Gary f, List, I've been reflecting on your several posts in the Pragmatic Trivium thread(s) and found them, and especially this one, very useful in beginning to once again try to think through these matters. But, preparing for a medical procedure happening overmorrow (a word -- archaic, but used as recently as 1969 by James Krugman, and meaning 'the day after tomorrow'),I've a lot to do before then. So, I'll have to keep it short for now. You wrote:
Gf: In all of this theorizing [by Peirce], it is clear that esthetics, ethics and logical critic correspond to Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness respectively. In his fifth Harvard Lecture of 1903, after expressing some doubts about his classification of the normative sciences, Peirce said: [[ Supposing, however, that normative science divides into esthetics, ethics, and logic, then it is easily perceived, from my standpoint, that this division is governed by the three categories. For Normative Science in general being the science of the laws of conformity of things to ends, esthetics considers those things whose ends are to embody qualities of feeling, ethics those things whose ends lie in action, and logic those things whose end is to represent something. Just at this point we begin to get upon the trail of the secret of pragmatism … ](CP 5.129-30, EP2:200)] GR: I suppose many responded with excited anticipation as I did upon reading that last sentence, that "we begin to get upon the trail of the secret of pragmatism" in reflecting on the respective 1ns, 2ns, and 3ns, as well as the characters of each of the normative sciences. After all, the entire lecture series is meant to explicate pragmatism; and by 1903 we can imagine that Peirce has a pretty good, albeit fallible, understanding of what pragmatism is. GR: You then skipped over some material to get to some of Peirce's thoughts on "the primacy of esthetics" (EP2:201, CP 5.132). [[ . . . I find the task imposed upon me of defining the esthetically good,—a work which so many philosophical artists have made as many attempts at performing. In the light of the doctrine of categories I should say that an object, to be esthetically good, must have a multitude of parts so related to one another as to impart a positive simple immediate quality to their totality; and whatever does this is, in so far, esthetically good, no matter what the particular quality of the total may be. If that quality be such as to nauseate us, to scare us, or otherwise to disturb us to the point of throwing us out of the mood of esthetic enjoyment, out of the mood of simply contemplating the embodiment of the quality . . . ]] Parenthetically, I might draw our attention to Peirce's comment in the very first sentence above that he considers most work thus far on esthetics to have been done by "philosophical artists," that is, *not* scientists. But returning to the topic at hand, esthetic contemplation, you wrote "requires us to set aside any emotional reaction we may have to the object contemplated, which is esthetically good to the extent that it has a “positive simple immediate quality.” Thus the *esthetically good* is entirely different from the *morally* good, which only applies to actions, and only as a quality opposed to the morally *bad*. The act of *judging* any positive simple immediate quality to be “bad” – or even to be “good” *as opposed to bad* – incapacitates us for the “esthetic enjoyment” which comes only with “esthetic contemplation.” Peirce confirmed this point later in 1903, in his *Syllabus*: “no form is esthetically bad, if regarded from the strictly esthetical point of view, without any idea of adopting the form in conduct. All esthetic disgust is due to defective insight and narrowness of sympathy” (EP2:272). Gf: Peirce's Harvard lecture goes on to point out that his argument comes to a seemingly paradoxical conclusion: [[ This suggestion . . . [if] it be correct, it will follow that there is no such thing as positive esthetic badness; and since by goodness we chiefly in this discussion mean merely the absence of badness, or faultlessness, there will be no such thing as esthetic goodness. [(EP2:201)]] GR: My initial response is, that nothing is positively esthetically bad or good holds *for science*, and here Peirce is discussing normative science, a "pure theoretical science" and certainly not an applied one, nor even a "special science." In the latter case, the special sciences, the principles discovered by research into the theoretical cenosocopic sciences, perhaps especially the normative sciences, ought be applied to the special sciences keeping with the dictum that in Peirce's classification of the sciences (following Comte), those 'higher' on the list ought to supply laws and principles to those 'lower' on the list, while those 'lower' in the classification ought to offer realized cases as useful examples from those lower (I hope we won't get into another discussion here about whether 'higher' and 'lower' are valuations, as they most certainly are not. See Section 1: https://www.iep.utm.edu/peircear/). Gf:This raises the question of how a science can be called “normative” if it doesn't judge anything to be good or bad, but i won't delve into Peirce's answer to that. GR: I would be most interested to hear what you consider to be Peirce's answer as to "the question of how a science can be called “normative” if it doesn't judge anything to be good or bad,. I would suggest -- and Peirce comments to this effect (see quotations below) -- that it is the three normative sciences *taken together* that makes them normative. Further, that the central science of ethics is, associated as it clearly is with 2ns, is the commanding one of the three. There is much, much more to be said here about the relations amongst the three normative sciences, but that would take us far from our current central topic, esthetics. GR: I will, however, offer a hint of what might be further considered here via a couple of short quotations lifted from the *Commens Dictionary*. I will not at this point comment on them, but I do hope that we can discuss this in the future. 