C. S. Peirce and Josiah Royce: Understanding, self-understanding, and self-misunderstanding

Abstract

There is, at the heart of this paper, a comparison between Peirce’s understanding of inquiry and Royce’s account of interpretation. It is framed by a consideration of self-misunderstanding (a consideration developed in reference to Peirce) and, tied to this discussion of self-misunderstanding, a consideration of understanding itself. For Peirce, in his account of inquiry, and Royce in his meta-interpretation (i.e., his interpretation of the meaning and function of interpretation itself), some form of understanding is at stake. For example, the task of the scientific inquirer is unfinished if it stops at the discovering of the bare facts (simply that something is actually the case—i.e., a body such as a small stone held aloft by a person will fall to the ground if the person lets it go). While for both thinkers, science is not a body of secure knowledge but rather a form of ongoing inquiry, it aims primarily at understanding. Both Peirce and Royce are animated by a commitment to the intelligibility of the cosmos in its full sweep and smallest detail. Peirce’s account of inquiry and Royce’s conception of interpretation are endeavors to detail how human actors render ever more deeply and widely intelligible the world of their experience. Much can be learned comparing them in this respect.