Stefan, List,
Stefan, thanks for bringing together these several relevant Peirce
quotations. You concluded your post:
The context for Peirce thinking about democracy and political
economy are obviously his religious ideas. Central concepts in
this context are love and greed/ altruism and egoism. This brings
immediatly Aristoteles classification of forms of government to my
mind (Pol. III, 6 f.).
government of... altruistic
good
egoistic
bad
one
monarchy
tyranny
few aristocracy
oligarchy
many politeía
democracy
Maybe this could be a direction to think more about Peirce and
democracy...
I'm not so sure that reflecting on Aristotle's views in this matter
will help us much in getting at Peirce's. I would , however, tend to
strongly agree with you that "The context for Peirce thinking about
democracy and political economy are obviously his religious ideas.
Central concepts in this context are love and greed/ altruism and egoism."
I'm not sure why this brought Aristotle's classification "immediately"
to your mind given that Aristotle's views would seem to have little to
do with religion, love, and greed. As for Peirce's view (if not
exactly of democracy, at least of what underpins political economy),
it seems to me to be admirably represented by this quotation which you
offered which contrasts the Gospel of Christ (i.e., of Love) with the
Gospel of Greed.
6.294. Here, then, is the issue. The gospel of Christ says that
progress comes from every individual merging his individuality in
sympathy with his neighbors. On the other side, the conviction of
the nineteenth century is that progress takes place by virtue of
every individual’s striving for himself with all his might and
trampling his neighbor under foot whenever he gets a chance to do
so. This may accurately be called the Gospel of Greed.
Peirce most surely did not have anything good to say about social
Darwinism.
While for Aristotle democracy is not a good form of government, one
ought recall that for him the concept of democracy is rule by the
indigent or needy (I'm not sure why this gets democracy placed among
the 'egoistic' forms of government). The better form for him is, as in
your diagram above, that of the /politeía/ composed, I take it, of
those with enough time and resources to pursue virtue (one might
assume, in the interest of the general good), so certainly not the
common people. /Politeía/ is, however, a problematic term in
Aristotle's work and is to this day much debated as he does not use it
in a consistent sense in /Politics/. But, in any event, even a
benevolent monarchy is preferable to a democracy in Aristotle's sense
of that concept.
Best,
Gary R
Gary Richmond*
*
*
*
*Gary Richmond*
*Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
*Communication Studies*
*LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
*C 745*
*718 482-5690 <tel:718%20482-5690>*
On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 3:06 PM, sb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Gary, Clark, List,
You may recall that I concluded my message which began this
thread with this question: can anyone on the list offer some
Peirce quotations which might help quickly clarify his views on
democracy?
when i search the CP for "democra" there are only three hits. Just
because of curiosity i also searched for "Jefferson" and
"Tocqueville"but there were no results. Hits in CP I and CP VI are:
CP 1.654. Common sense, which is the resultant of the
traditional experience of mankind, witnesses unequivocally
that the heart is more than the head, and is in fact
everything in our highest concerns, thus agreeing with my
unproved logical theorem; and those persons who think that
sentiment has no part in common sense forget that the dicta of
common sense are objective facts, not the way some dyspeptic
may feel, but what the healthy, natural, normal *democracy*
thinks. And yet when you open the next new book on the
philosophy of religion that comes out, the chances are that it
will be written by an intellectualist who in his preface
offers you his metaphysics as a guide for the soul, talking as
if philosophy were one of our deepest concerns. How can the
writer so deceive himself?
----
CP 6.449. Many a scientific man and student of philosophy
recognizes that it is the Christian church which has made him
a man among men. To it he owes consolations, enjoyments,
escapes from great perils, and whatever rectitude of heart and
purpose may be his. To the monks of the medieval church he
owes the preservation of ancient literature; and without the
revival of learning he can hardly see how the revival of
science would have been possible. To them he owes the
framework of his intellectual system, and if he speaks
English, a most important part of his daily speech. The law of
love which, however little it be obeyed, he holds to be the
soul of civilization, came to Europe through Christianity.
