Estetica Pierce Lefbvrer

8/3/2019 Estetica Pierce Lefbvrer

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W hat is man's proper function if it benot to embody general ideas in art-creations, in utilities, and above all intheoretical cognitions?

C . S. Peirce^ PeircesAbstract j~ , iIs Peirce's esthetic relevant for the philoso- PStrlF.LlCSlphy of artwhat is usually referred to . ,__, ptoday as aesthetics^ At first glance Peirce's J\ iclSte JOYidiosyncratic esthetic seems quite uncon- ,cerned with issues of art. Yet a careful exam- ^t^flS t7lination reveals that this is not the case. ^Thus, rather than attempt to "apply" MARTIN LEFEBVREPeirce's views to some aspect of the practiceor the theory of art (e.g., creativity, histori-ography of art, style, genre), or even to aparticular work of art, my intention is toexamine how art fits into Peirce's own con-ception of his esthetic theory. The argu-ment is divided into two parts. In the firstsection I present Peirce's conception ofesthetics in the contex t of the normative sci-ences. I argue that esthetics connects withvarious strands of Peirce's philosophy, mostnotahly his cosmology, his agapasm andwith the way that important aspects ofthem hang together around the principle ofahduction and the corresponding notioninsight. In the second section, I consider inwhat way art may be said to he admirable,to contribute to the summum honum. I tryto show that Peirce's esthetic suggests thatwhat attracts us towards art is firs t and fore-most a semeiotic quality qua quality of m indor quality of Th irdness.Key words: Normative Sciences, Esthetics,


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(^ Can Peirce's conception of the esthetic con tribute any thing to the the-Z( ory or the philosophy of art what is usually referred to today as aes-O theticsi^ Th e question opens u p a perspective from which I have sought'' to exam ine some of Peirce's later writings where he explains his concep-^ tions of both the norm ative sciences and his pragmaticism. At the out-^ set we shall see how much Peirce's com m itm en t to esthetics as the*'-' science of the "admirable in itself" departs from the more common^ view of esthetics as the philosophy of art. Yet, Peirce's many hesitationswhenever he ventured to discuss esthetics m ay be seen to illustrate some, of the difficulties he wrestled with in trying to distinguish his concep-r tion of this science from the idea that it should primarily be concernedwith art and the beautiful. What is more, there is no evidence to be hadthat Peirce ever arrived at a defmitive statem ent on the m atter nor even

that he had settled it to his own satisfaction. But the absence of anysuch truly comprehensive or fmal account that would clarify once andfor all the place occupied by art or by the esthetic experience of artwithin Peirce's conception of esthetics in no way implies that there isno thin g to be gained by giving the issue careful cons ideration. T he fol-lowing is an attem pt to do just that.In the first section, I go over the main points of Peirce's esthetics andconsider its role as a "normative science" within his mature classifica-

tion of the sciences. In the second section, I offer some hypotheses as towhat concep tion of art and of aesthetic experience one m ay legitimatelydraw from Peirce's approach to esthetics.Esthetics and normative scienceTo avoid any misunderstandings, it is important from the start to pointou t that what Peirce meant by "esthetics" differs greatly from that whichthe m odern tradition has identified as the part of philosophy which con-cerns itself, as Hegel pu t it in the introduc tion o'i^^ys, Aesthetics, with "threalm of the beautiful; and more precisely [. . .] art, or rather, ^ f art!'^Indeed, while art eventually became the paradigmatic dom ain of esthet-ics, especially in the post-Kantian period, the Peircean conception of thisscience seems at first glance to be somewhat indifferent to it. In fact,Peirce even appears at times contemptuous of esthetics so understood, ascan be seen in a manuscript of 1911 where he writes that "instead of asilly science of Esthetics, that tries to bring us enjoyment of sensuousbeauty,by which I mean all beauty that appeals to our five senses,that which ought to be fostered is meditation, ponderings, day-dreams


