Peirce and Plato on “The Fixation of Belief”

This paper advances two claims that run against the grain of recent scholarship on the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce. First, it argues that Peirce’s “The Fixation of Belief” is not to be understood exclusively in terms of its epistemic import but provides key insights into how moral ideals might be fixed in an ethical theory constructed along pragmatic lines. This argument stands in contrast to the prevailing sense that Peirce—as opposed to the majority of figures in the American philosophical canon—had precious little to contribute to a discussion of ethics. Second, it suggests that the ethical import of “The Fixation of Belief” can be seen by way of a comparison between Peirce’s essay and the Euthyphro, in which Plato asks a similar question concerning the justification of ethico-religious belief.