Dissertation Abstract
The Analytic of
Representation in
Charles S. Peirce's Early
and Late Writings
L'Analytique de la
Representation dans
Les Premiers et Derniers
Ecrits de Charles S. Peirce
by
Andre De Tienne
Year:
1991
Pages:
652
Institution:
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (
Source:
DAI, 52, no. 03C, (1991): 0309
In the first (French-written) part of the
dissertation, Peirce's 1857-1867 writings are examined rigorously so as to
reconstitute chronologically all the steps he followed to establish the main
argument of his paper "On a New List of Categories." The basic
categorial triadism is shown to originate in Peirce's reading of Schiller's
Aesthetische Briefe, and all the phases of his struggle with Kant's Critique
are described: notably the substitution of the "thought/thought-of"
dichotomy for the phenomenon/noumenon dichotomy, and the rejection of both
transcendentalism and dogmatism in favor of an in-between epistemological
position, called metaphysical fideism (a pre-pragmatic attitude). Peirce's many
accounts of the conceptual concatenation that grounds any modification of
consciousness are then presented, and all the paragraphs of the "New
List" are explained. This explanation traces every line of the text back
to all previous writings, and refers to all the commentators of the juvenilia.
Both the epistemological frame of the central argument and the method of
deriving the categories are described in detail, and each category is
completely explicated.
In the second
(English-written) part, a great number of published and unpublished writings of
the 1900-1914 period are examined, so as to reconstruct the argument Peirce had
in mind when he inserted the doctrine of the categories into his classification
of the sciences under the name of phenomenology or phaneroscopy. His
definitions of the phaneron are sorted out into three categories. The notion of
phaneron is compared with those of experience and perception, and Peirce is
shown to reject the idea that the two concepts of manifestation and
representation are synonymous.
Joseph Ransdell's position
on the matter is criticized in depth. Then a description is given of the way
representation can be said to originate in the self-presentation of the phaneron,
and the passage from phaneron to sign is suggested to be Peirce's reformulation
of the passage from the sense-manifold to unity. Some important considerations
are made in the conclusion about the nature of phaneroscopy as a science at the
juncture between mathematics and semiotics.
Reference
Copy: BIBLIOTHEQUE DE L'INSTITUT
SUPERIEUR DE PHILOSOPHIE, U.C.L., CHEMIN D'ARISTOTE, 1, B-1348
LOUVAIN-LA-NEUVE, BELGIUM
Language: French
SUBJECT(S)
Descriptor: PHILOSOPHY
Accession
No: AAGC182685
Provider: OCLC
Database: Dissertations