{"id":7713,"date":"2015-09-04T10:30:09","date_gmt":"2015-09-04T15:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=7713"},"modified":"2015-09-07T11:01:37","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T16:01:37","slug":"peirces-long-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/09\/04\/peirces-long-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Peirce’s “long revolution”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2464\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As the world’s refugee crisis<\/a> builds — reminding us that much worse movements of people loom ahead, and much worse wars, as climate systems destabilize<\/a>\u00a0and the capitalist world-ecology<\/a> unravels in the decades and centuries ahead — I can’t help\u00a0asking myself what, if anything, philosophy can offer in response.<\/p>\n

It depends on which\u00a0philosophy, of course. But to take one of my favorites: C. S. Peirce’s whole philosophical work was an extended argument for an expanded understanding of reason. Reason, for Peirce, was rooted in human nature and in nature itself; it is a development of the very process of making meaning that is the essence of all living things (and, Peirce would say, all\u00a0things living or not).<\/p>\n

Reason\u00a0grows out of intuitive common sense — the hunches that Peirce labeled “abduction,” which supplement and ground the better\u00a0known processes of induction and deduction. As logical reasoning, it is rooted, furthermore, in aesthetics and ethics — the capacity to cultivate habits of perception and relation commensurate with the habits of reason that beckon to us through our efforts to know the universe. And reason develops through dialogue and increasingly refined communication into something that is shared across a community of reasoning beings.<\/p>\n

Peirce is not a Cartesian, however. He doesn’t believe in a division between mind and matter, soul and body, reason and passion. This brings him closer in spirit to those — Buddhists, Daoists and neo-Confucians, Sufis, process philosophers, Franciscans<\/a>, and\u00a0others — for whom reason is subordinate to\u00a0the heart, that organ of perception by which we feel the solidarity of those whose sentience (like ours) appears and disappears on a sea of interdependent relationality.<\/p>\n

The following quote is the kind of thing that gives me hope:<\/p>\n

“Inanimate things do not err at all; and the lower animals very little. Instinct is all but unerring; but reason in all vitally important matters is a treacherous guide. This tendency to error, when you put it under the microscope of reflection, is seen to consist of fortuitous variations of our actions in time. But it is apt to escape our attention that on such fortuitous variation our intellect is nourished and grows<\/em>. For without such fortuitous variation, habit-taking would be impossible; and intellect consists in a plasticity of habit.” [CP 6.86, italics added]<\/p>\n

In other words, reason alone is risky, and it’s often better\u00a0to go with our instinct. But it is because we can err that we can learn, and because learning is possible<\/em>, learning will ultimately occur, however long it may take.<\/p>\n

Raymond Williams referred to the faith\u00a0that things are moving, however chaotically (or at least dialectically) towards a better human future, as “the long revolution<\/a>.”\u00a0Williams was a socialist, and the optimism of his particular formulation may not ring as true today as it did to him half a century ago. I find interesting, however, that Williams\u00a0wasn’t just intending this as a description of change; he was also aiming to cultivate an\u00a0attitude toward that change:<\/p>\n

“In naming the great process of change the long revolution, I am trying to learn assent to it<\/em>, an adequate assent of mind and spirit. I find increasingly that the values and meanings I need are all in this process of change.”<\/p>\n

If, as my work is devoted to showing, and as Peirce, Whitehead, and many other ontologically minded philosophers have argued, the social and the natural are not opposed<\/em> to each other but are integrally, if complexly, intertwined, interdependent, and ultimately\u00a0inseparable, then there’s something beyond socialism<\/em> that would be a good description of this side of Peirce.<\/p>\n

A socialist in this understanding is a believer in the eventual triumph of an ever better, more just and more sustainable, social<\/em>\u00a0world. A\u00a0naturalist, by the same token, would be a believer in the eventual triumph of an ever more beautifully evolved natural<\/em>\u00a0world. (The Darwin\u00a0of The Origin of Species<\/em><\/a> is one of our better representatives of that view.)<\/p>\n

Peirce would instead be something like a cosmopolist<\/em>, a believer that the cosmos itself is evolving<\/a> toward something better. In that evolution, sociality and reason play important\u00a0roles — even increasing roles — but never in separation from nature.<\/p>\n

Such an\u00a0“even longer revolution”\u00a0may\u00a0take many deep, dark turns along the way. Contrary to what our human pride suggests, it may shed civilizations, even worlds (not to mention\u00a0species like ours), in the process. But Peirce seemed to believe that those, too, will be redeemed in the end — that, to paraphrase Mikhail Bakhtin, they, too, will have their homecoming festivals.<\/p>\n

That’s a leap of faith that I wouldn’t expect anyone to take without some\u00a0experience that conformed to or resonated with it. Certain forms of ethico-aesthetic practice aim to engender\u00a0such experience. (Mahayana Buddhist practices, for instance. Or Hadotian Stoicism<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

