C. S. Peirce’s Hegelian Moment?

 

C. S. Peirce’s Hegelian Moment?

 

 

Dear Reader,

In volume I of the Harvard University Press, Belknap Press edition of the COLLECTED PAPERS OF CHARLES SAUNDERS PEIRCE, entitled “PRINCIPLES OF PHILSOPHY”, in its CHAPTER 3, from some circa 1890 drafts of a work to be entitled “A GUESS AT THE RIDDLE” [referencing the Sphinx], in the section labeled “1. TRICHOTOMY”, which starts from page 181, and on page 183, as paragraph number 356, we find a formulation that rings somewhat like a highly-condensed version of the opening of Hegel’s dialectical «Logik».

 

C. S. Peirce --

“The first is that whose being is simply in itself, not referring to anything nor lying behind anything.” 

 

“The second is that which is what it is by force of something to which it is second.”

 

“The third is that which what it is owing to things between which it mediates and which it brings into relation to each other.”

 

Regards,

Miguel