PEIRCE: ETHICS IS NOT NORMATIVE -- IT IS PRE-NORMATIVE

CP 1.577. There is room for doubt whether ethics is correctly described as a normative branch of philosophy. The doctrine of rights and duties is practical rather than normative; and if we are to use the word philosophy, as I intend to do, for that part of science which rests upon so much of experience as presses in upon every man during every hour of his waking life, then it is plain that the doctrine of rights and duties, which makes heavy drafts upon wisdom, or the knowledge which comes by reflection upon the total experience of a lifetime, as well as upon a learned acquaintance with the structure of the society in which one lives, stretches far beyond the familiar ground of philosophy. But the doctrine of rights and duties is a mere superstructure upon ethics proper. This groundwork philosophy will never disavow; for it is her pride and boast, the one branch of her work in which during the last three centuries an indisputable, steady progress has been made, not put to shame by the achievements of the special sciences. I wish as much could be said of logic. Concerning what, then, have all those writers whose subtle and beautiful discussions have built up the science of ethics been mainly occupying themselves? Surely not casuistry, or the determination of what under given circumstances ought to or may be done. They have been largely busied with the analysis of conscience, which as a psychological problem, mainly, belongs among the special psychical sciences. But the more important subject of their deliberations has been, What is good? Now this is hardly a normative question: it is pre-normative. It does not ask for the conditions of fulfillment of a definitely accepted purpose, but asks what is to be sought, not for a reason, but back of every reason. Logic, as a true normative science, supposes the question of what is to be aimed at to be already answered before it could itself have been called into being. Pure ethics, philosophical ethics, is not normative, but pre-normative.END

The triad on which Triadic Philosophy rests is Reality Ethics Aesthetics and more and more I find within Peirce the background of the highly practical and universal practice I am advocating. Very simply the triad mandates a daily discipline that puts one in touch with one's higher self. Ethics is assumed to be an ontological term which denoted fundamental universal values such as tolerance, helpfulness and democracy. Consideration of ones reality in relation to these yields up the possibility of a positive conclusion that is both true and beautiful and which is arrived at in conversation with ones best self or one's guide if one senses one has one.

It is my contention that we all have access to guidance and that inner conversation is understood by Peirce and certainly by me to be the essential mark of growth in any human being.