LAUSR

Charles S. Peirce, the ingenious founder of pragmatism who later famously rebaptized his philosophy as ‘pragmaticism’, is usually viewed as the most original American philosopher as well as a rigorous scientific thinker who made fundamental contributions to logic, epistemology,metaphysics, the philosophy ofmathematics, the foundations of scientific methodology, and semiotics, or the general theory of signs.While the other classical American pragmatists, especially William James and John Dewey, are important references not only in the philosophy of science, the theory of inquiry, and related areas of ‘theoretical philosophy’ but also in ethics and the philosophy of religion, Peirce’s influence has been mostly confined to theoretical philosophy. Peirce is only rarely discussed in the field of ‘practical philosophy’, or when it comes to ethics, politics, and religion – even though we might expect that the one who established pragmatism as a philosophical approach ought to have had something to say about such ‘practical’ matters of human life, too. In fact, Peirce did have a lot to say. Richard Atkins’s book shows us why Peirce ought to be taken very seriously as an ethical and religious thinker. His interpretation and critical defense of a Peircean approach in these areas is organized around Peirce’s dialogue with James (especially his response to James’s ‘will to believe’ argument) and is also essentially tied up with Peirce’s theory of inquiry and scientific inference. Various central themes of Peirce’s thought are carefully discussed and relatively little known areas are usefully illuminated. The key idea is that we should, according to Peirce, conduct our lives on the basis of our sentiments and instincts rather than on the basis of philosophical theories. This ‘sentimental conservatism’ has important applications in the philosophy of religion, too, because Peirce, on Atkins’s reading, defends the rational acceptability of a ‘living belief in God’. The first chapter contrasts Peirce’s sentimental conservatism with what the author calls James’s ‘rational radicalism’ by examining the critical exchanges between the two giants of pragmatism surrounding Peirce’s 1898 Cambridge Lectures,Reasoning and the Logic of Things. James, who had arranged this lecture opportunity for Peirce, notoriously suggested that Peirce ought to have discussed ‘topics of vital