187

p Peirce’s aesthetics, like all his philosophy in general, has an explicitly idealistic character, and is just as inwardly contradictory as his philosophy.  [187•1  Two main contradictions can be 188 identified. The first consists in the following: when he formulates his views of scientific importance Peirce sometimes adopts the positions of spontaneous materialism, incompatible with his conscious adherence to the idealistic “faith”. The second contradiction characterizes his idealistic position itself.

p In Peirce’s aesthetics, as in his philosophy, his commentators note such contradictory (in a single channel of idealism) tendencies as the subjective-idealistic doctrine of pragmatism and objective-idealistic metaphysics (Melvil), the positivist tendency, which can be traced through Mill and Bain to Hume and Berkeley, and the objective-idealistic tendency inherited from German classical idealism (Bogomolov), naturalism and transcendentalism (Goudge, Thompson), empiricism and metaphysics (Nagel), rationalism and irrationalism (Feibleman) etc. We will not concern ourselves here with the reasons for this contradictoriness, which would take us too far away from our subject. His spontaneous materialism is clearly due to scientific tendencies in Peirce’s views, while his hostility to materialism is in many respects connected with the impossibility of reconciling this philosophy to religion, and also with false view of materialism as a vulgar and mechanistic philosophy.

p The contradictory character of Peirce’s idealism is attributable to the conflicting sources of his philosophy. Above all we should mention Kant, who greatly influenced both Peirce’s semiotics and pragmatism,  [188•1  and particularly his ethics and aesthetics. But, in Kant’s subjective-idealistic philosophy, and in particular his ethics and aesthetics, the concept of the supra-sensual world served as the point of departure in the development of the philosophy of German objective idealism. The objective-idealistic current in Peirce’s philosophy was reinforced by the influence of Hegel, Plato and “scholastic realism".

p The contradictory and confused nature of Peirce’s views in aesthetics are additionally compounded by his lack of 189 confidence. Despite the fact that throughout his creative life (we know that at the early age of 16 he read Schiller’s Letters on Aesthetic Education, which greatly influenced the young thinker) aesthetics remained within the range of his interests, particularly in his last years, Peirce, by his own admission, remained “lamentably ignorant" (1, 2. 120), a “perfect ignoramus" (1, 5. Ill) and did not feel himself entitled “to have any confident opinions about it" (1, 5. 129).  [189•1 

p Soviet scholars (Yuri Melvil, Lazar Reznikov) note that a spontaneous materialist tendency can be observed in Peirce’s interpretation of semiotics. Peirce, argues Melvil, “proceeds in his interpretation of the iconic sign and its function virtually from the materialist principle of reflection, although he does not explicitly recognize it and does not keep to it consistently" (14, 187-88). But the icon, according to Peirce, lies at the basis of art. This substantiates the view that Peirce’s semiotic theory of art implicitly contains materialist tendencies. We should not, however, go to the opposite extreme and see Peirce as consistent materialist. His materialism, as Mikhail Kissel and Maria Kozlova correctly note, was no more than “realism”, serving as a link between pragmatic methodology and objective-idealist cosmology (11, 158).

p The primary epistemological interpretation of semiotics is also connected with the interpretation of the semantic aspect of signs, with their “signification”. The problem of signification and meaning is a stumbling block for semantic philosophy and semantic aesthetics, and is in general one of the most serious philosophical problems. In Peirce’s writings we encounter the same varieties of the idealistic approach to this problem which we will observe when we trace the development of semantic aesthetics. Until about 1902 Peirce’s semiotics took form independently from his pragmatism. In the triadic sign relationship of sign, object and interpretant there was no place for a special fourth member-“signification”, which occupies the central place in pragmatism. This can be 190 attributed to the fact that Peirce here digresses away from the communication process, and therefore from the “fourth member" of the sign situation-the addressee of the sign. In this case “signification” can only be one of the members of the triad. Most often Peirce ties “signification” with the interpretant (1, 8. 179, 184). We may note that in this period the “interpretant” is primarily interpreted in its logical aspect as thought, concept, which contain signs. “By a sign,” writes Peirce, “I mean anything which conveys any definite notion of an object in any way. ... In particular, all signs convey notions to human minds" (1,1. 540). In attempting to evade the infelicities of the vulgar object treatment of meaning, Peirce does not include the outer object (“dynamic object”) in the sign relationship, and at the same time identifies various forms of the connection between the sign and the real object. When he discusses the sign process-the chain of sign triads (triad being a sign relationship)-he is anxious to emphasise the function of the sign in the system of language, in its interconnection with other signs, thereby avoiding the atomistic and strictly denotational approach to language. In the first and the second cases he omits from consideration the mechanism of representation of reality in the sign process, or in the process of reflection, which creates the “philosophical threat of phenomenalism" (11, 159). What was a “threat” for Peirce becomes a fact in subsequent idealistic interpretations of semiotics.

