Content area
Full Text
Mateusz Wsz. Oleksy Realism and Individualism. Charles S. Peirce and the Threat of Modern Nominalism Lodz: Lodz University Press, 2008. 360 pp. with index
In this ambitious study of the development of Charles Peirce's realism, Mateusz Oleksy attempts "to show that over the course of his entire career Peirce significantly modified his position on realism" (21). Oleksy differentiates between Peirce's earlier scholastic realism (SR) and Peirce's mature realism, which Oleksy calls pragmatic realism (PR). "One of the main theses of this book," he proclaims in the introduction, "is that PR is incompatible with SR as a whole, and that it replaces the latter in Peirce's mature thought" (7). Oleksy proposes to defend this thesis in the four ensuing chapters, "knowing very well that Peirce would most likely protest, since all throughout his career he declared loyalty to SR" (7).
Chapter One begins with a concise overview of Scotus' solution to the problem of universals as developed in his theory of objectively real common natures. Oleksy correctly identifies the semiotic and epistemological dimensions of Scotus' realism as the inspiration for Peirce's SR and acknowledges Peirce's eventual rejection of Scotus' theory of contraction as too nominalistic because of its emphasis on the mode of individuality and its ultimate unknowability. Oleksy then begins the discussion of Peirce's "anti-individualism," which, after a short summary of Ockham's logic and its effect on Peirce, paves the way for the next chapter.
Chapter Two is devoted to an examination of Peirce's crusade against what he called "modern nominalism" (MN, per Oleksy) and the different themes that Peirce brought under that label. Peirce's MN is appropriately recognized by Oleksy as a "comprehensive system of ideas," encompassing not just metaphysics but also semantics, logic, epistemology, methodology, psychology, social thought, and anthropology. Oleksy deftly traces, "without engaging in a fine-grained historical study," the roots of MN in scholasticism and in Descartes, and MN's subsequent manisfestations in British empiricism, as well as in the philosophies of Kant, Hegel, James, and Dewey (90).
Chapter Three expands on Oleksy's claim that PR should be considered Peirce's "final stand on realism", and not the SR of Peirce's 1871 review of Fraser's The Works of George Berkeley (the Berkeley review), as Oleksy alleges is commonly believed, since PR resulted...