Besides, religion is a great, perhaps the greatest, factor of
that social life which extends beyond one’s own circle of
personal friends. That life is everything for elevated, and
humane, and *democratic* civilization; and if one renounces
the Church, in what other way can one as satisfactorily
exercise the faculty of fraternizing with all one‘s neighbours?
In CP VIII:
Peirce: CP 8 Bibliography General 1875 [G-1875-1]1875
3. “A Plan and an Illustration” (on proportional
representation), The *Democratic* Party; A Political Study, by
a Political Zero (Melusina Fay Peirce), John Wilson and Son,
Cambridge, 1875, pp. 36-37. Both the whole work and Peirce’s
contribution are anonymous, but these are identified in
[Fisch-Haskell].
The publication by Melusina can be found here:
http://www.unav.es/gep/TheDemocraticPartyMichigan.pdf
<http://www.unav.es/gep/TheDemocraticPartyMichigan.pdf>
Using the keyword "republic" i find:
CP 2.654 To be logical men should not be selfish; and, in
point of fact, they are not so selfish as they are thought.
The willful prosecution of one’s desires is a different thing
from selfishness. The miser is not selfish; his money does him
no good, and he cares for what shall become of it after his
death. We are constantly speaking of /our/ possessions on the
Pacific, and of /our/ destiny as a *republic*, where no
personal interests are involved, in a way which shows that we
have wider ones. We discuss with anxiety the possible
exhaustion of coal in some hundreds of years, or the
cooling-off of the sun in some millions, and show in the most
popular of all religious tenets that we can conceive the
possibility of a man‘s descending into hell for the salvation
of his fellows.
CP 2.654 Now, it is not necessary for logicality that a man
should himself be capable of the heroism of self-sacrifice. It
is sufficient that he should recognize the possibility of it,
should perceive that only that man’s inferences who has it are
really logical, and should consequently regard his own as
being only so far valid as they would be accepted by the hero.
So far as he thus refers his inferences to that standard, he
becomes identified with such a mind.
----
CP 5.355. That being the case, it becomes interesting to
inquire how it is with men as a matter of fact. There is a
psychological theory that man cannot act without a view to his
own pleasure. This theory is based on a falsely assumed
subjectivism. Upon our principles of the objectivity of
knowledge, it could not be based; and if they are correct, it
is reduced to an absurdity. It seems to me that the usual
opinion of the selfishness of man is based in large measure
upon this false theory. I do not think that the facts bear out
the usual opinion. The immense self-sacrifices which the most
wilful men often make, show that wilfulness is a very
different thing from selfishness. The care that men have for
what is to happen after they are dead, cannot be selfish. And
finally and chiefly, the constant use of the word ”*/we/*“ --
as when we speak of our possessions on the Pacific -- our
destiny as a *republic* -- in cases in which no personal
interests at all are involved, show conclusively that men do
not make their personal interests their only ones, and
therefore may, at least, subordinate them to the interests of
the community.
In CP 8.41 and CP 4.231 P just refers to Platos Republic. And CP
7.601 is from my point of view also of lesser interest:
He will not even name him (perhaps to spare the family), but
refers to him by various satirical nick-names, especially as
”*/Thrasymachus,/*“†4 -- a foolish character introduced into
the *Republic* and another dialogue of Plato for the purpose
of showing how vastly such an ignorant pretender to philosophy
is inferior to Socrates (that is, to Plato himself) in every
quality of mind and heart, and especially in good manners.
The search terms "vote" and "voting"don't produceany hits related
to a discussion of democracy.
Since Peirce mentions democracy within the context of his
religious ideas i also included a search for "political economy",
because his views on political economy are also influenced by
religion:
CP 1.75 The old-fashioned *political economist* adored, as
alone capable of redeeming the human race, the glorious
principle of individual greed, although, as this principle
requires for its action hypocrisy and fraud, he generally
threw in some dash of inconsistent concessions to virtue, as a
sop to the vulgar Cerberus. But it is easy to see that the
only kind of science this principle would favor would be such
as is immediately remunerative with a great preference for
such as can be kept secret, like the modern sciences of dyeing
and perfumery.
