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C.S. Peirce’s Pragmatism

Peirce’s Early Pragmatism

 

The earliest clear statement of Peirce’s pragmatism comes from his 1878 paper "How To Make Our Ideas Clear." In this paper, Peirce introduces a maxim, or principle, which allows us to achieve the highest grade of clarity about the concepts we use. Peirce introduces this principle, which we shall discuss in detail below as the third grade of clarity, as a development of the rationalist notion of "clear and distinct ideas." Combining his pragmatic maxim with notions of clarity from Descartes and Leibniz, Peirce identifies three grades of clarity or understanding.

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