Charles Sanders Peirce (Enlarged Edition), Revised and Enlarged Edition A Life [Paperback]

[Brent] has produced a thoughtful, sometimes moving, and entirely accessible intellectual biography which is also, under the circumstances, indispensable. The New York Review of Books

... a fine biography. The New York Times Book Review

... an extraordinary, inspiring portrait of the largely forgotten Peirce, a progenitor of modern thought who devised a realist metaphysics and attempted to achieve direct knowledge of God by applying the logic of science. Publishers Weekly

In this expanded paperback edition of the critically acclaimed biography of a true American original, the philosopher-polymath Charles Sanders Peirce, Joseph Brent refines his interpretation of Peirces thought and character based on new research, and has added a glossary and a detailed chronology.

This title has been reviewed jointly with The essential Peirce: selected philosophical writings. v.1: 186[P]eirce himself displayed both logical brilliance and serious moral weaknesses, as Brent's narrative so vividly illustrates. This is one of the central, tragic paradoxes of Peirce's life and thought, and Joseph Brent has done a superb job of exposing and exploring it.15.3 Sept. 1994Peirce (1839, 1914) is America's most creative, dominant, and original philosopher. Yet the first book-length biography of the founder of pragmatism was not published until 75 years after his death: Elisabeth Walther's Charles Sanders Peirce: Leben und Werk (BadenBaden, 1989). Now we have the first American biography, and a superb book it is. The 35 years Brent expended in making this biography have seasoned and enriched his definitive production. (The telling of Peirce's story, like his life, has been fraught with malversation. Some day the story of telling his story will be told.) Here, the facts of Peirce's life are integrated into the systematization that he hoped would for a long time to come [influence] the entire work of human reason. From fields as diverse and powerful as semiotics, mlc&