The Esthetic Attitude of Abduction

Two central ideas underwrite my discussion of an esthetic dimension in Charles Peirce’s descriptions of abductive reasoning. The first of these is the idea that, for Peirce, abduction is a form of self-controlled reasoning for which a reasoner may establish useful habits. The second is the idea that abduction involves a transaction among facts, ideas, and an inquirer. In being self-controlled, abduction is nevertheless not merely dominated in all respects by an individual, reasoning mind. Rather, the abductive reasoning is both an experimental and a semeiotic process in which a reasoner must deal with the otherness, or the secondness, of both facts and ideas. I begin, then, with a brief look at these two ideas before turning to a more direct examination of what I take to be the esthetic attitude that Peirce makes integral to abduction. I should also note at the outset that throughout the essay I will trade on the ambiguity of the term ‘esthetic’. I will appeal to its meaning of having to do with feeling as well as its meaning of having to do with the creation and observation of fine art. For Peirce, as we will see, the ambiguity is synthesized precisely because artists are those for whom feeling and perceiving are central.