Peirce's philosophical perspectives

by Vincent G. Potter

Peirce's Philosophical Perspectives brings together penetrating studies of the United States' greatest philosopher by a foremost expositor. It stands shoulder to shoulder with Potter's Charles S. Peirce: On Norms and Ideals, a study whose main emphases and central concerns have been corroborated by later developments in Peirce scholarship. The present collection focuses primarily on Peirce's realism, pragmatism, and theism, with attention also being paid to his tychism (or doctrine of objective chance) and synechism (or insistence upon the reality and irreducibility of continuity). In exhibiting the connections among these doctrines, the collection reveals a unity of its own. The essays themselves are readily accessible and lucid, though neither accessibility nor lucidity is purchased at the price of subtlety or vigor. Together they provide a first-rate account of what are a first-rank philosopher's signal contributions to contemporary debates about reality, knowledge, and God.