For If I Should Die, I Could not Make the Account Square

Before taking up in this chapter what I call Stanley Cavell’s “transcendentalist strain” of pragmatism, a note about spatio-temporal sequencing is in order. While the chapter concerning Charles Sanders Peirce precedes that given to John Dewey, I composed the latter before the former, and on coming to its end, found myself wanting to write the chapters on Peirce and Cavell at the same time, so clearly had Dewey’s singular mediate significance in relation to both – rather like a hinge – in the story of the story of pragmatism shown itself. In the case of Peirce, it was my realizing how profoundly Dewey had internalized his teacher’s project for a new tripartite logic of naturalism – though unlike his teacher, he could not implement, but only describe this logic in the ordering of his prose. (Interestingly, in view of what will be considered in discussing Cavell, Peirce’s aspiration was, like William James’s and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s – one of Cavell’s heroes – to counter the impulse of philosophers “to sublime the logic of our language.” This notion will be developed as the chapter unfolds.) Reversing my temporal order of composition, to have the Dewey chapter follow immediately that on Peirce, has, I trust, made their affiliation clear.