On a New List of Categories
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~5,050 words · 24 passages
Cite this work
- APACharles Peirce. (n.d.). On a New List of Categories. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/charles-peirce/on-a-new-list-of-categories
- MLACharles Peirce. On a New List of Categories. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/charles-peirce/on-a-new-list-of-categories.
- ChicagoCharles Peirce. On a New List of Categories. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/charles-peirce/on-a-new-list-of-categories.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The 1867 paper in which Peirce, at twenty-seven, proposed to replace Kant's categories with three alone.
Context and history
Peirce is after the same thing as Aristotle and Kant — what are the basic ways in which anything is — but he gets there by way of the sign: by analysing what is needed to pass from a sense impression to a proposition. Three come out, which he would later call firstness, secondness and thirdness: quality alone, considered without anything further; reaction, the clash of two things; and mediation, the sign that relates two for a third. The rest of his work is in large part the application of this scheme to logic, to science and to metaphysics, and he always said himself that this was the text where everything began. It is dense, short and written for specialists; anyone who does not know Peirce would do well to begin with 'The Fixation of Belief' and come back to this afterwards.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
This is an imperfect view of the application which the conceptions which, according to our analysis, are the most fundamental ones find in the sphere of logic. It is believed, however, that it is sufficient to show that at least something may be usefully suggested by considering this science in this light. Notes 1. This agrees with the author of De Generibus et Speciebus, Ouvrages Inédits d'Abélard, p. 528. 2. Herbart says: “Unsre sämmtlichen Gedanken lassen sich von zwei Seiten betrachten; theils als Thätigkeiten unseres Geistes, theils in Hinsicht dessen, was durch sie gedacht wird. In letzterer Beziehung heissen sie Begriffe, welches Wort, indem es das Begriffene bezeichnet, zu abstrahiren gebietet von der Art und Weise, wie wir den Gedanken empfangen, produciren, oder reproduciren mögen.” But the whole difference between a concept and an external sign lies in these respects which logic ought, according to Herbart, to abstract from.