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O nly late in his life did Peirce ever com e to offer esthetics an im po r- Jtan t role within his philosophical system as a norm ative science, along- ^side ethics and logic.^ N o one, of course, could deny that, taken as a ""wh ole, his many contribution s to philosophy are first and foremost tha t c?of a logician, and not of a specialist of ethics or estheticsespecially if ^the latter is und erstoo d to be the philosophical science of the fine arts. HAt several occasions Peirce mentions that he considers himself illinformed, even incompetent, with regards to esthetic matters. "Likemo st logicians," he wro te in 19 03 , "I have pon dered that subject far too ^little" (CP 2.19 7). But to this he adds imm ediately thereafter: "Esthet- Hics an d logic seem, at first blush, to belong to different universes. It is zonly very recently that I have becom e persuaded that that seeming is ^illusory, and that, on the contrary, logic needs the help of esthetics. The Sm atter is no t yet very clear to m e."


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(^ given science foregrounds aspects of the three Categories of Firstness,IZi Secondness, and Th irdness. Simply pu t, this implies tha t the norm ativeO sciences, being set between phaneroscopy-First and metaphysics-Th ird,I' must display characteristics of Secondness. Next, the internal sub-^ division of the norm ative sciences implies tha t, relative to one another,^ they ail display different categorial characteristics: monadicity of esthet-'^ ics, dyadicity of ethics, triadicicy of logic. Finally, according to Peirce's^^ categorial taxonomic scheme, sciences which are "Firsts" offer operating^ principles to those that are "Second" and "Third", and those that are^ "Second" do the same for those that are "Third" this is how one mustJ. unders tand Peirce's statem ent tha t "logic needs the help of esthetics."^

In short, according to this breakdown, esthetics must manifest adyadic character, just as ethics an d logic do this is related to their sta-tus as "normative sciences" (see below) , bu t it must also manifest amonadic character such that it may further determine itself in ethicsand logic, which evidence dominant dyadic and triadic charactersrespectively. The sum of these categorial characteristics (dyadicity of thenormative sciences relative to the monadicity of phaneroscopy and tothe triadicity of metaphysics; monadicity of esthetics relative to thedyad icity of ethics and to the triadicity of logic) is what formally definesPeirce's conception of esthetics, ethics, and logic.

Peirce insists on the fact that the normative sciences are not con-cerned by what is or by what must be, rather they seek to examine theconditions of possibility for what ought to be with regards to feeling,conduct, and thought. More specifically, explains Peirce, they investi-gate "the universal and necessary laws of the relation of Phenomena toEnds'" {EP 2: 197, 1903). This is why he also states that the normativesciences are the "most purely theoretical of purely theoretical sciences{CP 1.281, 1902-03). Thus, contrary to certain ^r,2cfzc^/sciences thatclaim to discriminate and evaluate concrete and manifest feelings,actions, and thoughts, the normative sciences offer a theoretical inves-tigation of the conditions that make possible these sorts of discrimina-tion and evaluation in the first place. Now, the only way to considerwhat ought to be with regards to feeling, conduct, and thought andtherefore to envisage possible discrimination and evaluation in thesemattersfor instance: to distinguish between an ethically good and abad actionis to conceive of ends or ideals which ought to be con-formed w ith as m uch as possible so that they may accom plish or fulfillthemselves. This also serves to explain the dominant dyadic nature of


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self-controlwhich always imply effort or resistanceas the conditioti Jipmaking possible the free conformity of phenomena to ends evidences ^the duality that confers to the normative sciences their dominant


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oo this excludes m ak ing pleasure the en d or sup rem e ideal s ince, l ike pa in,Z it is no t a qu ality of feeling strictly sp ea ki ng no r is it a ha bi t of feelingO , bu t rather , acco rding to Peirce, a "secondary" feeling or a form ofI' gen eraliza tion th at gro up s tog eth er different qua lities of feeling w hi ch^ must nonetheless remain separate and dis t inct in themselves ( indeed,^ tho ug h bo th ma y be said to be painful, the sui generis feeling of a t oo th"^ ache rema ins dis t inct f rom tha t of an arm bein g br o ke n ) . '" I f pleasure^ does indeed accompany the accomplishment of the ideal , i t i s as a'~^ symptom, not as a cause. But what exactly is a habit of feeling"2 ) We know that Peirce unders tands hahi t in re la t ion to phenomenaJ. exh ibit ing the ten de ncy to spread ou t into a co n tin u um , tha t is to say,

