Origins of Pragmaticism: Peirce’s “Anti-foundationalism” and his Defense of Critical Common-Sensism

Abstract

The aim of my paper is already indicated in its subtitle (Peirce’s antifoundationalism and his defense of critical common-sensism). What I try to explain is what Peirce himself said: not only that all his philosophy has always seemed to him to grow “out of a contrite fallibilism, combined with a faith in the reality of knowledge, and an intense desire to find things out”, but also that two doctrines – critical common sensism [CCS] and the scholastic doctrine of realism (“usually defined as the opinion that there are real objects that are general. (...) the belief in this can hardly being accompanied by the acknowledgment that there are, besides, real vagues, and especially real possibilities”, CP 5.453) – were developed (by Peirce) before his formulation of pragmaticism (first enounced in the form of a maxim in 1878). Peirce’s realism and his pragmatism are not dissociated: “pragmatism could hardly have entered a head that was not already convinced that there are real generals” (CP 5. 503, c.1905). Instead of presenting Peirce simply as anti-Cartesian, I prefer to follow what he himself said: “Although pragmaticism is not a philosophy, yet (...) it best comports with the English philosophy, and more particularly with the Scotch doctrine of common sense” (CP 8.207) and to insist that pragmaticism “involves a complete rupture with nominalism” (CP 8.208). In Issues of Pragmaticism, Peirce defends his own doctrine of common sense (critical common-sensism) and specifies six errors which he finds in the Scotch doctrine of common sense. From the beginning to the end of his work, Peirce defended a realist and fallibilist pragmatism, but this, contrary to many contemporary “pragmatists”, did not impede him to refuse all accommodation with the “literary spirit” and to emphasize the legitimacy of the fundamental questions of philosophy.