The Point of Margolis’ Dissatisfaction with Peirce (and Pragmatism)

Margolis’ philosophical thought and career is framed by the pragmatism that dominated his early education and his vision of a “resurgent” pragmatism as the most promising direction for an increasingly eclectic Western philosophical tradition. This version of pragmatism is based on Peirce’s formulation of the pragmatic maxim, but Margolis sees the implications of that maxim as running counter to a central strand of Peirce’s own thought: fallibilism as an infinitist, self-correcting process of inquiry asymptotically tending toward to truth and reality. Margolis argues that this version of fallibilism is untenable and un-pragmatic, and his most mature work on the subject identifies an “abductive turn” in Peirce’s philosophy which points in the direction of an improved pragmatism, a pragmatism that is anarchic, relativistic, cast in terms of tolerances instead of laws, and without “Hope” in Peirce’s sense.