to regular ize and to reproduce themselves indefinitely in the future.This tendency manifes ts i t se l f in the fac t tha t once a phenomenonappears , the possibil i ty of another one just l ike i t appearing in thefuture hecomes more l ikely. Quali t ies of feeling are monads and thusunrelated to anything else, and yet , by their very appearance theyacquire the power of making their reproduct ion, the i r growth, andtheir reguiar ization more l ikely than before. Once regular ized in thisfashion, qualities of feeling hecome what Peirce calls ideas. Indeed ,writes Peirce, when feelings "become welded together in association,the result is a general idea" (CP6.137, 1892) . This is the very pr incipleof habit- taking that Peirce descr ibes as the ' law of mind' : "Feeling tendsto spread; connections between feelings awaken feelings; neighboringfeelings become assimilated; ideas are apt to reproduce themselves.These are so many formulat ions of the one law of the growth of mind"{CPG.2\, 1891) . Consequent ly , the summum bonum may be def ined asthe quali ty of feeling of the admirable in i tself which spreads, grows,and reproduces itself by habit, for as Peirce says it is a habit of feeling.Now, in as much as this habit is teleologicaland therefore controlled , the gro w th of this qua li ty of feeling corresp ond s to the very pr in ci-ple of rat ionali ty. This leads Peirce to conclude that the only thing thatis admirable in itself, independent ly of any reason, i s reason itself. B utreason here must not be understood as nor reduced to a faculty. Rather ,we must see it as the quality of feeling that regularizes itself in the ideaof reason, as its very essence whose character is to be in a state of con-stant incipiency. This s tate may be descr ibed as the never-fully-embo died habit the universe has developed of acquiring habits in an evermore controlled fashion, of constantly growing in concrete reasonab leness. Itis this quality that is admirable and that enables us to conceive of thesummum bonum as lying in the "rationalization of the universe" {CP


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tive sciences m entioned above. How ever, since criticism seeks to con - Jptrol the conditions according to which a phenomenonthe summum ^bonum, in this casecan embody and fulfill an ideal whose attractive- "ness or admirableness acts upon it as does a final cause, we are left to won-der how to avoid an infinite regress of ideals in accounting for the ^norm ativity of esthetics. T he only possible answer I can think of that is n'congruent with Peirce's viewsthough it is left implicit by him is toconsider in itself he supreme ideal as that which corresponds to the very for-mation and growth of ideals. This implies that the summum bonum is >itself its own no rm , since the growth of concrete reasonableness in the Huniverse would be impossible and un think ab le were it no t for the for- Zmation and growth of ideals. ^

With the summum bonum reason contemplates itself and, like some Sgreat Narcissus, hrings to hear upon itself the power of its own attrac-


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^^ action and every rational thought require an ideal that it attempts toIZi carry out concretely by conforming to it. At best we may envisage theO form ation , by way of chance initially, of an extremely vague ideal cease-i' lessly de term ining itself while also growing in complexity and varietyc"' through the conjugated and opposite effects of chance and habit. The^ no tion tha t ideals can grow thus implies a constant process of revision,"^ re-evaluation, and criticism. Not surprisingly, this picture of growth isy .^ analogous to how Peirce, in his cosmological writings, conceived of th e^ teleological evolution of the universe. As early as "A Guess at the Rid-/;; die," Peirce claimed that one finds three elements that are active in ther world: "first, chance; second, law; and third, habit-taking" (W5, p. 208,

1887-8) . If habit-taking is third, it is because it enables mediationbetween a universe entirely governed by chance in some infinitelyremote past and, at the other end of the spectrum, in some infinitelyremote future, a universe entirely governed by law. This future universewould be one completely under the sway of reason, yet it would he onefrom wh ich reason itself understood as that which "always mus t be ina state of incipiency, of growth" {EP2: 233, 1903)would necessarilybe absent. Therefore, it is in the interval between these two infinitelyremote points that the law of mind comes to manifest itself With it,reason appears as an incessantly emerging and perpetually growingproperty predicating everything in the universe, until it is replaced insome infinitely distant future by law, that is, hy a hahit having practi-cally lost all of its plasticity, a habit that chance can no longer infiu-encesuch a future, need we add, would he analogous to death {CP8.317, 1891). Finally, since the tendency to develop hahits occupies aspace in between two asymptotic points, it is impossible, explainsPeirce, to conceive of any actual moment in the past or future wherethis tendency would be absent, just as it is impossible to conceive of anyactual moment in the future from which chance would be absent.