1903 | Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism: Lecture V | CP 5.121-127 Philosophy has three grand divisions. [—] The second grand division is Normative Science, which investigates the universal and necessary laws of the relation of Phenomena to *Ends*. . . [—] Normative Science treats of the laws of the relation of phenomena to ends; that is, it treats of Phenomena in their Secondness. [—] 1905 | Adirondack Summer School Lectures | MS [R] 1334:36-37 The normative sciences are wholly said to be esthetics, ethics, and logic. . . *They are all largely & I may say principally occupied with a dual distinction, the distinction of the approved and the unapproved.* Esthetics relates to the immediately contemplated; ethics to doings; logic to thought. [—] It is not very easy to seize the exact meaning of the phrase *normative science*. It means the science of the approvable and unapprovable, or better the blameable and the unblameable. *These sciences are distinguished from most others by involving the dual distinction.* But it would be easy to exaggerate its prominence in them. This prominence is greatest in ethics, least in esthetics. (Emphasis added by me.) 1910-09-02 | Quest of Quest | MS [R] 655:24 The Normative Sciences . . . are confined respectively to ascertaining how Feeling, Conduct, and Thought *ought to be controlled* supposing them to be subject *in a measure*, and only in a measure, to self-control, exercised by means of self-criticism, and the purposive formation of habit. . . You concluded: Gf: I also won't try to explain here why i find the primacy of esthetics such an important part of Peirce's legacy in our 21st-Century situation, except to say that it's the *non-judgemental* quality that I consider essential to it. And that's the very quality implied in Peirce's appreciation of the elder James <http://gnusystems.ca/TS/snc.htm#x14>. So that's where i will leave this train of thought, for now anyway. GR: I will very much look forward to discussing this for I find Peirce somewhat inconsistent as regards his opinion of the putative non-judgmental quality of esthetics. I'll let a final quotation suggest what I have in mind in saying that. 1904 | A Brief Intellectual Autobiography by Charles Sanders Peirce | Peirce, 1983, p. 71; MS [R] L107:19-20 …*philosophical esthetics* (which becomes something very different from the study which the noun usually designates)[,] *studies the characters which will belong to the phenomenon so far as it is controllable*, that is, the characters of what is aimed at. Thus, the question, What is the *summum bonum*, is regarded as an esthetical question. (Emphasis added by me.) GR: Doesn't "control" here strongly suggest 2ns? Or, even if it does, is the kind of control which esthetics employs necessarily very different from other types of control, those, for example, involved in ethics and logic? Or is Peirce in error in making Esthetics a normative science? Best, Gary R "Time is not a renewable resource." gnox *Gary Richmond* *Philosophy and Critical Thinking* *Communication Studies* *LaGuardia College of the City University of New York* On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 6:26 PM <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote: > John, your post arrived just as I was about to post this one, and I’ll > have to study it for awhile before I can reply. (Same with Gary’s post > quoting Walt Whitman.) Here I’m just following up on my post to the list > this morning. > > In a footnote to his 1911 essay *A Sketch of Logical Critics*, Peirce > acknowledged his debt to the elder James: > > [[ *Three books from the study of which I have profited concerning > morality and otherwise are Henry James the First’s *Substance and Shadow, > The Secret of Swedenborg*, and *Spiritual Creation*. The fact that I have > been unable to agree with much, not to say *most*, of the author’s > opinions, while not quite confident of my own, has, no doubt, increased > their utility to me. Much that they contain enlightened me greatly. > ](EP2:460)] > > This ability to learn from someone you disagree with is, i would say, a > good example of the pragmaticistic *ethos* Peirce developed. A passage > from “Consequences of Pragmaticism” (1906) throws more light on the primacy > of esthetic ideals in self-control: > > [[ Pragmaticism makes thinking to consist in the living inferential > metaboly of symbols whose purport lies in conditional general resolutions > to act. As for the ultimate purpose of thought, which must be the purpose > of everything, it is beyond human comprehension; but according to the stage > of approach which my thought has made to it — with aid from many persons, > among whom I may mention Royce (in his *World and Individual*), Schiller > (in his *Riddles of the Sphinx*) as well, by the way, as the famous poet > [Friedrich Schiller] (in his *Aesthetische Briefe*), Henry James the > elder (in his *Substance and Shadow* and in his conversations), together > with Swedenborg himself — it is by the indefinite replication of > self-control upon self-control that the *vir* is begotten, and by action, > through thought, he grows an esthetic ideal, not for the behoof of his own > poor noddle merely, but as the share which God permits him to have in the > work of creation. This ideal, by modifying the rules of self-control > modifies action, and so experience too — both the man's own and that of > others, and this centrifugal movement thus rebounds in a new centripetal > movement, and so on; and the whole is a bit of what has been going on, we > may