Metafisica per assurdo: Peirce e i problemi del'epistemologia contemporanea (review)

The interest in Peirce grows as his architectonics open new paths in contemporary culture. Peirce, the "19th century thinker for the 21st century" is very much alive indeed. Maddalena's book forcefully shows how Peirce's thought clarifies the imbroglios of our present understanding. Metafisica per assurdo (metaphysics by contradiction) encompasses some very original approaches to Peirce studies, as ingeniously encoded in the title. Metaphysics enters the panorama through a scientific oriented discussion ("methodological metaphysical realism") that is based on two approaches: an investigation of the limits of analytic knowledge (with consequent openings to a via negativa understanding of the world and to a new synthetic paradigm), and a demonstration of how, with an eye toward Peirce's classification of the sciences, a new metaphysical perspective, based on mathematics, phenomenology, logic and semiotics, can emerge. Maddalena's refined method—thoroughly Peircean, consistently mediating between opposites, and always attuned to Peirce's "reasonableness" and the summum bonum (openness, continuous growth, evolving richness)—fits as a glove with his valiant enterprise.

The book is composed of an introduction, eight chapters, a conclusion, a helpful bio-bibliographical note on Peirce (pp. 15-20), a bibliography (pp. 237-247), and finally a name index (pp. 249-251). There is also a long preface by André De Tienne (pp. ix-xxv) that carefully outlines Maddalena's achievements. The Introduction (pp. 3-13) provides an overview of the volume, emphasizing three levels of reading (philological, methodological, and theoretical). Also shown is Peirce's peculiar mediation between thought and reality—through a dynamical/ structural web of signs, a continuous entanglement of pragmatic tools, a phenomenological apprehension of the Real, and a normative hierarchy in matters of creativity—that leads to a via negativa postulation of metaphysics, while considering alternative theses to Peirce's mediation which appear to produce insolvable contradictions.

Chapter One ("A Methodological Reading of Peirce", pp. 21-39) explains how Peirce's ideas force a complex reading of his system, necessarily involving mathematics, phenomenology, normative science, and metaphysics. In fact, a multiplicity of perspectives cannot be reduced to purely logical considerations. Complementing the limits and limitations of analytic knowledge, a fair understanding of the density of the world ("spessore") must be undertaken by exploring new paths in a via negativa that combines mathematics, logic and metaphysics. In Chapter Two ("The Genesis of Research: Signs and Reference", pp. 41-56) the focus is on Peirce's late semiotics, which is Maddalena's specialty. After a review of Peirce's considerations concerning proper names and surnames, Maddalena argues that phenomenology is needed for semiotics, and vice versa, since both a historical level of significance (semiotic evolution) and a foundational reference (phenomenological situation) are needed to explain linguistic phenomena.

Chapter Three (Birth of Hypothesis: Abduction Between Doubt and Certainty", pp. 57-78) introduces one of Maddalena's strongest claims in support of his Metafisica per assurdo. Maddalena presents a brilliant study of Peirce's discussion of musement in the "Neglected Argument" (1908), in which Maddalena emphasizes the central role of imagination and describes the limits of traditional knowledge with respect to the dyad singular/universal. After this he proposes to take seriously Peirce's "rational instinct" as the perfect mediator between a singular object and the general order of signs that surrounds it. Peirce's "rational instinct" is one that recognizes the interplay of singular/universal by an ethical/esthetical balance of the very signs involved. A fair understanding of abduction follows, where both rational and sensible (i.e. "reasonable" in the sense of Peirce and Vaz Ferreira) operations are needed in the natural selection of hypotheses. Chapter Four ("In the Heart of Reasoning: Evolution of Rational Instinct", pp. 79-96) further buttresses Maddalena's argument for the centrality of "rational instinct" within Peirce's architectonics. As always happens with Peirce's central concepts, the continuity of their development is unmistakable, something Maddalena shows carefully is true also for the idea of "rational instinct". Maddalena shows that Pascal...