----
6.290. The nineteenth century is now fast sinking into the
grave, and we all begin to review its doings and to think what
character it is destined to bear as compared with other
centuries in the minds of future historians. It will be
called, I guess, the Economical Century; for political economy
has more direct relations with all the branches of its
activity than has any other science. Well, *political economy*
has its formula of redemption, too. It is this: Intelligence
in the service of greed ensures the justest prices, the
fairest contracts, the most enlightened conduct of all the
dealings between men, and leads to the summum bonum, food in
plenty and perfect comfort. Food for whom? Why, for the greedy
master of intelligence. I do not mean to say that this is one
of the legitimate conclusions of political economy, the
scientific character of which I fully acknowledge. But the
study of doctrines, themselves true, will often temporarily
encourage generalizations extremely false, as the study of
physics has encouraged necessitarianism. What I say, then, is
that the great attention paid to economical questions during
our century has induced an exaggeration of the beneficial
effects of greed and of the unfortunate results of sentiment,
until there has resulted a philosophy which comes unwittingly
to this, that greed is the great agent in the elevation of the
human race and in the evolution of the universe.
CP 6.291 I open a handbook of *political economy* †1 -- the
most typical and middling one I have at hand -- and there find
some remarks of which I will here make a brief analysis. I
omit qualifications, sops thrown to Cerberus, phrases to
placate Christian prejudice, trappings which serve to hide
from author and reader alike the ugly nakedness of the
greed-god. But I have surveyed my position. The author
enumerates “three motives to human action:†2
CP 6.291The love of self;
CP 6.291The love of a limited class having common interests
and feelings with one‘s self;
CP 6.291The love of mankind at large.”
----
6.294. Here, then, is the issue. The gospel of Christ says
that progress comes from every individual merging his
individuality in sympathy with his neighbors. On the other
side, the conviction of the nineteenth century is that
progress takes place by virtue of every individual’s striving
for himself with all his might and trampling his neighbor
under foot whenever he gets a chance to do so. This may
accurately be called the Gospel of *Greed*.
----
7.96. In all the explanatory sciences theories far more simple
than the real facts are of the utmost service in enabling us
to analyse the phenomena, and it may truly be said that
physics could not possibly deal even with its relatively
simple facts without such analytic procedure. Thus, the
kinetical theory of gases, when first propounded, was obliged
to assume that all the molecules were elastic spheres, which
nobody could believe to be true. If this is necessary even in
physics, it is far more indispensable in every other science,
and most of all in the moral sciences, such as *political
economy*. Here the sane method is to begin by considering
persons placed in situations of extreme simplicity, in the
utmost contrast to those of all human society, and animated by
motives and by reasoning powers equally unlike those of real
men. Nevertheless, in this way alone can a base be obtained
from which to proceed to the consideration of the effects of
different complications. Owing to the necessity of making
theories far more simple than the real facts, we are obliged
to be cautious in accepting any extreme consequences of them,
and to be also upon our guard against apparent refutations of
them based upon such extreme consequences.
Other hits for political economy can be found in:
CP 2.4, CP 3.405,CP 4.210, CP 4.114, 5.377, CP 6.517, CP
6.612, CP 7.64, CP 7.66, CP 8.6, CP 8 Bibliography General
c.1893 [G-c.1893-5]
For "greed" in:
CP 6.292, CP 6.293, CP 6.294, CP 6.297, CP 6.311,CP 7.265, CP
8 Bibliography General c.1893 [G-c.1893-5]
The context for Peirce thinking about democracy and political
economy are obviously his religious ideas. Central concepts in
this context are love and greed/ altruism and egoism. This brings
immediatly Aristoteles classification of forms of government to my
mind (Pol. III, 6 f.).
government of... altruistic
good
egoistic
bad
one
monarchy
tyranny
few aristocracy
oligarchy
many politeía
democracy
Maybe this could be a direction to think more about Peirce and
democracy...
Best,
Stefan
