Home
Peirce: CP 6.294 Cross-Ref:††
294. Here, then, is the issue. The gospel of Christ says that progress comes from every individual merging his individuality in sympathy with his neighbors. On the other side, the conviction of the nineteenth century is that progress takes place by virtue of every individual's striving for himself with all his might and trampling his neighbor under foot whenever he gets a chance to do so. This may accurately be called the Gospel of Greed.
Peirce: CP 6.295 Cross-Ref:††
295. Much is to be said on both sides. I have not concealed, I could not conceal, my own passionate predilection. Such a confession will probably shock my scientific brethren. Yet the strong feeling is in itself, I think, an argument of some weight in favor of the agapastic theory of evolution -- so far as it may be presumed to bespeak the normal judgment of the Sensible Heart. Certainly, if it were possible to believe in agapasm without believing it warmly, that fact would be an argument against the truth of the doctrine. At any rate, since the warmth of feeling exists, it should on every account be candidly confessed; especially since it creates a liability to one-sidedness on my part against which it behooves my readers and me to be severally on our guard. END
It is unfair to fault Peirce's interpreters for largely ignoring Peirce's candid confession. I am not a close enough Peirce reader to suggest that his philosophy more or less stands on his willingness, at least here, to shock his scientific friends. Did he surmise that folks like myself would take the obvious unity of his unfinished work and build on it?
Would he stir from his heavenly activities long enough to suggest that his words here are spot on? Or on the other hand, would he be sufficiently perturbed by his own sense of failure or remorse to feel that glosses on his work are minor compared to what he would have created had he been given an extra hundred years and some penitence in his old Cambridge haunts to enable him to achieve a completed life work?
Things are as they are. I laud Peirce with Nietzsche and Wittgenstein -- three renegades, first among equals because of his proven prescience and his recognition of the nature of dualism -- what I have called binary thinking which still wreaks its havoc in the world. I would love to eavesdrop on their telepathic conversations in the dimensions they now occupy,
I know existentially exactly how all of them must have felt at times.
Agape is the same thing as unconditional love. If Peirce is willing to rest his thought on this destiny, this counsel, this requirement of global life, it is a sad thing that even the theologians who embrace pragmatism do not go farther and see that Peirce was a pragmaticist thinker who believed in unconditional love as an ontological foundation for existence.
But I know why. I have given most of my life to exploring the failures of Christianity and met with the precise responses you might expect. Fortunately everything I surmise from a plethora of heavenly or heaven-based contentions confirm the general drift of my criticisms and suggestions.
294. Here, then, is the issue. The gospel of Christ says that progress comes from every individual merging his individuality in sympathy with his neighbors. On the other side, the conviction of the nineteenth century is that progress takes place by virtue of every individual's striving for himself with all his might and trampling his neighbor under foot whenever he gets a chance to do so. This may accurately be called the Gospel of Greed.
Peirce: CP 6.295 Cross-Ref:††
295. Much is to be said on both sides. I have not concealed, I could not conceal, my own passionate predilection. Such a confession will probably shock my scientific brethren. Yet the strong feeling is in itself, I think, an argument of some weight in favor of the agapastic theory of evolution -- so far as it may be presumed to bespeak the normal judgment of the Sensible Heart. Certainly, if it were possible to believe in agapasm without believing it warmly, that fact would be an argument against the truth of the doctrine. At any rate, since the warmth of feeling exists, it should on every account be candidly confessed; especially since it creates a liability to one-sidedness on my part against which it behooves my readers and me to be severally on our guard. END
It is unfair to fault Peirce's interpreters for largely ignoring Peirce's candid confession. I am not a close enough Peirce reader to suggest that his philosophy more or less stands on his willingness, at least here, to shock his scientific friends. Did he surmise that folks like myself would take the obvious unity of his unfinished work and build on it?
Would he stir from his heavenly activities long enough to suggest that his words here are spot on? Or on the other hand, would he be sufficiently perturbed by his own sense of failure or remorse to feel that glosses on his work are minor compared to what he would have created had he been given an extra hundred years and some penitence in his old Cambridge haunts to enable him to achieve a completed life work?
Things are as they are. I laud Peirce with Nietzsche and Wittgenstein -- three renegades, first among equals because of his proven prescience and his recognition of the nature of dualism -- what I have called binary thinking which still wreaks its havoc in the world. I would love to eavesdrop on their telepathic conversations in the dimensions they now occupy,
I know existentially exactly how all of them must have felt at times.
Agape is the same thing as unconditional love. If Peirce is willing to rest his thought on this destiny, this counsel, this requirement of global life, it is a sad thing that even the theologians who embrace pragmatism do not go farther and see that Peirce was a pragmaticist thinker who believed in unconditional love as an ontological foundation for existence.
But I know why. I have given most of my life to exploring the failures of Christianity and met with the precise responses you might expect. Fortunately everything I surmise from a plethora of heavenly or heaven-based contentions confirm the general drift of my criticisms and suggestions.
