Peirce on Universals

Posted on December 15, 2008
Filed Under Derrida, Peirce, Philosophy | Leave a Comment

A few Peircean thoughts related to that quote about Derrida from yesterday.

After a good deal of reflection and careful rereading, I have come to think that the common pragmatistic opinion aforesaid is that every thought (unless perhaps certain single ideas each quite sui generis) has a meaning beyond the immediate content of the thought itself, so that it is as absurd to speak of a thought in itself as it would be to say of a man that he was a husband in himself or a son in himself, and this not merely because thought always refers to a real or fictitious object, but also because it supposes itself to be interpretable. If this analysis of the pragmatistic opinion be correct, the logical breadth of the term pragmatist is hereby enormously enlarged. (C. S. Peirce, “The Basis of Pragmaticism in Phaneroscopy”, EP 2.361)

This ability to be interpreted (which Peirce sees as characteristic of signs) is the ability to be grafted into a new context. Endlessly so.


Consider, for a moment, what Reason, as well as we can today conceive it, really is. I do not mean man’s faculty which is so called from embodying in some measure Reason, or Νους, as a something manifesting itself in the mind, in the history of mind’s development, and in nature. What is this Reason? In the first place, it is something that never can have been completely embodied. The most insignificant of general ideas always involves conditional predictions or requires for its fulfillment that events should come to pass, and all that ever can have come to pass must fall short of completely fulfilling its requirements.

A little example will serve to illustrate what I am saying. Take any general term whatever. I say of a stone that it is hard. That means that so long as the stone remains hard, every essay to scratch it is by moderate pressure of a knife will surely fail. To call the stone hard is to predict that no matter how often you try the experiment, it will fail every time. This innumerable series of conditional predictions is involved in the meaning of this lowly adjective. Whatever may have been done will not begin to exhaust its meaning. At the same time, the very being of the General, of Reason, is of such a mode that this being consists in the Reason’s actually governing events. [...] The very being of the General, of Reason consists in its governing individual events. So, then, the essence of Reason is such that its being never can have been completely perfected. It always must be in a state of incipiency, of growth. It is like the character of a man which consists in the ideas that he will conceive and in the efforts that he will make, and which only develops as the occasions actually arise. Yet in all his life long no son of Adam has ever fully manifested what there was in him. So, then, the development of Reason requires as a part of it the occurrence of more individual events than ever can occur. It requires, too, all the coloring of all qualities of feeling, including pleasure in its proper place among the rest. This development of Reason consists, you will observe, in embodiment, that is, in manifestation. (C. S. Peirce, “What Makes a Reasoning Sound?”, EP 2.254-5)

I may put up a few more later. However those familiar with Derrida and especially his critique of reason will see strong similarities in the above. Meaning is tied to generals (universals). Generals are thus tied to the ability to replicate them across contexts. Some of those contexts are essentially in the future. Thus the meaning or the universal itself is essentially deferred. Yet simultaneously there is a difference. That is we must be able to say this and not that. (Peirce continues touching on some of those points, but I’ll not get into them here) Most essentially Peirce critiques the traditional Aristotilean form/matter duality while keeping elements of form. Yet, as in Derrida, what we have is a structure for genesis as well as a genesis of structure.

Related posts:

  1. Peirce and the Principle of Sufficient Reason
  2. Peirce and Consciousness
  3. Every Man a Derrida
  4. Derrida and Universals
  5. Peirce and Idealism
  6. Gadamer and Authority

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