Rhythmic Foundations, and the Necessary Aesthetic in Peirce’s Categories :: Philosophy Philosophical Papers

Rhythmic Foundations, and the Necessary Aesthetic in Peirce’s Categories ABSTRACT: There has been a tendency in scholarship to steer quite clear of discussions of Peirce and Aesthetics, and I believe that the main reason that Peirce’s works lacks, perhaps even intentionally, a clear aesthetic theory is because his entire architectonic of experience is aesthetically founded. This thesis is based, in part, on the necessary aesthetic descriptions one is forced to use when describing something such as the categories. For example, Secondness necessarily elicits aesthetic descriptions of relations and tensions, Thirdness is described most accurately with words such as harmony and arrangement, and the process by which we come to attain a belief is an "aesthetic" endeavor aimed at satisfaction. Focusing particularly on the categories, and secondarily on the method for attaining belief, I hope to show that Peirce’s foundation is, itself, an aesthetic awareness of life. There has been a tendency to steer quite clear of discussions of Peirce and Aesthetics. Over and over, statements by Peircean scholars attest to the lack of philosophical guidance regarding the status and judgment of art that is available in his writings.(1) Peirce himself states that, "My notion would be that there are innumerable varieties of esthetic quality, but no purely esthetic grade of excellence."(2) Doug Anderson also states that a Peircean aesthetic is hard to piece together because it was a "very late addition to Peirce’s classification of the sciences." That is, even though aesthetics is presupposed by ethics, logic, and metaphysics, in Peirce’s prioritization of the sciences, his intention was that aesthetics was to be understood through the work he had already done in the other branches of his system.(3) This vagueness hasn’t, however, prevented scholars from speculating on the aesthetic in Peirce’s works. Yet even so, we are still faced with many problems. First is the "paleontological reconstruction", as Herman Parret states, of the various minuscule references by Peirce regarding the aesthetic. Second, it is claimed that if any approach to a Peircean aesthetic is going to be worthwhile, it will probably be too large to handle because it must incorporate his views on logic, metaphysics and theology.(4) Third, as pointed out by Beverly Kent, Peirce seems to conflate two senses of the aesthetic, where it is both a quality that is immediately present and an ultimate ideal.(5) I will argue that the main reason that Peirce’s works lacks, perhaps even intentionally, a clear aesthetic theory is because his depiction of experience is aesthetically founded.