{"id":3042,"date":"2022-04-11T21:55:19","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T21:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gchristopherscruggs.com\/?p=3042"},"modified":"2022-04-11T21:55:19","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T21:55:19","slug":"pragmatism-4-agapism-and-political-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gchristopherscruggs.com\/?p=3042","title":{"rendered":"Pragmatism 4: Agapism and Political Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This week we take a final look at the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). Peirce\u2019s life was something of a tragedy. He was a prodigy, reading Kant as a youth, studying under his famous father, a professor of mathematics at Harvard, and acknowledged to be one of the greatest and broadest minds of his day. He divorced his first wife and lived with his second wife before marriage. He lacked social skills and good political instincts. As a result, he was exiled from the most prestigious academic posts in America. He made a bare living writing articles for journals, lecturing and teaching where he could. For a time, he worked as a practicing scientist for the United States Coastal and Geodetic Survey, which is where he developed his theories of verification and his dislike of a kind of speculative philosophy he regarded as untrue to how human beings actually think. In the end, his suffering produced a rare, lovely, and brilliant character.<\/p>\n

A Guess at the Riddle<\/strong><\/p>\n

If political life is to be essentially communal, and characterized by a communal search for a just social order, then some kind of unselfish, community-creating and community-sustaining ethic must be present. Peirce held that the evolution of the universe, and therefore of every society, involves a kind of love that expresses itself in a devotion to cherishing and tending to people or things other than oneself, as parent may do for offspring.<\/p>\n

During the period from 1891 to 1893 Peirce wrote a series of articles collectively known as \u201cA Guess at the Riddle.\u201d [1]<\/a> In these articles, Peirce sets out a system of understanding the world based on Chance, Necessity, and Love. This is to say that the process of evolution, which lies at the basis of much of his thought, involves, among other things, the response of the creature to the circumstances of existence, the orderly evolution by natural law, and the impact of love. Here is how Peirce describes these three modes of evolution:<\/p>\n

Three modes of evolution have thus been brought before us: evolution by fortuitous variation, evolution by mechanical necessity, and evolution by creative love. We may term them tychastic<\/em> evolution, or tychasm<\/em>,anancastic<\/em> evolution, or anancasm<\/em>, and agapastic<\/em> evolution, or agapasm<\/em>. The doctrines which represent these as severally of principal importance we may term tychasticism<\/em>, anancasticism<\/em>, and agapasticism<\/em>. On the other hand the mere propositions that absolute chance, mechanical necessity, and the law of love are severally operative in the cosmos may receive the names of tychism<\/em>, anancism<\/em>, and agapism<\/em><\/strong>. [2]<\/a><\/p>\n

The term \u201cAgapism\u201d is the term Peirce uses for that cherishing or self-giving, sacrificial love that is at work in creation and in all human endeavors.<\/p>\n

In Peirce\u2019s view, all order emerges from chaos or what we might call in today\u2019s quantum language, \u201cpure potentiality.\u201d This potentiality exists before the laws of nature and is the source and ground of whatever is. [3]<\/a> In \u201cA Guess at the Riddle,\u201d written in the late 19th<\/sup> Century, Peirce expounds a theory of creation that anticipates modern \u201cBig Bang\u201d cosmology, and in which he sets out his view that there is at work in creation an evolutionary principle that we can call love.<\/p>\n

As one author puts it<\/p>\n

\u201cEvolutionary Love\u201d is one of Peirce\u2019s most fascinating philosophical writings. It describes the existence of a cosmic principle of love throughout the universe creatively supporting the formation of new evolutionary forms. This love is a cherishing form of love, because it recognizes that which is lovely in another being and sympathetically supports its existence. Peirce calls his new theory\u00a0\u201cagapism,\u201d\u00a0and he contrasts it with evolutionary theories that are based on a selfish form of love; these preach \u201cthe Gospel of Greed.\u201d Peirce points out the occurrence of such selfish, greed-based thinking in the modern politico-economical structures, and in Darwin\u2019s biological principle of natural selection based on the competition of private interests. On the other hand, agapism promotes a devotion to helping one\u2019s neighbors, and is a true doctrine of Christian ethics.<\/strong> [4]<\/a><\/p>\n

This quotation by Nicholas Guardiano sets out the reason which Peirce\u2019s Agapism is important for this blog: Peirce is partially motivated by a desire to overcome a kind of excessive laisse faire capitalism prominent at the time by setting out his own, Christian view of the role of love in society. However, underlying this position is the notion that the universe itself is characterized not just by competition, but also by love.<\/p>\n