N ot on ly does the summum bonum correspond to Peirce's scheme forgrowth in the universe, it also yields to this scheme in subjecting theformation of all our ideals to it. The summum bonum therefore appearsas an m6ie.mite[Y growing process of growth, as does its m o d e of gr owth .This implies hoth a growth o/" rationality, but also a growth withinrationality, or, to put it differently, grov^Tih in the very exercise of self-control. For as Peirce writes, in its most advanced stages, evolution orthe development of reason "takes place more and more largely throughself-control" {CP 5.433, 1905). Concretely, this translates into ever


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To belong to the continuum of the summum bonum much like the Jipconclusion of an induction can be said to belong to a con tinuous series of êxperimentationsan idea must possess admirableness, it must he.fineor v"kalos" (an ancient Greek word usually translated as "beautiful", though ^the latter, claims Peirce, is inadequate to express its meaning). In an ûnpublished defmition likely written as an addition to one of the Century n 'Dictionary s entries (c. 1888-1 889), Peirce states that adm iration,

. . . is simply a high degree of em otional approval of, or delight in any ôbject as bein g such or acting as it does regardless of any ulterior co n- ^siderations of util ity, interest, morality, or tru th. T hu s, I ma y adm ire ^the simp licity of a w om an's dress, or the accuracy of a man's langua ge, f-iw ithou t any part icular wo nder at it . . . . M y adm irat ion consists in mthe delight I take in looking at the one or attend ing to the other. I may wonder at God's creation of the world. But if he was to create it (oat all there can be no wonder that he made it one way rather than "another. Neither can there have been any utility or advantage of anykind of which we can have cognizance in its being constructed oneway rather than another. But that he created a world capable of devel-oping ends is something which, though taken as a whole it subservesno purpose whatsoever, excites an em otion in me which corresponds,as I think to some real general attribute of goodness ["goodness" wasstruck from the m anuscript] or excellence; and tbat em otion togetherwith my deliberate acceptance of it as a judgment, constitutes admi-ration. (R 1597a)

The passage is interesting in showing that a great num ber of things maybe admired at any given m om ent, such as clothes, rhetoric, or m ore tothe point, the development of ends in the universe. Indeed, humanbeings find different things adm irable and have different ideals. Yet, theissue for esthetics, as we have seen, is not to consider what is or may beadmirable but rather what ough t to be admirable. Now, it follows fromwhat was said earlier that in order "that it ought to be so", an adm irableidea must be able to grow indeftnitely, it must be capable of furtherdeterm ination and of determin ing itself in other ideas, notably throug hconduct and reasoning. In short, it must be reasonable. Moreover, itmust also be able to attract us, to attract our habits, and, in order to beconsidered admirable in itself, it must be capable of attracting us beforewe can inductively measure the consequences of adopting it on ourconduct or our reasoning.This attraction lies in part in the compatibility of the idea with


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(^ heedlessly as in tychasm [a mode of evolution resting on chance, as^ exemplified by Darw inian ism ], nor quite blindly by the mere force ofO circumstance or of logic, as in anancasm [a m ode of evolution restingI' on necessity, as exemplified by Hege lianism], but by an imm ediate'"'' attraction for the idea itself, whose nature is divined before the mind^ possesses it, by the power of sympathy, that is by virtue of the contin u-^ ity of m ind" (CP 6.307, 1893).1^ There is an obvious resemblance here between agapastic develop-\\ ment and Peirce's conception of the norm of validity of abduction.^ Indeed, according to him , the only way that one can explain the success, of abductive reasoning, and by the same token, the progress of scientific