p It is clear that on the basis of the phenomenological interpretation of semiotics the semiotic theory of art can also only be interpreted in the idealistic spirit as a closed system of signs which do not reflect or give cognition of objective reality. We find precisely this interpretation of the semiotic theories of art in the writings of a number of subsequent semanticists, who can quite justifiably be described as Peirce’s heirs.

p Peirce realized that the analysis of the actual communication process presupposes the inclusion of a fourth member connected with the interpreter. The sign “is a vehicle conveying into the mind something from without. That for which it stands is called its object; that which it conveys, its 191 meaning; and the idea to which it gives rise, its interpretant" (1, 1. 339). This approach made it possible to draw a distinction between “meaning” as an objective element of communication and the interpretant, which would now be understood in another “second” sense as the interpretation of “meaning” by the subject. But Peirce took a different course, prompted by his attempts (particularly in his last years) to bring semiotics into agreement with the pragmatic interpretation of meaning, which constitutes the essence of the pragmatic theory. The pragmatic interpretation of meaning, which receives its fullest expression in the famous “Peirce’s principle”, redirected attention from what was being communicated to the interpretant in the second sense. We have already mentioned Peirce’s extensive interpretation of the “interpretant” as the “significate effect" (1, 8. 332) of the influence of the sign in the form of thought, feeling and action (which corresponds to the logical, emotional and energetic interpretants). It is precisely in this version that the interpretant is now declared to be the “meaning of the sign”. The effect produced by the sign must have a general character and proceed in accordance with a general rule. Peirce sees the essence of the interpretant, and, therefore, of the “meaning” of the sign in habitintellectual, emotional and behavioural habit.

p The fact that Peirce directed attention to the nature of the effect of the sign on the interpreter (i.e. to its pragmatic aspect) was an important and valuable factor in his semiotics. In particular his isolation and characterization of the emotional interpretant made possible a more accurate examination of the semantic processes in art. It was not of fundamental significance that the term “meaning” had now been shifted to designate the “interpretant” in its second sense, i.e. to designate the habitual reaction of the interpreter to the sign. What was important was the loss of “meaning” in the sense of an ideal reflection of objective reality-a process, on the basis of which signs can evoke “significate effects”. The “meaning” of a sign was reduced to custom and habit. Thus, “in his endeavour to introduce to semiotics the pragmatic theory of meaning and to adapt the theory of signs to the subjectivist doctrine of pragmatism Peirce moved away from 192 objective scientific research and advanced the agnostic and behaviouristic conception of custom or habit in action as the apparently definitive and true meaning of the sign" (14, 245). This conception was seized upon by bourgeois philosophers of the most diverse schools, but its most thorough development it received in the behaviourist semiotics of Charles Morris.

p If we fail to take account of the reflective aspect of the meaning of signs it is impossible to achieve an accurate interpretation of the facts of art. The interpretant, including that of the emotional variety, is an aesthetic reaction, combined with all the accidental processes which this reaction provokes in the individual mind. Peirce notes that the interpretant, understood as the meaning of the sign, is characterized by vagueness.  [192•1  In general, notes the philosopher, “no communication of one person to another can be entirely definite, i.e., non-vague" (1, 5. 506). And the more “vague” the emotional interpretant appears. “I know no facts,” writes Peirce, “which prove that there is never the least vagueness in the immediate sensation" (1, 3. 93). Thus, the pragmatic interpretation of the “meaning” of a work of art as an emotional interpretant only takes into account the subjective aspect of the “meaning” of the work of art. As for the objective aspect, which has to do with an analysis of the content and the structure of the work with their reflection of reality, this is ignored by the pragmatic interpretation of “meaning”. The reduction of the “meaning” of a work of art to an interpretant characterized by “vagueness”, served as the point of departure for the fundamental argument of pragmatic aesthetics (Dewey, Morris)-a position, which leads to agnosticism, the theory of absolute indeterminateness and the relativity of “meaning” in works of art.

p Peirce’s interpretation of the ideal as the habit of feeling is also narrow. It is impossible on the basis of this interpretation to reveal all the depth of the concept of the “aesthetic 193 ideal”, its socio-psychological, class nature, the entire complex mechanism of its regulating effect on art as a whole. Peirce’s interpretation of the “ideal” as habit only touches on the psychological side of the mechanism of the functioning of the ideal, and not its epistemological and social essence. The latter can only be revealed by turning to the reflection of reality in the artist’s consciousness.

