THE SACRED DEPTHS OF NATURE AN ONTOLOGY OF THE POSSIBLE IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF PEIRCE AND HEIDEGGER by Leon J. Niemoczynski B.A., East Stroudsburg University, 2001 M.A., West Chester University, 2004 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy in the Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale May 2009 Copyright by LEON NIEMOCZYNSKI, 2009 All Rights Reserved DISSERTATION APPROVAL THE SACRED DEPTHS OF NATURE: AN ONTOLOGY OF THE POSSIBLE IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF PEIRCE AND HEIDEGGER By Leon J. Niemoczynski A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of Philosophy Approved by: Douglas R. Anderson, Chair Doug Berger Jed Delahoussaye Lenore Langsdorf Ken Stikkers Martin Weatherston Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale May 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................................i DEDICATION .............................................................................................................. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................iv CHAPTERS CHAPTER 1 – A PEIRCEAN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION I. Introduction A. Summary of argument....................................................................................1 B. Scope of project..............................................................................................8 II. Conceptual Background A. The category of Firstness and related perspectives......................................12 B. The categories and “the divine life” ............................................................13 C. The divine as a vague idea ...........................................................................17 D. The categories and the sacred: Firstness-feeling..........................................18 E. The categories and the divine life: Firstness-possibility...............................20 III. Peirce’s Philosophy of Religion: A Review of the Literature A. Two current perspectives on Peirce’s philosophy of religion: Theosemiotic (Hegel, Scholasticism) or Ecstatic Naturalism (Schelling, speculative metaphysics) .....................................................................................................26 B. Ecstatic Naturalism’s view on Peirce’s philosophy of religion....................28 IV. Methodology and Perspective: Ecstatic Naturalism and Contemporary Philosophy A. Nature and kinds of naturalism ...................................................................29 B. Definition of Ecstatic Naturalism.................................................................35 C. Ecstatic Naturalism and contemporary philosophy......................................38 D. The “ground” of disclosure for the divine life .............................................45 V. Organization of Chapters .............................................................................48 CHAPTER 2 – THE EVOLVING COSMOS I. Categories A. Doctrine of the categories ............................................................................62 B. Phenomenology: categories are elements of phenomena.............................65 C. Ontology-cosmology: categories are modes of being ..................................71 II. Doctrine of the Categories: Phenomenology A. Peirce’s idea of phenomenology ..................................................................73 B. Ordinal phenomenology in the perspective of Ecstatic Naturalism .............77 III. An Ontology of Possibility A. Reality: actual and possible..........................................................................82 B. Possibility: its concept and mode .................................................................86 C. The function of possibility in the divine life ................................................90 IV. Peirce’s “Cosmotheism”: Ontology and Cosmology A. Midworld and horizons, past and future ......................................................94 B. The continuum of nature: convergence of mind...........................................97 C. Pantheism or panentheism?........................................................................111 D. Nature and its orders: the depths of Firstness ............................................114 CHAPTER 3 – ABDUCTION AND THE ECSTATIC EVENT I. Abduction A. Abduction defined......................................................................................130 B. Abduction and induction ............................................................................136 C. Pierce’s theory of logic: abduction belongs to a lived process of inquiry..139 D Pierice’s theory of reasoning: abduction and its religious implications......144 II. Firstness and the Inquiring Organism A. Firstness-feeling defined ............................................................................152 B. Firstness-feeling disturbed: the origins of universe-wide mentality ..........154 III. Attuning to Nature’s Mind A. Irritation, doubt, and belief at the level of feeling .....................................164 B. Sedimented belief and the force of experience breaking up belief.............168 IV. Peirce’s “Neglected Argument”: Opening a Sacred Dimension of Human Experience A. The “Neglected Argument”: its history and structure................................174 B. Religious thinking and scientific inquiry share a common form of inference .........................................................................................................................177 C. Numinous feeling: a sacred dimension of human experience....................182 V. Abduction and the Ecstatic Event A. Finite before the Infinite.............................................................................190 B. Peirce’s Transcendentalism........................................................................193 C. Hypothesis confirmation as an ecstatic event.............................................196 VI. Realizing the Mind of God: The Religious Significance of the Community of Inquiry.............................................................................................................201 CHAPTER 4 – THE SACRED DEPTHS OF NATURE I. The Schelling Connection A. Schelling’s influence on Peirce..................................................................217 B. Schelling’s influence on Heidegger............................................................223 II. Heidegger’s 1936 Lecture on Schelling: Its Importance for Understanding Peircean Firstness A. Schelling’s idea of freedom and the indeterminate ground of Firstness....231 B. “Groundless ground” [ Abgrund ] and the ontological difference ..............240 C. Ground for transcendence: possibility........................................................251 III. The Sacred Depths of Nature A. Schelling’s philosophy of nature................................................................256 B. Schelling’s first divine potential and Peircean Firstness............................262 IV. Conclusion: Peirce from a Heideggerean Angle of Vision A. Nature and Beyng’s essential sway............................................................267 B. Receptivity: the poet and the scientist........................................................275 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................287 AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF LEON NIEMOCZYNSKI, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Philosophy, presented on December 5th, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: THE SACRED DEPTHS OF NATURE: AN ONTOLOGY OF THE POSSIBLE IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF PEIRCE AND HEIDEGGER MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Douglas R. Anderson This dissertation carries out a study of the American pragmaticist C.S. Peirce and constructively applies his thought to a religious understanding of nature called “ecstatic naturalism,” a philosophy developed by Robert S. Corrington that conjoins American pragmatism and Continental phenomenology. In this project I explore how the modality of possibility functions in the disclosure of a “divine life,” that is, the life of a developing cosmos taken to be sacred in its continual processes of evolutionary growth and transformation. Possibility, found in Peirce’s category of experience known as “Firstness,” provides organisms with the ontological conditions required for any immediately felt qualitative experience—experience that is the site for potential religious experience. “Religious” experience here means the ecstatic contraposition of finite being before “infinite” being. I consider infinite being first as an honorific sheer availability of being (potential or possible being: becoming ) and then in terms of how inquiry may reveal nature to be an encompassing infinite that locates and situates finite organisms. It is my thesis that, as it is found in Peirce’s category of Firstness, possibility serves as a ground for the disclosure of this infinite, “the divine life,” by enabling its presence to come forward as a feeling of the sacred — a feeling found when inquirers muse over nature and establish beliefs about the universe in which they are situated. To the end of i making these claims more concrete, I draw on figures such as the German existential phenomenologist Martin Heidegger, and the German idealist F.W.J. Schelling so as to identify