Thinking Through the Imagination: Aesthetics in Human Cognition

Three C. S. Peirce and the Growth of the Imagination

B { 57 } The Seeds of the Aesthetic The seeds of the aesthetic are buried deep in the work of Charles Sanders Peirce. The sprouts were, therefore, rather slow to show themselves. However, the concept of the imagination as framed by Kant and other German Enlightenment thinkers does emerge in the ground of his epistemology, ontology, and metaphysics. Peirce recognizes the important function of Kantian reproductive imagination as he develops a description of inquiry that underscores the continuity between bodily sensation and understanding, once again challenging the mind-body dualism to which the idealists and empiricists continually fell prey. A more radical claim emerges from this challenge, namely that the “genius” of pragmatic inquiry, like the genius of Kantian creativity, ought to be regarded as a “gift of nature,” as being continuous with and arising from the natural processes of organic life. The continuity that is highlighted between the sensuous and the conceptual implies a certain unity between the material reality and the mental lives of individuals which will Three C. S. Peirce and the Growth of the Imagination 58 Peirce and the Growth of the Imagination be highlighted in coming chapters. In addition to addressing the mediating character of the imagination, Peirce seizes upon the character of the productive and creative imagination, translating the aesthetic concept into the language of epistemology and ontology. Peircean abduction, the process of hypothesis generation, dramatically demonstrates this translation : Peirce takes up the issues of spontaneity, growth, and adaptation as he advances his logic of abduction. The two defining characteristics of Peirce’s philosophy—spontaneity and continuity—are the primary subjects of the next three chapters. In concentrating on these two aspects of Peirce’s thought, it is possible to argue that the logic and ontology of pragmaticism are defined by the aesthetic imagination. More specifically, I will argue that abduction, a hallmark of Pierce’s philosophy, is a direct offshoot of this aesthetic process as it has been described vis-à-vis the thinking of the German Enlightenment . Peirce extends the concept of the imagination outlined by Kant, more or less unknowingly, in order to place philosophy on a new footing. If the imagination is at the core of Peirce’s thought, it is often covered over or overlooked in contemporary Peirce scholarship. My investigation takes its cue from Phillip Weiner’s claim that Peirce “boldly generalized the role of the imagination” and described it as the “source of all the sciences.” Weiner’s framing of the imagination, however, did not allow him to examine the implications of his initial observation. My account is indebted to Douglas Anderson’s work in Creativity and the Work of C. S. Peirce, where he presents a sustained argument that there is a latent theory of aesthetic creativity in Peirce’s extremely analytic corpus. At points, it echoes a portion of Murray Code’s analysis of Peirce’s appropriation of the Kantian project, for example when he writes that “Kant’s inability to tame the imagination, and thus live up to his promise to reform metaphysics once and for all, invites a return to his original insight— that there is an originary imagination involved in the very constitution of experience.” Peirce provides a way of thinking through the creative imagination as the constitutive element of consciousness on the whole. Framed in this way, this section of the project also emerges as a rebuttal to scholars who continue to downplay the importance of aesthetics in Peirce’s work. Beverly Kent, for example, treats aesthetics as a small sub- Peirce and the Growth of the Imagination 59 section of Peirce’s categories and claims that, “Peirce developed an increasingly clear idea of the sort of science aesthetics must be if it was to harmonize with his architectonic development.” Instead of suggesting that Peirce had to find a place for aesthetics in his philosophy, I will argue that the concept of aesthetic imagination constitutes the very foundation of his thinking. I would agree with Kent that Peirce’s explicit comments on the nature of aesthetics are “permeated with anomalies and sometimes with bizarre assertions.” Despite this, his rendering of human cognition, ontology, and metaphysics is uniquely artistic in character and helps us recognize the motivating force that a theory of imaginative thinking can have in the doing of philosophy. This reading of Peirce also stands against accounts that attempt to enlist particular Peircean notions into the service of aesthetic theory...