Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

One of the consequences of Cartesian rationalism was its continuation of the scholastic habit of developing philosophy around exclusionary disjunctions: certainty or ignorance, mind or body, reason or perception. If we take this habit into our examinations of the history of philosophy, we easily fall into a dichotomizing of philosophers: Parmenides or Heraclitus, Hume or Kant, Plato or Aristotle, and so forth. In the case at hand, we'd be tempted to begin by opposing Descartes and Charles Peirce (see Peirce). Indeed, this route is well traveled. From a Peircean perspective, however, this would be a mistake. Peirce saw himself as standing in an intellectual tradition with Descartes, as sharing interests, problems, and concerns. Thus, as we mark out the important distinctions between Peircean pragmatism and Cartesian rationalism, we must do so against the background of these shared interests. As Peirce saw it, “Descartes marks the period when Philosophy put off childish things and began to be a conceited young man. By the time the young man has grown to be an old man, he will have learned that traditions are precious treasures, while iconoclastic inventions are always cheap and often nasty” (CP 4.71). In the overview of Peirce's critical engagement with Cartesian thought that follows, it will be important to keep in mind that Peirce saw the Cartesian tradition as a treasure even as ... log in or subscribe to read full text