inquiry, is to consider that hypotheses must first appear adequate to usthanks to a sort of natural insight or instinct (Galileo's "z7 lume natu-rale'') according to which human beings, notwithstanding all the fail-ings of their conjecturing, evidence a tendency to guess the truth. Andalthough this is the only sort of epistemic assurance that abductionaffords, it nonetheless constitutes a rational form of contro l, as weak asit may be. This same sort of abductive assurance, namely, the fact thatan idea appears imm ediately attractive, equally secures the rationality inthe formation of new ideals. It explains not only the success, but alsothe general tendency we exhibit of advancing reason desp ite all our col-lective failings in this regard.A unique feature of Peirce's agapasticism resides in how novelty andchance are integrated into its account of the teleological though nonnecessaryevolution of the universe. A similar picture can be drawn toaccount for the formation and evolution of the summum bonum and ofideals which, hecause they serve the normativity of ethics and logic and,therefore, equally serve the rationality of metaphysics and of all the spe-cial sciences, enable us to contribute to the evolving universe, to give "ahand toward rendering the world more reasonable" {EP 2: 255, 1903).According to the doctrine of agapasticism, the initial chance emerging ofqualities of feeling, their subsequent growth into growing habits of feel-ing, establish teloi that increase the probability for the growth of con-tinua of qualities of feeling. The recurrence of this process with variousqualities of feeling, different habits, entails numerous teloi' subject toordering themselves hierarchically, to opposing one another, to grow, toperfect or transform themselves. At the same time, the general tendencyto acquire hahits undergoes a similar process through the recursive app li-cation of its own habit. What clearly distinguishes agapasticism from


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increase in complexity and diversity in the universe all the while reduc- Jping in it the role played hy chance. ^From the stand poin t of practicality, it is obvious that esthetic norm a- tivity, in relying chiefly on attraction or insight that is to say, on the E?only form of assurance afforded by abduction , offers very little secu- ^

rity in making esthetic discriminations in the actual process of forming Rnew ideals. Yet, this heing said, one must not helieve that Peirce con-ceived of abduction as an unbridled process of invention arrived atthrough the sole agency oi pure chance. Rather, he saw it as a process of ^forming hypotheses subject to final causation. This means that ahduc - Htion's rationalitybased on our ahility to insightfully guess the tru th , to zinstinctively grasp the continuity of thingsis itself increasing, if only ^infinitesimally, as it takes into consideration other, established, hypo the- Sses.^^ Guessing right, in other words, is also suhject to growth. Now, the


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" o esthetic idea, that of God , whose description bears stunn ing resem-iZi hlance to tha t which he gives the summum bonum.O For Peirce, all these ideas are adm irahle hecause they helong to the'' contin uu m of reason, the continuum of the summum bonum. They are'""' reasonahle feelings or "logical sen timents" {W 3: 281-285) whose^ ado ption as idealsas a result of our hahits heing indefinitely attracted"^ and harm oniously associated to them m akes us partake in the growth^^ of concrete reasonableness in the world. Now , one might well say of a^^ person who adopts such hahits of feeling as ideals that they are culti-^ vating a taste for reason and that the admirahle in esthetics is all thatJ , wh ich is con tinuo us with such a taste, that is to say, all that wh ich isperceived as heing compatible with it or as possessing the quality itapproves or looks for, and through which it can grow, improve, renew

or even transform itself This taste for reason which we all possess,though some cultivate it more fervently than others, is that whichmight equally he known as the taste for Thirdness.Esthetics and ArtThe above survey of some key aspects of Peirce's esthetics may helpmeasure the considerable distance that separates his normative concep-tion of this science from that of the majority of modern philosopherswho narrow its domain to the fine arts exclusively. More recently, thatis, starting at the turn of the last century, most thinkers have en-deavored instead to ban normativity from their conceptions oi artisticproduction, products, and reception. As a result, few contemporaryestheticians, or art theorists, have shown m uch interest in this aspect ofPeirce's philosophy. Not surprizingly, perhaps, Peirce himself consid-ered, around 1905, jettisoning the term "esthetics" altogether as thedesignation for the first of the three normative sciences, and replacingit with the neologism ''axiagastics" from the Greek ''axiagastos",which m eans "w orthy of adm iration". Yet this is not to say that one can-not use Peirce's esthetics to investigate a number of issues that havebeen significant in the tradition of Western art theory. Thus, forinstance, a few years ago, Douglas Anderson examined artistic creativ-ity in relation to agapastic evolution, which, as we saw earlier, underliesthe theory of the formation of ideals and of the summum bonum.^^ Fur-thermore, the same developmental teleology might also be called upon toinvestigate such issues as the formation of artistic genres, themes, oreven tha t of artistic personality or style. Finally, if Hegel could conceive


