Peirce's Retrospectives on his Phenomenological Quest

Abstract

The late Joseph Ransdell's advocacy for a "unitary interpretation" of the work of C.S. Peirce found expression in a 1989 paper where he declared Peirce's 1867 essay "On a New List of Categories" to be "the basic text for that part of his philosophy which he called 'phenomenology'." Several of Peirce's later writings comment retrospectively on the process of inquiry which produced that 1867 paper and eventually developed into the science which he named "phenomenology" in 1902. Some of these later texts are arguably as "basic" to an understanding of Peircean phenomenology as the 1867 essay itself. An examination of these retrospective texts, together with some of Peirce's late writings on phaneroscopy, will support Ransdell's claim that Peirce rightly considered his own life's work to be "fundamentally selfconsistent throughout," but will also clarify and modify Ransdell's assertions about Peirce's 1867 essay, his phenomenology, and their roles in his philosophical system.

The Dismissal of ‘Substance’ and ‘Being’ in Peirce’s Regenerated Logic

“…8 Furthermore, NL is often used as an 'argument' to support the continuity and internal development of Peirce's thought, or for the complete opposite, namely for demonstrating the discontinuity with his phenomenological writings. For a reconsideration of the continuity between NL and Peirce's phenomenology, see [26]; on their discontinuity, see [2]. On the development of Peirce's theory of categories and phenomenology see also [16,48,51].…”

“…In consequence, the predicate is the purely 'potential' part of the proposition, which delineates its syntactical structure and provides the indications of the number of subjects needed, and the subject does not correspond any longer to the grammatical one. 26 Subjects may be many and are not necessarily in the nominative case. Their characterizing feature is their 'indexicality', so that they are "quite anti-general, referring to a hic et nunc (.…”

“…Another key feature of Peirce's analysis of the proposition is that 'common nouns' are not considered as a necessary part of the proposition [cf., e.g., EP2, p. 309, 1904; cf. also Peirce, 1897, p. 163] 26. Because of its indisputable relevance, this topic has been widely explored [cf 1,3,13,58]…”

Beyond Transcendentalism and Naturalization: A Categorial Framework for the Semiotic Phenomenology

“…"Object" here is not a semiotic representation, namely the correlate of a sign or triadic relation, but a "phaneron", that is a presence or phenomenon manifesting itself in its nature. Peirce's phaneroscopy aims also at describing the relational categories through an algebraic-diagrammatic representation of them [75][76][77][78]. In what follows I will re-propose Peirce's categorial approach from the within of Schelerian phenomenology.…”