This book covers the early work of Charles Sanders Peirce, the father of Pragmatism. Starting with his seminal work on signs and triadic relations, this book covers a smattering of topics from the importance of conveying what we mean to the concept of Pragmaticism. As the recognized founder of american philosophy, this book shows a diverse picture of the work created by this remarkable man.

No he leido el libro, pero estoy muy interesada en conseguirlo

I came to this book because I was inspired by "the Metaphysical Club" to learn more about the roots of pragmatism. The book is challenging. The Metaphysical Club points out that William James did not understand Peirce at first, so it is a bit much for mere mortals. It is especially daunting because the first essay is written with respect to Kant's categories, not something I know off of the top-of-my head.
However, as the books progresses many of the things that are assumed in the first essay are explained. For instance Peirce explains in detail what he means by a sign.

He discusses cognition, or consciousness and shows that logically our internal experience is based on external stimulation. It soon becomes impossible to ignore the fact that you are reading the works of a logician and that that is where he is coming from. But even though you might have to reread parts several times, once you master the arguements, it is satisfying indeed.

According to the introduction of the book and references, Peirce was influential. William James, Oliver Wendel Holmes and John Dewey were all influenced by him. Modern cognitive psychology owes much to William James. Psychology took a different direction through psychoanalysis and then behaviorism but cognitive psychology is now the dominate paradigm. Because of this Peirce has renewed importance.

My advice is to read it through once and not feel you have to get everything and the reread it because he explains things later that he assmes you know earlier.

Cornelis de Waal's ON PEIRCE provides a solid and reliable survey of the principal doctrines and concerns of the great American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce. As de Waal puts it, the text constitutes a trustworthy "travel companion" to Peirce, and so does not get mired in the difficult interpretive issues concerning how Peirce's "system" hangs together. Highly recommended for both philosophical novices and philosophers unacquainted with Peirce's thought.

It's a rare and beautiful event when two scientific intelligences engage in genuinely truthful dialogue about vitally important matters which impact daily life. Fortunately that's just what lies in store for any sovereign wayfaring reader of Thief of Peirce. At least that was what I discovered throughout this smooth-flowing collection of correspondence between essayist/novelist Walker Percy, and philosopher Kenneth Ketner.

I've read and re-read so many portions of this book, making margin notes galore, and reflecting on my own view of the subjects on which these two gents exchange ideas and thoughts. So much goes on in Thief that any list of the best content would end up including the whole book anyway; although the most used portion of my copy is Ketner's essay, Novel Science.

So, if you're looking to gain insight into Percy's novels, and Ketner's new sense of autobiography in His Glassy Essence (written before the Reagan bio, as a matter of fact), then don't miss this particular essay in Thief.

But, don't take my word for it --- be Percy's sovereign wayfarer and discover the beauty of this book on your own. After reading it you'll likely be a Thief of Peirce yourself.

This is a very good biography of an overlooked great American thinker. Mr. Brent does a good job of recounting the life of Peirce without getting bogged down in the details of Peirce's philosophy which is well documented in several other books. The book also attempts to analyze Peirce's behavoir and why he failed as an academic, something that desperately needed to be done. As Peirce's reputation inevitatably increases, this biography will become a classic reference to this very interesting American.

This book contains a great deal of information on the life of a sadly-neglected philosopher; one of the most brilliant Americans of the 19th century. Dr. Brent has a wonderful, at times even poetic, writing style, and he has "lived" with Peirce so long that he has excellent insight into the man behind the philosophy. Struggling through Peirce in a class? This book may not make his philosophy "easy"--but it will make him more human.

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 -1914) was an eccentric American genius and the founder of the philosophy generally known as pragmatism. A difficult, erratic, and sometimes violent man, he was denied in his attempts to secure an academic position and spent the last several years of his life in near isolation at his home, called Arisbe, near Milford, Pennsylvania. Peirce may be America's most significant philosopher. Yet he never produced a book. His reputation, insofar as it is based on his written work, is based on essays he wrote throughout his life and on large manuscripts which his admirers saw through to publication beginning shortly after his death.

Professor Kenneth Ketner, the author of this "autobiography" of Peirce, is an acknoledged authority on Peirce's life and thought. He calls this book, "His Glassy Essence" an "autobiography" because it is based in large part upon a selection of Peirce's writings and letters arranged to tell the story of his life. As Professor Ketner states, however, the book is also in part fiction. It includes three fictitious characters, the narrator, Ike, a writer of mysteries, his wife Betsey, a nurse, and Roy, a Harvard PhD in philosophy who allegedly knew and studied with Peirce. The story line involves Ike taking an interest in Peirce based upon an old box of Peirce's papers that Betsey has inherited. Roy comes into the story to provide information about Peirce and, not accidentally, some excellent discussions on the nature of philosophy.

The mechanism creaks at times. The story line is artificial although Roy has many insightful things to say in commenting on Peirce. It is difficult to separate fact from fiction in the account of Peirce because many of his letters and essays seem to be melded together from sources written at different times and places. Ketner's protestations notwithstanding, it is difficult to be convinced of the accuracy of the account presented here as scholarly biography. Finally, this book covers essentially only the first 28 years of Peirce's life (with forwards to his death and to some of his subsequent writings.) There are two promised sequels which are to continue the story through the remainder of Peirce's life.

For all the difficulties, I came away from this book with a better understanding of Peirce and some inkling of the development of his thought. Peirce's own distinctive ideas beging to be developed only in the last third or so of this book. The earlier sections deal largely with Peirce's years in college when he was deeply under the influence of Kant.