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way of knowing in advance what results it might yield. Nevertheless, ppsuch a history would undoubtedly appear as a series of ends constantly ^emerging, forming and developing themselves possibly through t"chance alone initially and later throu gh more controlled m eans , c?while others are transformed and eventually abando ned . In short, it ^wo uld likely show the history of art to be an infmitely complex netw ork nor web created out of a multiplicity of histories and teloi.

But such considerations are not what concern me here. Indeed, ratherthan attem pt to "apply" Peirce's views to some aspect of the practice or ^the theory of art (e.g., creativity, historiography of art, style, genre), or Seven to a particular work of art, my intention is to examine how art fits Zinto Peirce's esthetic theory and to consider what, if anything, the latter ^has to offer esthetics (or aesthetics) in the current usage of the term. W ha t, Sthen, is the place of art within Peirce's esthetic theory?


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oo ideal than to enable such habits to grow so as to render possible (or ever^ more likely) the emergence of other works where the same ideal couldO find expression, and so on indefinitely, the practice of art could be con-> sidered as admirable in itself, at least, in so far as the artist and the act off"' artistic creation are concerned. Yet what about art understood not as a^ object of willful or rational creation, but rather as an object of experi-"^ ence? For although it could be argued that the practice of art, as justj ^ described, belongs to (or better yet: is eontinuous with) the summum\^ bonum, nothing in what has been said so far implies that the product ofJ^ this practice, i.e. art itself, equally belongs to it.r Let us begin with a truism: by not making art or the beautiful theobject of his esthetic theory, Peirce avoids folding the esthetic on to theartistic. The same might be said of Kant to the extent that he made

nature, not art, the pragadigmatic locus of the esthetic. Yet, by ap-proaching it in terms of the beautiful and of disinterested pleasure itcould be said that the Critique offudgment was nonetheless conduciveto the further conflation of the esthetic with the artistic. Peirce, on theother hand, fully understood that the use of the term "beautiful" wouldhave considerably narrowed the province of his esthetic theory. Indeed,as he saw it, esthetics was the theoretical science whose object was thegrowth of qualities of feeling into ideals. Art being m ade up of qualitiesof feeling much like perception in this regard_ it is the formationof ideals within its sphere, the presence of habits of feeling attractingother habits of feeling into their orbit, that will fall under the umbrellaof esthetics.

Looking at what Peirce wrote on the subject of esthetics, thereappears to be only one paper where one can fmd more than mere pass-ing remarks concerning art. The piece in question is "The SevenSystems of Metaphysics", the 4'*' in the Harvard lecture series on prag-matism of 1903. In a section entitled "The Reality of F irstness" we findan unusual amount of observations pertaining to the activity of artists,"esthetic enjoyment" and, as we shall soon see, a remarkable compari-son between the universe and a work of art. The same section, more-over, is also concerned with perception as the royal road of access toqualities of feeling. H ere , Peirce explains tha t qualities of feeling are reaiand that they are not a product of some individual s mind, as is oftenbelieved by those who investigate such questions from the vantagepoint of psychology rather than logic. The very same po int is also m adelater, albeit more succintly, in the "Neglected A rgum ent for the Reality


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feeling, whether it is a perception , a dream , a mathem atical formula or Jpan argum ent. Peirce conceived of the terms "quality" and "feeling" as ^practically interchangeable since feeling is the undifferentiated m ode of


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because all of us are, in some respect, "artists" the m om en t our feelings Jipform habits and our habits ideals whose purpose is to attract other feel- ^ings and ideals, and so on . In short, we m ight say that we each possess "an esthetic "style" of our own. And it is this en tire process, as we have ^seen, that Peirce considers worthy of adm iration ; wh ich is why, to his ^m ind , any narrowing down of esthetics to art or to a theory of sensual o'beauty would constitute an unacceptable limitation of the breadth ofesthetics. This explains why Peirce, unlike most of his predecessorssave perhaps Plato in the Symposium or the Phaedruschose to develop ^an esthetic theory, a theory of the admirable in itself, regardless of any Hmajor consideration for art. z

