http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibnzKeA6yxI
On Mar 25, 2012, at 2:54 PM, Eugene Halton <[email protected]> wrote: > Forster: "On [Peirce's] view, human beings are not cogs in a vast cosmic > mechanism, but rather are free, creative agents capable of transforming the > world though the active realization of intelligent ideals. The ultimate fate > of the world is indeterminate and there is no guarantee that the forces of > reasonableness will triumph. > Nevertheless, the potential for victory is there. All it requires, he thinks, > is a community of individuals who devote their energy to the pursuit of truth > and goodness, a community united, not by mutual self-interest, but by a > common love of reasonableness" (Forster, op. cit., 245). > > I could not think of anything worse than a community transforming the world > through "intelligent ideals," and I do not think the statement accurately > represents Peirce. This Pyrrhic victory of eviscerated, abstract intelligence > in the service of ideals would be ruinous to life, just as Teilhard de > Chardin's concept of a "noosphere" (in the sense of atmosphere, stratosphere) > is, a film of planetary intelligence in which "life's domain" would be ruled > by reason. Life from the neck up is ruinous to life: the noose sphere. > Peirce, it seems to me, understood the limited place of science in the > practice of life, which is why he thought pragmatically that science is > impractical. Other people, such as Dostoyevsky and Melville and D. H. > Lawrence, saw more deeply into the problem of the idealization of life than > Peirce did, perhaps because they were artists. > > Life cannot be lived by ideals for long; life can be lived with ideals, never > sustainably by them. Our age today, with its ideal religions and ideal > science and technology, is fast realizing ideal ruination of the biosphere. > > We have butchered our spontaneous souls into ether, we have butchered our > minds into believing that our bodies are machines and the universe is a > machine, and we have butchered the earth: The poisoned fruit of our science > and its cultural legacy. Scientific self-correction may be a matter of the > long run. Hooray for it. The problem is that life is also a matter of once > for all time. Cut its cord and it's gone. > > Creation issues forth as non-ideal spontaneous reasonableness, which may be > an aspect of Peirce's understanding of the aesthetic as more encompassing > than the ethical or logical and their concerns with the good and the true. > "The admirable," literally that which one "wonders at," as an understanding > of aesthetic (a word which means to perceive or feel), seems to have moved > from its literal meaning of wonder toward one of idealizing, perhaps as an > aspect of our idealizing, anesthetic age. > > Gene Halton > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L > listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to > [email protected] with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of > the message. To post a message to the list, send it to > [email protected] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to [email protected] with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to [email protected]