p Without taking into account the process of reflection it is similarly impofsible to explain the effect of art on the behaviour of people. We are forced to admit that Peirce did not himself interpret art in terms of “behaviour”, “habit” and “custom”. But his semiotics contain all the premises for such an interpretation, and these were developed in the semiotic theory of art advanced by Charles Morris.

p Let us now examine Peirce’s general aesthetic views. Of decisive importance for these was his interpretation of “ quality"—the first category of his phenomenology. Depending on how we understand this concept we will also be able to explain artistic representation, aesthetic quality and aesthetic feeling.

p “Quality” is the first category in Peirce’s phenomenologythe section of his philosophy which studies the different types of phenomena. By phenomenon he means “whatever is present at any time to the mind in any way" (1, 1. 186). Quality as a phenomenon of the consciousness is actualized, realized quality. Until it is actualized it exists as “possibility” (1, 1. 25), “abstract potentiality" (1, 1. 422). “The mode of being a redness, before anything in the universe was yet red, was nevertheless a positive qualitative possibility" (1, 1. 25). This argument applies fully to aesthetic qualities too. The world of aesthetic qualities or values is the world of eternal objects, outside time and space. Many commentators correctly note the kinship cf these ideas with Platonism. We should only stress that the objective-idealistic tendencies of Kantian philosophy are directly developed in this. Peirce “anticipated” in his phenomenology the ideas of the neo-Kantians, who developed the tendencies noted above into the theory of the transcendental kingdom of values.

p Much common ground can be traced in the phenomenology 194 of Peirce and Husserl (although it would be wrong to talk here of mutual influence). According to Peirce, aesthetic quality (or beauty), understood as potential, exists neither in the mind nor in objects, but in a special world of phenomenological essences. This phenomenological understanding of aesthetic quality applies closely to the characteristics of icon. By definition, an icon represents an object thanks to a quality which it itself possesses and which is similar to a quality of the object. Therefore icons belong to the “first” category in Peirce’s classification of signs. We have already stated that the term “icon” in Peirce’s exact use of the word refers to the ideal side of representation. Moreover, when quality is understood as possibility, an icon does not exist in the mind. We have already quoted Peirce’s statement about the perception of painting, in which he stresses that when we contemplate an icon proper we contemplate an essence which is neither a “partial” (i.e. material) existence, nor a universal (i.e. existing in the mind) (1,3.362).

p Aesthetic quality, understood as being in possibility, exists outside and independently of the mind of man. Western commentators (N. Bosco, T. Schulz, M. Hocutt et al.) conclude on the basis of this that in Peirce’s interpretation aesthetic quality has an objective character. We should only bear in mind that this “objectivity” is interpreted by Peirce in the spirit of objective idealism. Moreover, Peirce’s works also contain statements which give grounds for viewing his theories as subjective-idealist, as we shall be elaborating below.

p Unrealised quality as being in possibility characterizes the metaphysical aspect of quality. In its psychological aspect quality is already actualized and constitutes a mere quality of direct consciousness (1,1. 707). Aesthetic quality is revealed in the mind as “the quality of the emotion upon contemplating a fine mathematical demonstration" (1, 1. 304) or as the quality of “universal” feeling which is evoked by the tragedy of King Lear (1, 1. 531). Thus, aesthetic quality becomes the quality of feeling and acquires a subjective character.  [194•1  It 195 seems as though Peirce distinguishes an aesthetic quality, which exists objectively (in the sense of objective idealism) and the quality of aesthetic feeling as the “subjective correlate" of this aesthetic quality. In actual fact the situation is slightly different. When Peirce talks of “firstness” as the “quality of feeling" he never makes a distinction between the felt quality and the quality of feeling. Peirce shares the monist interpretation of phenomena, which can be found in Ernst Mach and in the radical empiricism of William James in his later period. Aesthetic feeling is compared to such “secondary qualities" as “blue”, “hard”, “sweet”, it acquires an ontological status and is placed beyond the limits of the human mind. That there should be no doubt on this score we can quote Peirce himself: “I prefer to guess that it is a psychic feeling of red without us which arouses a sympathetic feeling of red in our senses" (1, 1. 311). Aesthetic feeling outside mansuch is the paradoxical conclusion of Peirce’s “objectivism”, a conclusion that inevitably proceeds from his idealistic, positivist (in the spirit of Mach) understanding of quality. “ Quality" for Peirce embraces both aesthetic quality and aesthetic feeling in an indivisible union.

