The Legitimacy of Metaphysics: Kant's Legacy to Peirce, and Peirce's to Philosophy Today

Abstract

Part of Kant's legacy to Peirce was a lasting conviction that metaphysics can and should be set "on the secure path of a science." However, Peirce's understanding of "scientific metaphysics," unlike Kant's, uses the method of science, i.e., of experience and reasoning; but requires close attention to experience of the most familiar kind rather that recherché experience needed by the special sciences. This distinctively plausible reconstruction of what a genuinely scientific metaphysics would be is part of Peirce's legacy to philosophy today, enabling us to steer clear both of apriorism and scientism - the Scylla and Charybdis of recent metaphysics.

Keywords: Kant, Hume, Peirce, metaphysics, pragmatism,potivism, analytic/synthetic, phenomenology, categories, Synechism, agapism, objective idealism