Agapism<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Peirce, the evolution of human society, like the evolution of the world, is characterized by chance, deterministic features, and love. In order to understand what Peirce is trying to say, it is important to understand what he means by the term \u201cAgapism.\u201d In his \u201cA Guess at the Riddle,\u201d Peirce defines this love as (i) an active bestowal of energy by the lover to the beloved, (ii) a cherishing of the beloved by the lover, (iii) and a positive sympathy on the part of the lover for the benefit of the beloved. [5]<\/a><\/p>\n

According to Peirce, Agapistic Love manifests itself in three specific ways:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Agapistic Love may affect a people or a community and its collective personality as an idea or experience is communicated to individuals who in sympathy with the common connection of the collective mind of the group.<\/li>\n
  2. Agapistic Love may affect an individual enabling that individual to apprehend an idea or appreciate the attractiveness of an idea due to an increase in sympathy with his community under the influence of a striking experience or development of thought.<\/li>\n
  3. Agapistic Love may impact and individual independently of a human affection by virtue of an attraction exercise directly upon the mind prior to comprehension. [6]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As examples of the three kinds of experience of which Peirce is speaking, consider the appearance of Christ to his disciples after the crucifixion. This was a striking appearance to a group in sympathy with one another such that the group as a whole was enlightened and changed. Secondly, and an example Peirce uses, consider the experience of Paul on the Road to Damascus, a striking event that brought Paul into sympathy with the Christian movement. Peirce calls the third kind of example, \u201cthe divination of genius\u201d by which a single individual is struck by an idea that immediately attracts the individual. Perhaps the famous incident of an apple falling at Isaac Newton\u2019s feet, which gave him the immediate notion of gravity is an example.<\/p>\n

    From the perspective of political thought, all three characteristics of agapistic love are important. First, there are incidental moments of genius by which political thought is moved forward. This might for example, be seen in some of the great philosophers this blog has studied. Second, there are times in which an individual who is not in sympathy with a society or political system is struck by some virtue in that system and immediately grasps its importance. This might be seen in, for example, some of those who were in favor of communism but whose faith in freedom was kindled by contact with democracies. Finally, there are times when an idea impacts an entire society, as perhaps when the ideals of the Enlightenment impacted the American nation leading to the American revolution and national freedom.<\/p>\n

    Agapism and Politics and Morals<\/strong><\/p>\n

    It is important to note that Peirce believes that Agapism is central to the evolution of the universe and human society, and the other features of evolutionary growth, chance and necessity, are derived from this primordial love. In other words, love is a central characteristic for the creation of the world and of human societies. It is not an \u201cadd on\u201d or a psychological reaction of certain individuals to harmonies in the world or society. It is a feature of reality itself. In another context I have called the kind of love to which Peirce is referring, \u201cDeep Love\u201d or \u201cDeep Relationality.\u201d [7]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Peirce begins his analysis of agapism with with quotations from the letters of John in which he says that \u201cGod is love\u201d (I John 4:8,16). He then proceeds to a discussion of the nature of that kind of love we see reflected in the life of Christ and to which John refers, as well as critiquing John\u2019s supposed deviations from the pure gospel of love. After introducing this theme, Peirce proceeds to a discussion of the nature of that kind of love we see reflected in the life of Christ. He then begins to discuss its application to evolutionarily theory. \u00a0What is important in Peirce\u2019s approach is that he gives an ontological basis for morality and politics: It is built into the nature of creation.<\/p>\n

    I, however, would like to approach agapism from a different point of view. Peirce wrote before modern relativity and quantum theory and before the abundant proofs in science that relationality is built into the universe. Beginning with Einstein\u2019s insights, the notion of the world as built upon independent unites of matter related only by forces acting upon them was undermined. Time and Space are relational phenomena. According to the best science available, particles are waves or \u201cexcitements\u201d in a universal field that permeates the universe. Both the quantum phenomenon of \u201cEntanglement\u201d and Chaos theory point towards a relationality of creation embedded in the universe, whatever one\u2019s theory of creation may be. [8]<\/a> The physicist Argyris Nicolaidis puts it this way:<\/p>\n

    In conclusion, a mode of thinking has been reached where the primacy focuses on an \u201cinteractive being,\u201d a being constant in relation to the other and being in continuous ex-stasis<\/em> to reach the other.\u00a0 This relational mode of existence, which has been associated with creative growth, novelty, and free development is qualified as agape. Agape then is something more than an emotional state or sentimental experience it is a very principle of existence\u2026.<\/strong> [9]<\/a><\/p>\n

    In defending an agapistic ethic, I would move from the phenomena of relationality within the creative order, a kind of Deep Relationality, to the emergence of the various kinds of love best captured from their Greek forms as a part of the process of the gradual evolution of the human race and human society:<\/p>\n