Peirce, Pragmatism, and the Logic of Scripture

A study of Peirce's published writings on pragmatism.

This book is a study of Peirce's published writings on pragmatism for postmodern theologians and postmodern literary scholars. Peter Ochs examines Peirce's philosophy as a form of writing, looks at Peirce's pragmatism as a critique of philosophic writing, and correlates the logic of Peirce's pragmatism with a 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.