The book makes a good case that Peirce's work is narrowed unduly when he is viewed simply as one of the first American pragmatists. He was in fact a philosopher in the large manner concerned about science, about logic and categories in an expansive sense of these terms, and about God. He was an empiricist in the broadest sense that William James developed with his term "radical empiricism". I also see strong parallels in the account of Peirce given in this book to Husserl's phenomenology.

Peirce tought the distinction between knowledge, or the accumulation of facts, and wisdom and meaning which cannot be learned from the books. He developed the philosophy of signs called semiotics and invented a personal and highly idiosyncratic philosophical vocabulary, including terms such as "Cenopythagoreanism" (see page 342) which stretch the casual reader' patience and may stretch the more serious reader's mind.

This book gives an excellent picture of the philosophic mind, in the person of Charles Peirce, and of the serious and consuming nature of philosophic inquiry. It is not a book to read for a full account either of Peirce's life or his thought. It does capture something of the spirit of the man and the thinker.

Readers who want a historically based account of Peirce and his times might enjoy "The Metaphysical Club" by Louis Menand. Ketner's book is cited in the references for Menand and it covers much of the same ground, Peirce's life, his relationship to his father, the mathematician Benjamin Peirce, the metaphysical club which met briefly at Harvard in the 1870s, the effect of the Civil War on American pragmatism, and much else. The distinctive value of Ketner's book, I think, is that for all its problems it will allow the reader to see Peirce from the inside out.

For me the book, "His Glassy Essence," has been invaluable. Ketner has pulled together information about Peirce's early life that I could not possibly have gotten to on my own. Since I am not attached to any institution, I do not have access to any unpublished documents. I am not sure I would have been able to find the information Ketner has laid out in this book even if I had such access. He has pulled together a great deal of information from diverse sources and put these scattered pieces together in chronological and contextual order.

This book has been immensely helpful to me for coming to understand the provenance of Peirce's pragmatism. Now, it is obvious to me that there was no abrupt beginning to the development of Peirce's pragmatic theory. Now that I know of his early exposure to qualitative discernment and aesthetics, I can identify these as central to the evolution of his theory of abduction-something I have suspected all along, but had been unable to nail down because of the lack of a chronological and contextual framework for Peirce's early life.

The author did a fine job of referencing information, providing page by page notes at the end of the book. These references were noted in such a way that they do not interfere with the reading of the text--which unfolds in a story-like way, enabling me to see how Peirce fit within his context. The biographical and temperamental information concerning Peirce's father, for example, fleshed out the cultural and familial milieu in which he was raised-seemingly as a crown prince of the intellectual world for which his father was a sort of king.

Although there are minor discrepancies (such as a brother who seems to have been left out)and occasional confusions when following the story line, I think that this book is going to be very useful for anyone wanting to know about the early Peirce. I am finding "His Glassy Essence" especially useful as a reference tool. I suspect that other independent researchers, like myself, who are working with Peirce's ideas, but do not have access to unpublished materials by or about him will find this book useful as well.

As a Peircean supporter of personal inquiry I can't in good conscience write a traditional "review" like the Kirkus one which dominates this page. I write to encourage everybody to disregard the Kirkus comments and explore His Glassy Essence (and their own, in turn) for themselves.

Having read the correspondence between Ketner and Percy in Thief of Peirce, I know that Percy commissioned Ketner to write this volume. That said, I believe that Charles S Peirce, Walker Percy, and Kenneth L. Ketner are all speaking to any person whose interests run toward open-minded, evaluative, and exploratory inquiry into Life. What better way to discover your own Way than to see it in the life of another, namely Peirce.

Personally, I have no doubt in my heart that Percy would be pleased with Ketner's first installment of the life of CS Peirce. But, by all means, don't take anyone's word for it --- be Percy's sovereign wayfarer, pick up a copy of HGE, and discover Peirce's transformative power for you own self!

Have you ever wondered what makes America? What is patriotism? What is right and wrong within YOUR society? Peirce helps in your discovery of who you are among your people. He preaches, but as any good philosopher, expects his readers to think hard. Not for beginners, but entertaining.

The Two Pragmatisms is for and about Mounce. The four pragmatists covered (Pierce, James, Dewey, Rorty) get a few pages of summary at the begginning of each chapter, the remaining bulk of the book is about the authors personal ideas. Mounce is a religous man, and strongly attacks both Dewey and Rorty. If you are interested in Mounce and his ideas, then read this book, otherwise take a pass. I found it disappointing, poorly written, and really only suitable for Mouncian scholars.

I do commend this illuminating study to anyone interested inthe meaning and implications of pragmatism. I find itdifficult,however, to subscribe to the author's thesis when he claims that William James and John Dewey drove Pierce's pragmatism on a wrong path at the turn of the century. This may sound self-evident, but pragmatism and radical empiricism were clearly distinct from one another to begin with. There is little - if any - doubt that William James was perfectly aware that the particular kind of philosophy he was developing was steering away from Pierce's pragmatism. Hence, probably, his preference for the formulation 'radical empiricism". Howard Mounce himself writes(p.231)that the pragmatism of James, Dewey and later Rorty "is not a new philosophy but is a variation on Positivism, a form of extreme Empiricism. It is in conflict with the first Prgmatism, not at incidental points, but in its essentials". Should this be regarded as a wrong turn ? Readers may turn to the works of people like James Wesley Robbins (University of Indiana - South Bend) for a slightly different approach to better understand the difference between metaphysical and non-metaphysical pragmatism / radical empiricism, the latter having favored reform and religious freedom at the turn of the century. It could, and should therefore be argued that William James and John Dewey's contribution is to have adapted pragmatism to the 20th century. This cannot be conceived as a wrong turn, James and Dewey made sure pragmatism would never become a dead end.