On a Mistaken Emendation of Peirce's 1903 Harvard Lectures

Abstract

Abstract:A sentence in the last section of the last of Peirce's 1903 lectures at Harvard is problematic. The editors of The Essential Peirce, Volume 2 changed one word in it, explaining the change in a note. I argue that the attempted emendation fails, not because Peirce's word is preferable, but because no single word would suffice in that context. To state what Peirce must have meant requires more sentences than he used. Exegesis is therefore needed, rather than emendation. It is important to get what Peirce meant right, for the sentence in question bears crucially on what he was attempting to do in the final lecture of the Harvard series.