Royce and Peirce—Two Models of a personal Divine?

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) and Josiah Royce (1855–1916) have both developed a metaphyical semiotics at the center of their versions of philosophical pragmatism. Thereby, they also tried to reconsider the question of a "personal God", but not in the line of classical theism. This article compares Peirce´s and Royce´s model of a personal divine under several aspects: their dealing with questions of cosmology, of social philosophy, and especially in their dealing with the problem of evil. Whereas Peirce is arguing for kind of "aesthetic theism", Royce mostly comes close to an ethical model of theism in which the "universal community of mankind" is both, saved and reconciled in the "community of interpretation".