Abstract
This chapter is not a polemic. It provides links between legitimacy and legality. It opens inquiry on the following questions:
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1.
In what sense can Peirce’s concept of aesthetic freedom—free play—be reconciled with the prevailing prescriptive notion of a normative aesthetics?
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2.
If a process of inquiry is itself a sign in Peirce’s philosophy, how do we communicate our objects of inquiry through philosophical dialogue which, in this case, is inquiry into aspects of American legal philosophy? If the process is undetermining and open-ended, how do we identify and define the goal?
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3.
How may the process for choosing leading principles of inquiry be applied in the selection of those underlying principles or values that determine the structures of legal codes and of the ethical codes that regulate behavior of official legal actors, for instance, jurists, legislators, and lawyers?
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Notes
See Peirce’s “On the Origin of Signs” (CP 3.159). Also, refer to his 1893 paper “Association,” on the “occult” source of signs in the imagination and on the “free play” of imagination.
See Dewey (1934:272–297). See also McDermott (1976) who says that “… aesthetic sensibility does not denote exclusive or even necessary relationship to the world of art. In this, we follow the lead of John Dewey, for whom all experiencing is potentially aesthetic” (xii, xiii). See also Morton White (1955:174, 176) on the “mediating” ethics of Dewey; see also his interpretation of how pragmatism evolved, so that “Peirce’s pragmatic theory of meaning was carried over to ‘true’ by James and by Dewey to ‘good’ …” (17).
Peirce, in “Forms of Consciousness” (CP 7.540), discusses how Kant has distorted Tetens’s concept of feeling. Peirce says that what he will mean by feeling directly follows Tetens: “Take whatever is directly and immediately in consciousness at any instant, just as it is, without regard to what it signifies, to what its parts are, to what causes it, or any of its relations to anything else….”
See McDermott (1977:16, 17).
See Morris (1970. 1946).
See Tom Goldstein’s “Attorneys Pondering the Ethics of their Trade,” The New York Times, August 19, 1979, E7.
See Kent (1976).
See Wilkinson and Willoughby (1967); they discuss in their introduction the singular ability of Peirce correctly to understand what Schiller means by the Aesthetic (clxxxiiii-clxxxix); see also their translations, particularly, of Letters XV, XIV, XXVII, XXVI, XXIII.
See Wilkinson and Willoughby (1967:105), Letter XV.
See Kevelson (1987).
Richard Rorty, presidential address, American Philosophical Association, December 1979, printed in Proceedings and Addresses (August 1980:719).
See Fisch, Ketner, and Kloesell (1979).
See Rescher (1969: particularly 54–59.
For discussion of the process, in Peirce, from the pre-ethical, through the ethical, to esthetic judgments, see Walter Krolikowski, “The Peircean Vir,” in Moore and Robin (1964:257–77).
See Kevelson (1982d).
See Kevelson (1982a).
See Peirce’s review of S. E. Mazes’ work on Ethics (The Nation 73 Oct. 1901, reprinted in Ketner and Cook (1979). See also Peirce’s understanding of the “magic” of imagination in scientific inquiry (CP 1.47, 48).
See Bernstein (1971).
See Peirce’s review “Aristotle’s Ethics” (The Nation 83 1906 226–7, reprinted in Ketner and Cook (1979).
See Kevelson (1978a).
See Kevelson (1987). See also J. Sully, “Aesthetics” in Encyclopedia Brittanica, Vol. 1 (1904:212–224
C. J. Ducasse (1964:71–83). A distorted interpretation of Schiller’s play is given in Croce, The Aesthetic (1909). See also discussion of play in Dewey (1920) and also a reduced, restricted concept of play in Santayana’s Sense of Beauty.
See Nagel (1979:329–335) for discussion of what he calls a “fortuitous hypothesis” with regard to the Peircean concept of chance, spontaneity, and freedom.
See particularly Schiller’s Letter XXVII (Wilkinson and Willoughby (1967:215).
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Kevelson, R. (1988). Pure Play. In: The Law as a System of Signs. Topics in Contemporary Semiotics. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0911-6_9
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