Peirce, Pragmatism, and the Logic of Scripture

This is the first study of Charles Peirce’s philosophy as a form of writing and the first study of his pragmatic writings as a critique of the modern attempt to change society by writing philosophy. According to Ochs, Peirce concluded that his own pragmatism displayed the errors of modernity, attempting to recreate rather than repair modern philosophy. His self-critique - which he called pragmaticism - refashions pragmatism as what Ochs calls a ‘pragmatic method of reading’: a method of, first, uncovering the conflicting beliefs that generate modern philosophies and, second, recommending ways of repairing these conflicts. Redescribing Peirce’s pragmatism as ‘the logic of scripture’, Ochs suggests that Christians and Jews may in fact re-read pragmatism as a logic of Scripture: that is, as a modern philosopher’s way of diagramming the Bible’s rules for repairing broken lives and healing societal suffering.

• The only study of Peirce’s philosophy as a form of writing and of Peirce’s pragmatism as a critique of philosophic writing • The only study to correlate the logic of Peirce’s pragmatism with a logic of Scripture • Peirce for postmodern literary scholars and postmodern theologians

Part I. Pierce’s Pragmatic Writing: 1. Introduction: reading Peirce’s pragmatism; 2. Pragmatic methods of reading and interpretation; 3. Problems in Peirce’s early critique of cartesianism; 4. Problems in Peirce’s early theory of pragmatism; 5. Problems in Peirce’s normative theory of pragmatism, 1878–1903; 6. A pragmatic reading of Peirce’s lectures on pragmatism; Part II. Pierce’s Pragmatic Writing: 17. Irremediable vagueness in Peirce’s pragmaticist writings: a plain sense reading; 8. Pragmaticism re-read: from common-sense to the logic of scripture.