Once we accept the irreducibility of the esthetic to the artistic, we ^can move on to consider the possible integration of the artistic within Sthe esthetic. The goal is not to produce an ars poetica, bu t rather to the-


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'^ of pure esthetic betterness and worseness. My notion would be that^ there are innumerable varieties of esthetic quality, but no purelyQ esthetic grade of excellence. {EP 2: 201 -202 , 1903)'^I IH W ha t may strike us today in these ideas, once we apply them to art,U is their resolutely modern character. Indeed, the upshot of separating


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m u s t b e s o b y w a y o f a q u a l i t y o f fee l i ng , including s igns , wh ich belong Jipto Thirdness , i t w o u l d s e e m t h a t w h a t P e i r c e i s r e a l l y d e s c r i b i n g h e r e is ^*th e contemplation o f s i g n h o o d ( i .e. t h e q u a l i ty o f a sign qu a sign) iconically S i ? "s t an d i n g fo r itself. In d eed , 1) u n d e r s t ood t h a t s ig n s are Th i r d s ; 2) u n d e r - ^s t ood t h a t Th i r d n es s is t h e c a t ego ry of m i n d ; a n d 3) u n d e r s to od t h a t ^t h e es sen c e of Th i r d n e s s -m i n d lies i n c o n t i n u o u s g r o w t h a c c o r d i n g t o o 't he law o f m i n d , i t follow s t h a t r he su i generis qu a l it y t h a t s ig n s a c t u a l -i zenor i n bod y bu t i n sou l " ' ca n on ly be t h a t of a r e a s o n a b l e fe e l i n g .I t ake i t , t h en , t h a t Pe irce is say ing th a t es th e t ic exper ien ce involves >cons c iousn ess of "represented n ess ." Th e l a t ter , m oreover, can only bu t Hat t rac t us , or form a sympathetic b o n d w i th u s , s in c e b ot h i t a n d o u r zm i n d bel on g t o t h e s a m e c o n t i n u u m . ^Th i s hypot he s is g a i n s i n c r ed ibi li ty w h en , ju s t a few pa r a g r aph s la ter , Pe i rce com pares th e un iverse to a w ork of art : "t h e y m a y b e c o m m e n c e d , c a n n o t f all u l t i m a t e l y t o a t t a i n a n y t r u t h t h a t is a t t a i n - >a b l e . C o n s e q u e n t l y , t h e r e is o n l y a r e l a ti v e p r e f e r e n c e b e t w e e n d i f f e r e n t a b d u c t i o n s ; Ha n d t h e g r o u n d o f s u c h p r e f e r e n c e m u s t b e e c o n o m i c a l . T h a t is t o s ay , t h e b e t t e r 2a b d u c t i o n is t h e o n e w h i c h is l i k e ly t o l e a d t o t h e t r u t h w i t h t h e l e ss e r e x p e n d i t u r e j 'of time, vitality, etc. " {NEM 4: 37-38) w

Th e implication here is that there exists a minim al form of self-control in abduc- 5tion that enables distinguishing between different hypotheses and thus explains ^the rationality of this form of reasoning. There is more, however, if one considersabduction from the perspective of agapastic evolution. Indeed, in the agapasticevolution of reason our guesses become constrainedif only infinitesimallyaschance diminishes. This means that, theoretically, abduction at the beginning ofthe universe should be more unbridled than abduction at the moment just priorthe universe's eventual crystallization as law. In short, the tendency enxibited bythe universe to grow in reasonableness and diminish the role of chance also affectsabduction.13. Douglas R. Anderson, Creativity and the Philosophy of C. S. Peirce, Dor-drecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987.14. Immanuel Kant, Critique ofJudgement, translated with Introduction andNotes by J.H. Bernard (2nd ed. revised), London: Macmillan, 1914.15. Reproduced below is the passage in its entiretyas we shall see, it is suchas to warrant a brief comm entary afterward :

