Charles Sanders Peirce, a profound philosopher and logician, mortgaged the result of his enquiry on the future possibility of a community of inquirers. Peirce was not a democrat, nor a believer in the trustworthiness of common opinion, yet his agapistic metaphysics makes the incorporation of individual inquirers into the scientific community a pragmatic necessity. In this paper I attempt to bring out Peirce's political dimension, which is embedded in his logic and his treatment of time. I suggest that at the (...) core of Peirce's community is a polis dependent on pragmatic temporality, a time within time that is not ordered by the facticity of the past, the immediacy of the present, or the 'would be' of the future. I conclude that politics is a philosophical limit for Peirce's semiotic metaphysic, revealing the depth of his existential and philosophical problem of the freedom of the self in light of secondness, or brute experience. I suggest that this kind of treatment is necessary for a recovery of American idealism in the ongoing discussion of politics and democracy. Key Words: community • logic • Peirce • politics • time. (shrink)

Introduction: Conversion and the practice of transformation -- The philosophical structure of Jonathan Edwards's religious affections -- Habit, habit change, and conversion in C.S. Peirce -- Reconstructing faith : religious overcoming in Dewey's pragmatism -- Transforming obligation in William James -- Dwelling in absence: the reflective origin of conversion -- Creative transformation : the work of conversion -- The evasion of conversion in recent American philosophy.

This essay unearths the meaning of community in John Dewey’s Experience and Nature, using Marilyn Friedman’s terms “community of choice” and “community of origin.” The authority of communication as determinative of Dewey’s community comes out. In fact, communication seems to be the philosophical point of Dewey’s descriptions in that book which reveals his anticipation of a community wherever communication obtains. Dewey is shown, in conclusion, to call us beyond communities of choice or origin to a community of authority which holds (...) both peculiar promise for, and demands of, individuals. (shrink)

elaine and i were in mexico city following the 2020 meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. From our Airbnb, we walked everywhere—to El Zocalo, to museums and restaurants, and through neighborhoods. We followed the news of increasing concern about the COVID outbreak in Europe and the United States, but it seemed like news from a distant planet. Until we flew home, that is, and the airport was deserted. My college paused classes after Spring break, and the (...) NCAA basketball tournament was canceled—that is when we knew it was serious. My father was released from the hospital after a brain biopsy on March 17, and we drove to Pennsylvania from Kentucky. The highway was deserted, the food and... (shrink)

Building upon her work in Livestock, Erin McKenna's Living with Animals delivers eight chapters about animals with which human beings share their lives: chimpanzees and other primates, horses and cattle, pigs and poultry, whales and fishes, pests, and cats and canines. This new work is carefully and beautifully constructed, consistent with her long effort of developing pragmatic ecofeminism. McKenna raises our attention to the use of pragmatism to name and address compelling problems of community—which, from this perspective, is construed in (...) its broadest sense to include non-human animals. The focus in this text is on animals with which humans have evolved and upon whose welfare we continue to depend for our... (shrink)

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes he also believes to be true.The pragmatic and gospel adage that you can judge a tree by its fruits is especially apt for John J. McDermott. The fruits of extraordinary and prolific scholarship are second only to his extraordinary and prolific teaching. Mc-Dermott's place in American philosophy, and his making American philosophy his place, gathers vitality from the texts of James, Dewey, and Royce he has opened through the mantra of (...) experience that reflects the existentialists, urban living, problems of education, and radical aesthetic sensibility. McDermott just sees the world and philosophy from a unique angle, an American angle, an angle we can only .. (shrink)

Charles Sanders Peirce developed a mature Christian faith under the influence of his father Benjamin Peirce and Frederic Dan Huntington, a teacher and pastor at Harvard. Peirce’s Christian self-understanding and concern shape the development of his philosophical logic as well as the development and refinement of pragmatism.

i am deeply grateful to aaron and the three scholars who have taken upon themselves the task of reading and responding to my book Peirce and Religion. Their assessments, in a general way, are a variety of the same criticism concerning my argument about Peirce’s Christianity. My intention here is to address this general point, consider some particular comments from each of the respondents, and offer a re-direction at the end.I take it as success to have evoked the response from (...) each of these scholars. Tunstall brings forward the question of whether I have left philosophy altogether when presenting an apology of sorts for Trinitarian Christianity in the guise of assessing Peirce’s religion. The worry is that an... (shrink)

In Christ and the Cosmos Keith Ward hopes to “reformulate” the conciliar statements of the Trinity and Incarnation since they cannot serve our post-Enlightenment, scientific age. I dispute Ward’s motivation, noting that the differences in perspective to which he points may not be as radical as he supposes. And his “reformulation” has worrisome consequences. I am especially concerned at his point that Jesus, while very special and perfectly good, is only human. This undermines free will theodicy, and, much (...) more troubling, makes global Christian practice for two millennia idolatry. (shrink)

We report on our experiences in a participatory design project to develop ICTs in a hospital ward working with deliberate self-harm patients. This project involves the creation and constant re-creation of socio-technical ensembles that satisfy the various, changing and often contradictory and conflicting needs in this context. Such systems are shaped in locally meaningful ways but nevertheless reach beyond their immediate context to gain wider importance and to be integrated with the larger environment.