We noted above that according to Peirce aesthetic quality has a logical and mathematical basis. It can be understood, it is rational, generalized and has structure. These characteristics were connected with that stage in Peirce’s interpretation of the nature of the first category when he rejected the spontaneity of quality and viewed it as “an element of cognition”. In his subsequent phenomenology Peirce started to lay emphasis on the spontaneity of quality, arguing that quality ( interpreted in particular as aesthetic quality and aesthetic sensation) is “not intelligible”, one can feel it, but to comprehend it or express it in a general formula is out of the question (1, 5. 49). It is “spontaneous, free, vivid, conscious, and evanescent. . . Every description of it must be false to it" (1, 1. 357). In aesthetic experience an increasingly greater role is now being accorded to instinct, which is acquiring exceptional significance for the explanation of aesthetic behaviour. This position of Peirce’s can be described as anti-intellectual, irrationalist, and extremely close to intuitivism with its rejection of 196 the possibility of cognizing beauty. It can be said of Peirce that he made the first decisive step from intellectualism to antiintellectualism in modern American thought (P. Crosser).

p In addition to his interpretation of the first category, Peirce’s “third category" is of grate significance for an understanding of his aesthetics. In contrast to the “first”, which regards “quality” as possibility, and the “second”, which expresses the idea of individual existence, of the fact, the third category acts as a link between the first two, as “Medium, between a Second and its First" (1, 5. 66) and expresses the idea of a law, of regularity and universality. Whereas Peirce views aesthetic quality, or beauty, within his “first” category, into the “third” he introduces the concept of the aesthetic ideal, interpreted as summum bonum. The aesthetic ideal, in correspondence with the characteristic features of the “third” category, expresses the idea of “regularity” (we might remind ourselves here of his psychological definition of the aesthetic ideal as the “habit of feeling”), and is characterized by universality (1,1. 613). As for its function as a “medium”, we should perhaps discuss that in greater detail.

p Pleasure could form the link between aesthetic quality as an abstract possibility and the individual phenomenon in which this quality is realised. But Peirce rejected hedonism, which regards sensual pleasure as the ultimate goal of aesthetic experience. Yet, as M. G. Murphey correctly notes, once he had rejected hedonism Peirce had to find another regulator, another “medium” between quality and individual existence (15, 353). This link he eventually found in the concept of the norm, of the aesthetic standard, or ideal. The task of the aesthetic ideal is to realise and embody the quality of feeling (1, 5. 129). But why, we might ask, should the aesthetic ideal perform the function of a “medium”? Because it acts as an ultimate goal, the summum bonum of all human activity. Aesthetics, however, which embraces the field of the ideal (1, 1. 197, 574) is viewed as an analysis of the sort that is not exclusively connected with the interpretation and evaluation of the nature of such forms of art as painting, sculpture, music etc. Aesthetics is a science of goals, and the business of 197 the aesthetician “is to say what is the state of things which is most admirable in itself" (1,1. 611).

p What then is the ultimate goal, the summum bonum for Peirce? We have already seen that Peirce rejects hedonism. Neither can we, in his opinion, identify the ideal with any particular state of society, for these are transient. The summum bonum should be in harmony with the infinite community in its development (1, 2. 655). This is “rationalization of the universe”, “law of nature" (1, 1. 590), “Reason itself comprehended in all its fullness" (1, 1. 615).

p Peirce’s views have much in common with the conception of cosmic teleology (whose essence is that the universe is pursuing a global goal), which combines objective idealism with elements of naturalism (the true goal is close to a “law of nature”). If, however, we are to take into account the “scandalous”, in Melvil’s expression, conclusion reached by Peirce as a result of his many years of study that “the laws of nature are ideas or resolutions in the mind of some vast consciousness, who ... is a Deity relatively to us" (1, 5. 107), it will become clear that Peirce was approaching a divine conception of the ideal.

p Making use of the concept of the summum bonum, or the aesthetic ideal, Peirce tried to substantiate the normative character of aesthetics. Aesthetics was included along with ethics and logic in the normative sciences (which together with phenomenology and metaphysics form philosophy), concerned with the study of what should be, or in other words, ideals. Aesthetics lies at the basis of ethics, and ethics at the basis of logic. Thus aesthetics forms the foundation stone of the entire edifice of the normative sciences. He accords this place to aesthetics because it studies the ultimate goal of all activity-the summum bonum, or the aesthetic ideal.