With his insistence that habits are to be cultivated, Peirce belongs to\u00a0the class of believers in the\u00a0practice of cosmopolism<\/em>\u00a0(or what William Connolly calls immanent naturalism<\/a>) — the cultivation of a better, more reasonable, more ethically\u00a0satisfying, and more beautiful\u00a0universe by the universe itself, including us. Just as ontological constructivism (of the sort that Whitehead, Stengers, Latour, and others speak about) is broader and more capacious than social constructionism, so this is more capacious than socialism.<\/p>\n

In the end, its vision is very much a social vision<\/a>, but it’s a sociality that is extended, deepened, and redefined by the deepest withdrawals of dark matter<\/a> we will ever find, or not. (I admit I’m going beyond Peirce here.) It’s a faith in what is unencompassable by faith itself. A realism that believes in a reality that trumps and outwits<\/a> all our ideas about it — believes in it not only intellectually, but emotionally and spiritually. Believes in its goodness. “Assents” to it “in mind and spirit,” as Williams would have it.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure how that bears on our capacity to respond to the refugee emergencies<\/a> that are and will be arising\u00a0all around us. The refugees are people, families with kids, from Syria, Iraq, Lybia, Somalia,\u00a0Bangladesh, and elsewhere. But they are also nonhumans, Gaia’s vast proletariat, whose own abodes are being demolished, destroyed, and abandoned in the wake of the building climate emergency.<\/p>\n

To deal with them adequately, we’ll need all the resources we can muster. One of those is the faith in responsiveness itself, agapistic<\/a> (or agapastic, as Peirce called\u00a0it) responsiveness. Because that’s what grows the universe into the new folds that are worth growing into.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the world’s refugee crisis builds — reminding us that much worse movements of people loom ahead, and much worse wars, as climate systems destabilize\u00a0and the capitalist world-ecology unravels in the decades and centuries ahead — I can’t help\u00a0asking myself what, if anything, philosophy can offer in response. It depends on which\u00a0philosophy, of course. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688615,691847],"tags":[123667,123652,269,468,123656,123658,16870,123654,123659,280,25162],"class_list":["post-7713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropo_scene","category-religion-spirituality","tag-anthropocene","tag-cosmopolism","tag-darwin","tag-ethics","tag-naturalism","tag-optimism","tag-peirce","tag-raymond-williams","tag-refugee-crisis","tag-socialism","tag-william-connolly"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-20p","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8747,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/05\/07\/wark-on-the-geopolitics-of-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":7713,"position":0},"title":"Wark on the geopolitics of the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 7, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"McKenzie Wark has written a very provocative piece on the geopolitics of the Anthropocene, or what he calls \"The Geopolitics of Hibernation.\" A quote:\u00a0 \"Resource wars are no new thing. They are a defining feature of the history of geopolitics. But perhaps the resource wars of the Anthropocene have some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8265,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/07\/21\/bandwagocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":7713,"position":1},"title":"Bandwagocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 21, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"These days, it takes a course release for an academic to keep up with the avalanche of books\u00a0being published with titles that feature the word \"Anthropocene.\" To read them would take a sabbatical. Doing anything approximating a \"slow read\" would require, well, retirement. But that's no reason not to try.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7208,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/01\/20\/anthropocene-readings\/","url_meta":{"origin":7713,"position":2},"title":"Anthropocene readings","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 20, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 I'm thinking of making my Spring semester graduate class, \"Environment, Science, and Society in the Anthropocene,\" into a semi-public seminar series, with a blog where we will share links to readings and videos as well as discussions. (Actual meetings will not be online, but will be open to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Clark","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/01\/Clark-183x275.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7942,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/12\/13\/anthropocene-multispecies-other-trends\/","url_meta":{"origin":7713,"position":3},"title":"Anthropocene, multispecies, & other trends","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 13, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Academic trend watchers will be interested to see how\u00a0the digital and the Anthropocene have catapulted to the top of hot topics at this year's American Anthropological Association conference.\u00a0(A few others are mentioned here\u00a0and here, Bruno Latour's keynote being one of them. Here's a collection of tweets on Latour's talk, most\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7993,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/01\/17\/anthropocenic-reckoning\/","url_meta":{"origin":7713,"position":4},"title":"Anthropocenic reckoning","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 17, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"With environmental and eco-political news in the front pages daily, it's easy to get back into the swing of regular, even daily, posting after the winter holiday lull. Here's more on the \"dating the ecocrisis\" theme... Andy Revkin is reporting that the Anthropocene Working Group has concluded that the middle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11838,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2021\/05\/18\/manthropocene-vs-the-pluriverse\/","url_meta":{"origin":7713,"position":5},"title":"(M)anthropocene vs. the pluriverse","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 18, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Those interested in the Anthropo(S)cene thread (technically, a \"category\") of this blog may be interested in the call for proposals for a special issue of Radical History Review on Alternatives to the Anthropocene. (Hat tip to Jeremy Schmidt at The Anthropo.Scene.) The call reads, in part: By \u201calternatives to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7713"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8384,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7713\/revisions\/8384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}