892, as Brent pointed out. Of course, it could
have been that Peirce was already planning that turn, and his mystical
experience came timely with it, invited by that turn, and perhaps reinforcing
or energizing it somehow.
(1891 January), "The Architecture of Theories", The Monist, v. I, n. 2.
(1892 April) "The Doctrine of Necessity Examined", The Monist, v. II, n. 3
(1892 July) "The Law of Mind", The Monist, v. II, n. 4
(1892 October), "Man's Glassy Essence", The Monist, v. III, n. 1
(1893 January), "Evolutionary Love", The Monist, v. III, n. 2
(1893 July), "Reply to the Necessitarians", The Monist, v. III, n. 4
and one should also mention
"Immortality in the Light of Synechism," submitted 1893 May 4, but unpublished
in The Monist because of a misunderstanding.
Meanwhile, I don't see all this as having much to do with Peirce's 1905
distinction of pragmaticism from pragmatism more generally. He wanted to
distinguish pragmaticism from the magical pragmatist Papini's notion that
pragmatism cannot be defined, and from the Schiller's and James's versions.
Peirce believed that they held, among other things, that truth is not immutable
and that infinity is not real. He also disagreed with James's ideas of the will
to believe. While such unpragmaticistic ideas run contrary to Peirce's
religious ideas, they also run contrary to his ideas in general.
Note, on the listing of the letter to Brown as "L 482". I don't have my copy of
Brent's Peirce handy and the Google preview omits some pages that I needed to
see. I had wanted to find out whether the letter to Brown was a draft.
G.E.P.'s transcription calls the letter "L 482" but the Robin Catalogue
http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/robin/robin_fm/toc_frm.htm<http://www.iupui.edu/%7Epeirce/robin/robin_fm/toc_frm.htm>
has something else as L 482. I did a browser search on instances of "Brown"
but did not find the letter to John W. Brown in either of the two lists of
letters at the Robin Catalogue.
Best, Ben
On 5/21/2014 12:00 PM, Gary Fuhrman wrote:
If the “unpublished fragment” you quote dates from 1890, how can it bear
witness to the effect on Peirce of an experience he had in 1892?
Peirce’s account of that experience says that he was drawn into St. Thomas’s
church, and up to the communion rail, “almost without my own volition.” He
wrote about it to the rector of the church, offering his services in “some form
of church work”. Then he says, “I have never before been mystical; but now I
am.” But what does that mean, pragmaticistically? What church work did Peirce
do as a result? As for his philosophical work, there is no evidence whatsoever
that this “mystical” experience, or the memory of it, had anything to do with
Peirce inventing “pragmaticism” as an alternative to “pragmatism” 12 years
later. I think you’re ignoring everything Peirce wrote about the “natural
light” during the years in between (see my post addressed to Søren). That
certainly does have a lot to do with pragmaticism.
Brent on p.210 makes a totally specious connection between this incident and
something Peirce wrote six years later, in which he says that “No amount of
speculation can take the place of experience.” But that passage is much more
genuinely connected to Peirce’s remark in his 1903 Harvard lectures that
“experience is our only teacher.” Peirce makes no mention in either place of
mystical experience, and elsewhere he makes it clear that the mystical is just
about the most inconsequential kind of experience, contributing almost nothing
to the growth of “concrete reasonableness”, which he virtually equates with the
evolution of God.
gary f.
From: Stephen C. Rose
Sent: 21-May-14 11:04 AM
To: Gary Fuhrman
Cc: Peirce List
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and
religion: text 1
For starters this unpublished fragment noted in Brent (2nd ed) as CSP to PC [20
July 1890) (L 77) which reads in part:: "Since then God is using me ... should
I not be content? ..." And then his explicit description of his experience in
church which he describes in his own words as mystical on pp 209-10 of the same
book. CSP's conclusion" "I have never before been mystical, but now I am." The
practical effect was his effort to define pragmaticism as distinct from
pragmatism and complete 70K or so mss pages, many following the experience of
April 24, 1992. I would suggest the practical effect is manifest 100 years
following his death. And that such testimony in itself should at least be
accorded a place in scholarly awareness of his biography.
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