p In the literature on Peirce we encounter attempts to explain his theory of the aesthetic ideal and aesthetics as a normative science, proceeding from the demands of Peirce’s pragmatism (12, 90-92). The connection between Peirce’s aesthetics and pragmatism is indisputable, but both the aesthetics and the actual pragmatism of the American philosopher have their theoretical roots in Kantianism. His normative approach to 198 philosophy comes from Kant. Kant subordinated the idea of supreme virtue to a moral law, a categorical imperative. And although Kant himself distinguished between aesthetic and ethical ideals, his idea of the categorical imperative as a moral duty, the only supreme law controlling human activity, provided the basis for his followers’ (e.g. Fichte) diffusion of the aesthetic ideal in the ethical. Peirce’s summum bonum or aesthetic ideal is extremely close to a moral ideal, or, to be more precise, to Kant’s categorical imperative. “Kant’s categorical imperative,” writes Feibleman, “set up an aesthetic ideal for the guidance of moral action, and Peirce was of the opinion that it could be defended" (7, 390). Like the categorical imperative the aesthetic ideal, as the ultimate aim both of aesthetic and ethical behaviour, is an ultimate end, an end in itself, irrelevant to all other goals. Just as Kant approximated the imperative of duty to a universal law of nature, Peirce naturalistically views the aesthetic ideal (summum bonum) as something like a natural law. Just as Kant’s imperative is something obligatory, so is Peirce’s ideal supposed to be the sort of goal which must be energetically pursued, and if this goal is ignored it is not an ideal (1, 5. 133). Thus, Peirce’s aesthetic ideal contains nothing properly aesthetic, and we can observe something comparable to Fichte’s tendency to diffuse the aesthetic in the ethical.

These are some basic aspects of the philosophical interpretation of Peirce’s semiotics and their application to the explanation of art. Briefly, this interpretation can be reduced to the following views: the phenomenological and pragmatic tendency in the explanation of the “meaning” of the signs of art, which admits the possibility of behaviourist conceptions; the objective-idealist, phenomenological theory of aesthetic value alongside the Machian interpretation of “aesthetic quality”, the view of aesthetics as a normative science in the spirit of Kantian philosophy.

p Peirce’s semiotics itself, and also the ideas it contained which made possible the construction of a semiotic theory of 199 art, exercised an enormous influence on the development of the semiotic theory of art (21; 22). Richards and Ogden were the first, after Peirce’s death, to draw attention to his work in semiotics, and in the supplement of their The Meaning of Meaning they included a resume of Peirce’s view on semiotics. They assessed Peirce’s semiotics as the most relevant attempt at an explanation of signs and their meanings. Peirce’s ideas are distinctly evident in the subsequent work of Richards in the field of aesthetics. Peirce was a primary influence on Charles Morris, the systematizer of semiotics and a prominent representative of semantic aesthetics. Morris wrote that Peirce’s work in the field of semiotics was a stimulating source and had no equals throughout its history. Peirce’s theory of icon in many respects determined the “semiotic” aspect of Susanne Langer’s theory of “presentational symbolism”. Peirce’s semiotics had decisive influence on the formation of semiotics and the semantic theory of art in the work of M. Bense. As Bense himself writes in his Semiotic, he makes use in every instance of the bases of Peirce’s theory of signs. In his opinion Peirce’s semiotics (together with Morris’ work Foundations of the Theory ot Signs) opened up a new avenue for aesthetic theory, by which he meant the creation of a “ contemporary" aesthetics-text and communication theory.

p Peirce’s semiotic methods, and in particular his classification of signs (index, icon, symbol) have provoked lively interest in recent years and have penetrated the methodology of literary criticism.

p Peirce’s followers have received from him, in addition to the solid gold of his semiotic ideas, which are interesting and valuable from a scientific point of view, the lead of his idealistic interpretation of semiotics and art. We have already quoted Morris’ words to the effect that Peirce made use of semiotics to support his metaphysics.

Peirce’s semiotics, which rests on a phenomenological and pragmatic foundation, has enabled its interpreters to make idealistic deductions with respect to art. We should note here the admission by the American aesthetician A. Levi of the idealist “strategy” of applying Peirce’s ideas to special problems of art criticism (13, 35). As an example of such an 200 interpretation of Peirce we can take the article by Max Hocutt, professor of philosophy at the University of South Florida, “The Logical Foundations of Peirce’s Aesthetics”. In particular this author writes: “There is nothing in Peirce’s view of art to suggest that ’realism’ is the only legitimate or proper art technique" (10, 159). It patently follows from the entire context of the article that by the non-realist technique the author means modernism. M. Bense’s interpretation of Peirce’s view of the symbol as the highest level of free creation, in contrast to the icon as less free and dependent on the object, moves in the same direction. Whether we accept or reject such interpretations of Peirce’s thought the fact remains that apologists in certain social conditions use Peirce’s views as a source of theoretical (semiotic) justification for art which is at variance with realism.