Selected Philosophical Writings (1867-1893)

Description

Peirce's political philosophy (p. 105, DjVu p. 76) from 1871 has a Woodburyan succinctness to it:

Though the question of realism and nominalism has its roots in the technicalities of logic, its branches reach about our life. The question whether the genus Homo has any existence except as individuals, is the question whether there is anything of any more dignity, worth, and importance than individual happiness, individual aspirations, and individual life. Whether men really have anything in common, so that the community is to be considered as an end in itself, and if so, what the relative value of the two factors is, is the most fundamental practical question in regard to every institution the constitution of which we have it in our power to influence.

Nowadays, nothing is thought to transcend a man and woman in their relationships. This problem is part of the broader question of individualism, which denies the existence of transcendent common goods like marriage and the State, vs. realism, which affirms their existence. Nominalism is the root of the extreme individualism we see today.

"... a first-rate edition, which supersedes all other portable Peirces.... all the Peirce most people will ever need.

" —Louis Menand, The New York Review of Books"The ?Monist essays are included in the first volume of the compact and welcome ?Essential Peirce; they are by Peirce's standards quite accessible and splendid in their cosmic scope and assertiveness.

" —London Review of BooksA convenient two-volume reader's edition makes accessible to students and scholars the most important philosophical papers of the brilliant American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce. This first volume presents twenty-five key texts from the first quarter century of his writing, with a clear introduction and informative headnotes. Volume 2 will highlight the development of Peirce's system of signs and his mature pragmatism.