In the light of the doctrine of categories I should say that an object, to be estheti-cally good, m ust have a multitude of parts so related to one another as to impart apositive simple immediate quality to their totality; and whatever does this is, in sofar, esthetically good, no matter what the particular quality of the total may be. Ifthat quality be such as to nauseate us, to scare us, or otherwise to disturb us to thepoint of throwing us out of the mood of esthetic enjoyment, out of the mood ofsimply contemplating the embodiment of the quality^just, for example, as theAlps affected the people of old times, when the state of civilization was such that animpression of great power was inseparably associated with lively apprehension andterrorthen the object remains none the less esthetically good, although people inour condition are incapacitated from a calm esthetic contemplation of it.

This suggestion m ust go for w hat it may be worth , which I dare say may be verylittle. If it be correct, it will follow that there is no such thing as positive estheticbadness; and since by goodness we chiefly in this discussion mean merely theabsence of badness, or faultlessness, there will be no such thing as esthetic good-


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f notion would be that there are innumerable varieties of esthetic quality, but noJZ; purely esthetic grade of excellence." {EP 2: 201-202, 1903)O At first glance we may be struck by how this passage seems to contradict' " ' ano ther passage, quo ted earlier, where Peirce claims that "it would be the height of' " ' s tup id i ty to say that esthetics knows no good and bad". Since the latter quote is^ taken from a later essaya 1906 manuscrip t for an article Peirce had planned to"^ publish in The Monist entitled "The Basis of Pragmaticism in the Normat ive Sci-" ^ ences"it might be t empt ing to infer that he had merely changed his mi n d dur-2 ing the intervening years. But is this really the case? Is Peirce really condradicting< J hims elf here? I don't think so. In fact, I believe that both remarks bear to somepin extent on different objects. In the Har vard lecture, Peirce is still hesitant in affirm-[1 ing the existence of esthetics as a normative science. Of esthetics, he writes: "I am

enclined to think that there is such a normative science; but I feel by no meanssure even of that" {EP 2: 200). Yet, for one who surmises its existence, "estheticsconsiders those things whose ends are to embody qualities of feeling" (Ibid.Emphasis mine). In "The Basis of Pragmaticism in the Normative Sciences"Peirce, we saw earlier, offers more precision when he writes that esthetics is "thetheory of the deliberate formation of [. . .] habits of feeling" {EP 2: 378, 1906,emphasis mine). Now, the point I wish to make is this: since, according to the cat-egorial architectonic, deliberate embodiment of qualities of feeling can only happenthrough the mediation of habits of feeling, the later essay merely appears to be draw-ing the necessary conclusion of the views presented in the Harvard lecture threeyears earlier. In short: it is one thing for qualities of feeling to know neither goodnor bad, but quite another for the deliberate formation of habits of feeling to knowesthetic goodness or badness. For deliberateness implies some degree of self-control, and therefore Secondness (as is implied with esthetics being a normativescience). That Peirce didn't draw this conclusion in his Harvard lecture mayappear surprising, yet the idea of there being no degree of esthetic excellence withregards to qualities of feeling is entirely congruent with his theory of the categoriesandvi\t\\ the perspective he adopts in 1906 for his projected Monist article.

16 . See "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God", in EP 2: 435, 1908.17 . Friedrich Schelling, Philosophy of Art, edited, translated and introduced by

Douglas W. Stott, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989: 21. In the"Law of Mind" of 1892, Peirce acknowledged a connection to Schelling withregards to cosmological essays he had published in The Monist in 1891 and 1892("The Architecture of Theories" and "The Doctrine of Necessity Examined"): "Ihave begun by showing that tychism must give birth to an evolutionary cosmology,in which all the regularities of nature and of mind are regarded as products ofgrowth, and to a Schelling-fashioned idealism which holds matter to be mere spe-cialized and partially deadened mind" {CP6.1Q2).

18. See "Sundry Logical Conceptions" and "Nomenclature and Divisions ofTriadic Relations, As Far As They Are Determined" in EP2: 267-288, 1903.


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Estetica Pierce Lefbvrer

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