Peirce's esthetics and the problem of normativity

The main problem confronting Peirce's theory of normative science is the problem of the principle-dependence of ethics and logic on esthetics. As early as 1902, Peirce was convinced of the need for a third normative science on which ethics and logic must depend for principles under his Comtean classificatory scheme however, the classification of esthetics as this third science raises two serious objections. The first objection states that ethics and logic cannot be made to depend on esthetics for principles without collapsing both sciences into hedonism. Chapters 1 and 2 engage this first objection. Chapter 1 considers Peirce's early and later arguments against hedonism and argues that the refutation of hedonism requires a phenomenological redescription of pleasure and pain rather than the disassociation of these phenomena from normative science. Chapter 2 then works through Peirce's phenomenology of pleasure and pain and its implications for his theory of normative science. The second objection concedes that esthetics is a theoretical science, but maintains that theoretical esthetics is prenormative rather than normative. Chapter 3 reframes the problem of the normativity of esthetics through this second objection. Chapters 4 and 5 then answer the objection that esthetics is prenormative by giving an account of the esthetic recognition of the summum bonum as a conscious and thus deliberately controlled process of habit formation.