The Politics of Survival: Peirce, Affectivity, and Social Criticism

Lara Trout

Open Access Published by Fordham University Press 2019

The Politics of Survival

Peirce, Affectivity, and Social Criticism

Lara Trout

In the series American Philosophy

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823285280

Overview
Contents

About this book

How can sincere, well-meaning people unintentionally perpetuate discrimination based on race, sex, sexuality, or other socio-political factors? To address this question, Lara Trout engages a neglected dimension of Charles S. Peirce's philosophy - human embodiment - in order to highlight the compatibility between Peirce's ideas and contemporary work in social criticism. This compatibility, which has been neglected in both Peircean and social criticism scholarship, emerges when the body is fore-grounded among the affective dimensions of Peirce's philosophy (including feeling, emotion, belief, doubt, instinct, and habit). Trout explains unintentional discrimination by situating Peircean affectivity within a post-Darwinian context, using the work of contemporary neuroscientist Antonio Damasio to facilitate this contextual move. Since children are vulnerable, naïve, and dependent upon their caretakers for survival, they must trust their caretaker's testimony about reality. This dependency, coupled with societal norms that reinforce historically dominant perspectives (such as being heterosexual, male, middle-class, and/or white), fosters the internalization of discriminatory habits that function non-consciously in adulthood.

The Politics of Survival brings Peirce and social criticism into conversation. On the one hand, Peircean cognition, epistemology, phenomenology, and metaphysics dovetail with social critical insights into the inter-relationships among body and mind, emotion and reason, self and society. Moreover, Peirce's epistemological ideal of an infinitely inclusive community of inquiry into knowledge and reality implies a repudiation of exclusionary prejudice. On the other hand, work in feminism and race theory illustrates how the application of Peirce's infinitely inclusive communal ideal can be undermined by non-conscious habits of exclusion internalized in childhood by members belonging to historically dominant groups, such as the economically privileged, heterosexuals, men, and whites. Trout offers a Peircean response to this application problem that both acknowledges the "blind spots" of non-conscious discrimination and recommends a communally situated network of remedies including agapic love, critical common-sensism, scientific method, and self-control.

Author / Editor information

Trout Lara :

Lara Trout is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Portland.Lara Trout is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Portland.

Reviews

—Mitchell Aboulafia:
The Politics of Survival provides a lucid, compelling, and exceptionally accessible account of the relevance of Peirce and pragmatism to contemporary discussions of social justice. Trout demonstrates how Peirce's philosophy rises above his personal prejudices to provide a unique set of tools for analyzing and criticizing the nonconscious biases of those who believe that they are free from prejudice. The Politics of Survival is unmatched in the manner in which it makes Peirce and pragmatism relevant to recent literature on racism and sexism.

Examines what is termed a neglected element of embodiment in the philosophy of Charles Sanders Pierce.

—Roger Ward:
This is a brave book balancing strong scholarship, clear organization, and a provocative reading of Peirce.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction Open Access Download PDF	1
1 Peircean Affectivity Open Access Download PDF	25
2 The Affectivity of Cognition: Journal of Speculative Philosophy Cognition Series, 1868–69 Open Access Download PDF	69
3 The Affectivity of Inquiry: Popular Science Monthly Illustrations of the Logic of Science Series, 1877–78 Open Access Download PDF	128
4 The Law of Mind, Association, and Sympathy: Monist ‘‘Cosmology Series’’ and Association Writings, 1890s Open Access Download PDF	174
5 Critical Common-sensism, 1900s Open Access Download PDF	229
Conclusion Open Access Download PDF	273
Notes Open Access Download PDF	285
Works Cited Open Access Download PDF	339
Index Open Access Download PDF	351

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Pages
- Main content: 304

eBook

Published: January 29, 2019
ISBN: 9780823285280