early last year, i was invited to write a review for the Journal of the American Academy of Religion of Roger Ward’s recently published book on Peirce and Religion: Knowledge, Transformation, and the Reality of God. I was delighted to do so, and I am now equally pleased to participate in today’s discussion.1 My presentation here represents a natural sequel to that published review. The greater length of this paper should allow me to explain more clearly and carefully (...) why I think this book is so important and valuable, while also allowing me to clarify those places where Ward and I interpret Peirce differently and, finally, to raise a few questions.I noted in my review the unfortunate fact that... (shrink)

In his Peirce and Religion, Roger Ward offers an insightful interpretative angle into Peirce’s philosophy. Ward interprets Peirce as a fundamentally religious Christian and Trinitarian thinker who holds that science and religion are complementary approaches to inquiry. He tracks the development of Peirce’s pragmatism against the background of Peirce’s life, and searches for points of contact between Peirce’s pragmatism on the one hand and Trinitarian theology and Christian ecclesiology on the other. Such an interpretation would place Peirce (...) along great Christian philosophers of language like Augustine, Duns Scotus, and J. G. Hamann.Ward first gives us an overview of Peirce’s intellectual background in mid-19th... (shrink)

Widely known among philosophers and scholars as one of the most important logicians in the history of Western philosophy, C. S. Peirce is not equally known as an intellectual whose work was guided by theological views. In other words, compared to his profound contributions in other areas – logic, semiotics and epistemology, to name but a few –, the religious dimension of Peirce’s thought has not yet received all the attention it deserves. What explanations can be given of this neglect? (...) Firstl... (shrink)

i find roger ward’s interpretation of Charles Sanders Peirce’s logic, semiotics, and pragmaticism in Peirce and Religion to be not only plausible, but also compelling. What makes Ward’s interpretation of Peirce’s thought compelling, at least to me, is the story he tells about how Peirce’s Trinitarian faith commitments shaped Peirce’s thought from the early 1860s to his death in 1914. Ward’s story accounts for how Peirce’s Trinitarian faith commitments led Peirce to consider his study of logic (...) and semiotics as his vocation. It also accounts for how Peirce’s Trinitarian faith commitments motivated Peirce to transition from being a proponent of a nominalistic pragmatism in the 1870s to being a pragmaticist by the... (shrink)

What is it to be an agent? One influential line of thought, endorsed by G. E. M. Anscombe and David Velleman, among others, holds that agency depends on practical rationality—the ability to act for reasons, rather than being merely moved by causes. Over the past 25 years, Velleman has argued compellingly for a distinctive view of agency and the practical rationality with which he associates it. On Velleman’s conception, being an agent consists in having the capacity to be motivated by (...) a drive to act for reasons. Your bodily movements qualify as genuine actions insofar as they are motivated in part by your desire to behave in a way that makes sense to yourself. However, there are at least two distinct ways of spelling out what this drive towards self-intelligibility consists in, both present in Velleman’s work. It might consist in a drive towards intelligibility in causal-psychological terms: roughly, a drive to maximize the rational coherence of your psychological states. Alternatively, it might consist in a drive towards narrative intelligibility: a drive to make your ongoing activity conform to a recognizable narrative structure, where that structure is understood emotionally. Velleman originally saw these options as basically equivalent, but later came to prioritize the drive towards causal-psychological intelligibility over that towards narrative intelligibility. I argue that this gets things the wrong way round—we should instead understand our capacities to render ourselves intelligible in causal-psychological terms as built upon a bedrock of emotionally suffused narrative understanding. In doing so, we resolve several problems for Velleman’s view, and pave the way for an embodied, embedded and affective account of practical rationality and agency. According to the picture that emerges, practical rationality is essential to agency, narrative understanding is essential to practical rationality, and the rhythms and structures patterning the ebb and flow of our emotional lives are essential to narrative understanding. (shrink)

This paperback edition is fully updated with new chapters on the livestoick crisis, fishing and BSE and a layman's guide introduction to philosophical concepts, ...

Descartes and the last Scholastics: objections and replies -- Descartes and the Scotists -- Ideas, before and after Descartes -- The Cartesian destiny of form and matter -- Descartes, Basso, and Toletus: three kinds of Corpuscularians -- Scholastics and the new astronomy on the substance of the heavens -- Descartes and the Jesuits of La Fleche: the Eucharist -- Condemnations of Cartesianism: the extension and unity of the universe -- Cartesians, Gassendists, and censorship -- The cogito in the seventeenth century.

Nietzsche and Freud saw Christianity as metaphysical escapism, with Nietzsche calling the religion a "Platonism for the masses" and faulting Paul the apostle for negating more immanent, material modes of thought and political solidarity. Integrating this debate with the philosophies of difference espoused by Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ward Blanton argues that genealogical interventions into the political economies of Western cultural memory do not go far enough in relation to the imagined (...) founder of Christianity. Blanton challenges the idea of Paulinism as a pop Platonic worldview or form of social control. He unearths in Pauline legacies otherwise repressed resources for new materialist spiritualities and new forms of radical political solidarity, liberating "religion" from inherited interpretive assumptions so philosophical thought can manifest in risky, radical freedom. (shrink)

Blanton Ward traces the current critical engagement of Agamben, Derrida and Zizek, among others, back to the 19th and early 20th century philosophers of early Christianity.