presume, for a time in comparison with which the sum of the geological > ages is as the surface of an electron in comparison with that of a planet. > ](R 289, CP 5.402n)] > > We should notice that this “esthetic ideal” is clearly a > more-than-individual matter, indeed more-than-human – and yet it is “by the > indefinite replication of self-control upon self-control that the *vir* > is begotten,” and the human person *grows* the ideal “by action, through > thought.” A diagram of this cyclic process might resemble the meaning > cycle <http://gnusystems.ca/TS/mdl.htm#meancyc> diagram in *Turning Signs*. > > > Like the ideal of Truth as “the ultimate interpretant of every sign”, this > esthetic ideal is a *would-be* which can never be actualized, but can > serve as a kind of beacon which draws conduct toward a future which is > better than the past because it approaches the *good*, the *summum bonum*. > Only in this sense is it “destined”: it is a destination we have to head > for without ever reaching it in real time. > > Peirce probably thought of growing such an ideal as a person's way of > “exalting his moral freedom, which is a purely negative one, into an > aesthetic or positive form” (as Henry James the First put it > <http://gnusystems.ca/TS/snc.htm#x14>). Peirce contrasted this “exalting” > with morality in another remark c. 1906: [[ I do not presume to know > anything about it, but it seems to me that the very meaning of the word > “God” implies, not surely morality, for He seems to me to be above all > self-restraint or law, but to imply aesthetic spiritual perfection. ](CP > 5.510, c.1906)] > > In all of this theorizing, it is clear that esthetics, ethics and logical > critic correspond to Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness respectively. In > his fifth Harvard Lecture of 1903, after expressing some doubts about his > classification of the normative sciences, Peirce said: > > [[ Supposing, however, that normative science divides into esthetics, > ethics, and logic, then it is easily perceived, from my standpoint, that > this division is governed by the three categories. For Normative Science in > general being the science of the laws of conformity of things to ends, > esthetics considers those things whose ends are to embody qualities of > feeling, ethics those things whose ends lie in action, and logic those > things whose end is to represent something. Just at this point we begin to > get upon the trail of the secret of pragmatism … ](CP 5.129-30, EP2:200)] > > At this point i'm skipping about a page of Peirce's lecture in order to > focus on the primacy of esthetics within the normative sciences. Resuming, > then, on EP2:201 (CP 5.132): > > [[ So, then, incompetent as I am to it, I find the task imposed upon me of > defining the esthetically good,—a work which so many philosophical artists > have made as many attempts at performing. In the light of the doctrine of > categories I should say that an object, to be esthetically good, must have > a multitude of parts so related to one another as to impart a positive > simple immediate quality to their totality; and whatever does this is, in > so far, esthetically good, no matter what the particular quality of the > total may be. If that quality be such as to nauseate us, to scare us, or > otherwise to disturb us to the point of throwing us out of the mood of > esthetic enjoyment, out of the mood of simply contemplating the embodiment > of the quality,—just, for example, as the Alps affected the people of old > times, when the state of civilization was such that an impression of great > power was inseparably associated with lively apprehension and terror,—then > the object remains none the less esthetically good, although people in our > condition are incapacitated from a calm esthetic contemplation of it. ]] > > Esthetic contemplation, then, requires us to set aside any emotional > reaction we may have to the object contemplated, which is esthetically good > to the extent that it has a “positive simple immediate quality.” Thus the > *esthetically > good* is entirely different from the *morally* good, which only applies > to actions, and only as a quality opposed to the morally *bad*. The act > of *judging* any positive simple immediate quality to be “bad” – or even > to be “good” *as opposed to bad* – incapacitates us for the “esthetic > enjoyment” which comes only with “esthetic contemplation.” Peirce confirmed > this point later in 1903, in his *Syllabus*: “no form is esthetically > bad, if regarded from the strictly esthetical point of view, without any > idea of adopting the form in conduct. All esthetic disgust is due to > defective insight and narrowness of sympathy” (EP2:272). > > Peirce's Harvard lecture goes on to point out that his argument comes to a > seemingly paradoxical conclusion: > > [[ This suggestion must go for what it may be worth, which I dare say may > be very little. If it be correct, it will follow that there is no such > thing as positive esthetic badness; and since by goodness we chiefly in > this discussion mean merely the absence of badness, or faultlessness, there > will be no such thing as esthetic goodness. [(EP2:201)]] > > This raises the question of how a science can be called “normative” if it > doesn't judge anything to be good or bad, but i won't delve into Peirce's > answer to that. I also won't try to explain here why i find the primacy of > esthetics such an important part of Peirce's legacy in our 21st-Century > situation, except to say that it's the *non-judgemental* quality that I > consider essential to it. And that's the very quality implied in Peirce's > appreciation of the elder James <http://gnusystems.ca/TS/snc.htm#x14>. So > that's where i will leave this train of thought, for now anyway. > > Gary f. >
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