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CHARLES S. PEIRCE’S PRAGMATICISM AND THE REVALUATION OF THINKING ON VALUES AND POWERS

Charles Sanders Peirce’s pragmaticism is the corner stone of the philosophical tradition of American pragmatism. Peirce was the “stimulant” of pragmatism, its “first mover,” and pragmaticism as such deserves separate recognition. Since the present work is devoted to the problem of values and powers in this tradition, I will not detail the similarities and differences between pragmaticism and pragmatism. Instead, I show that Peirce contributed to the problem of values and powers within this tradition by revaluating thinking on values and powers so as to prepare pragmatism to formulate and elaborate the following issues: firstly and ethically, the split between the active and the passive; secondly and anthropologically, the tension between the individual and the social; thirdly and epistemologically, the directness and indirectness of the cognition; and fourthly and ontologically, the question in what sense values are cumulative. I describe these issues as “proto-pragmatic,” because while pragmatists take on these issues their treatment lacks the ontological background or metaphysical basis that is constitutive for Peirce. This ontological background prevents Peirce’s pragmaticism from existing side by side with the pragmatism of William James, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, and Richard Rorty. I would like to start by explaining this difference a little more.

1. Peirce’s Scholastic Ontology and Philosophy of Values

We must not, in my view, underestimate the connection between ontology and values, and Peirce appears to have felt the significance of this connection quite well. He provides us with a succinct articulation of one of the main problems in contemporary debates over values, and offers perhaps the best suggestions about the crisis in philosophy regarding values. Namely, Peirce reveals what is going on in this debate when he explains, in “The Maxim of Pragmatism,” that “there is some ideal state of things which regardless of how it should be brought about and independently of any ulterior reason whatsoever, is held to be good or fine” (Peirce, 1893-1913/1992, p. 142). For the sake of clarity, we can perceive a black and white picture of this discussion (although such bipolarity is often blurred in the practice of philosophizing). On the one side of the debate, we have a quite old tradition, starting with the Pythagoreans, Plato, Aristotle and down to the scholastics. This tradition continues, in modern times, 40 VALUES AND POWERS with the phenomenologists (Max Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann, and Roman Ingarden) who discuss, in different ways, autonomous, objective, and even absolute values. On the other side of the debate, we have those who deny any possibility of autonomous, objective, and absolute good and beauty, such as the Sophists in ancient times, Michel de Montaigne during the Renaissance, the Encyclopedists during the Enlightenment, and currently the postmodernists and American pragmatists. Since I view Peirce as a pragmaticist instead of a pragmatist, in accordance to his wish (cf., Peirce, 1958-1966, 8, Pt. 205), I should justify this without repeating the argumentation of innumerable works that compare and juxtapose these two systems of thought. My justification assumes a position which, I think, might be called “pragmatic,” and which is hardly compatible with Peirce’s position. That said, my starting point is Peirce’s scholastic realism, along with his idea of the normative sciences, as presented in “Critical Review of Berkeley’s Idealism,” “The Three Normative Sciences,” “The Nature of Meaning,” “The Seven Systems of Metaphysics,” and elsewhere. I do not believe that this starting point is abortive. However, I cannot see how I should overcome, while rethinking the problem of values and their ontological status, the borderline between “the ontological structure of reality,” as Peirce would say, and “the culturally, historically, and vocationally determined widespread convictions and habits of thinking of different communities and the philosophi- cal and artistic visions of different individuals about the ontological structure of reality.” Let me explain. Peirce emphasizes the role of practicality and “the facts of everyday life, such as present themselves to every adult and sane person, and for the most part in every day and hour of his waking life” (Peirce, 1893-1913/1992, p. 146). Following this, I could find myself daily and hourly, deeply and inescapably saturated in a virtual and digital reality, in which it would be difficult to use Peirce’s ontology to adequately grasp its ontological status. I have doubts about the possibility and plausibility of defining any ontological border between the natural and the illusory due to my being profoundly steeped in the cyberspace (and “cybertime”) of surrounding media. Nowadays, it would be impossible to live a social life in the West without television, radio, cinema, CDs, computers, and the Internet. The ontological status of the products of the computer sciences, such as computer viruses, is ambiguous as they struggle for survival as if they were alive. People witness reversible time and rearrangeable space in video productions, and react to the stimulation and provocation of images of the good, truth, and beauty (for instance, in reality shows) as if they were genuine values. Additionally, I am conscious that millions of people accept these construc- tions and re-constructions as the most authentic reality, the most genuine facts, the most undisputed states of things, and as something truer than anything else. I cannot see any strong arguments that could overcome doubts about the logical structure of this reality or its logically bound relations. I also am unsure