Charles Peirce Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Josiah Lee Auspitz

Critical Essay by Josiah Lee Auspitz

SOURCE: "The Greatest Living American Philosopher," in Commentary, Vol. 76, No. 6, December, 1983, pp. 51-64.

In the following excerpt, Auspitz asserts that Peirce was the United States' only contribution to great philosophy, and isolates his later writing as his most profound.

Charles Sanders Peirce, the only American one can confidently place among the world's great philosophers, had a view of logic as a form of heroism. As he saw, it, logical thinking is virtually useless in life, where the most important matters must be settled by faith and instinct. Logicality is heroic precisely because it is unarrested by practical interests, unhindered by the everyday need to leap to judgment. It is reasoning as if for eternity and for humanity as a whole. It is not dispassionate, since a commitment to the life of the mind is itself a sublime passion, but rather disinterested and selfless. It is, in his...
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