His Glassy Essence: An Autobiography of Charles Sanders Peirce (Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy) [Hardcover]

Kenneth Laine Ketner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 1998 | Series: Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), the most important and influential of the classical American philosophers, is credited as the inventor of the philosophical school of pragmatism. The scope and significance of his work have had a lasting effect not only in several fields of philosophy but also in mathematics, the history and philosophy of science, and the theory of signs, as well as in literary and cultural studies. Largely obscure until after his death, Peirce's life has long been a subject of interest and dispute. Unfortunately, previous biographies often confuse as much as they clarify crucial matters in Peirce's story. Ketner's new biographical project is remarkable not only for its entertaining aspects but also for its illuminating insights into Peirce's life, his thought, and the intellectual milieu in which he worked.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Having published eight books on C.S. Peirce, the founder of American pragmatism, Ketner is an acknowledged authority on the man as well as a true believer. The collected papers of Peirce (pronounced Purse) were published in multivolume editions, but Peirce never wrote an autobiography. To make up for this omission, Ketner has begun to write one for him in the first of three planned volumes. To produce this work of literary nonfiction, Ketner has inserted imagined speeches by Peirce and passages from Peirce's letters and philosophic writings where he "waxed autobiographical." To move the story along, Ketner introduces a narrator and two other fictional characters who function as intellectual detectives, separating genuine revelations from bogus ones. Their sleuthing may be helped or hindered by the fact that the narrator believes he is possessed by the spirit of Peirce. The reader is therefore confronted by a real author (Ketner), a dead subject (Peirce), fictional characters and reconstructed and imagined events. Using this convention, Ketner is able to make Peirce more immediate, and he weaves together an impressive amount of research on Peirce's early life, connecting thoughts to the thinker. However, the device of fictional scholarship becomes very complicated, awkward and, ultimately, impossible to sustain. If, as pragmatism claims, truth is whatever works, then this book cannot be called true. (Aug.) FYI: Indiana University is releasing Joseph Brent's Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life in a revised and enlarged edition. ($35 ISBN 0-253-33350-4; paper $18.95 -21161-1)
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The word autobiography in the subtitle should be in quotes, because this is an autobiography only in the sense that Ketner (philosophy, Texas Tech Univ.) uses as his primary source Peirce's own words concerning the facts and events in his life as found in his published and unpublished writings. Ketner adopts an innovative, mystery novel-like approach here: he invents several contemporaneous fictional characters, then follows them on a journey to fill in the gaps of a manuscript, found in an old box, purporting to be Peirce's autobiography. These characters then track Peirce (1839-1914) through the first 28 years of his life (two more volumes are planned). This device not only allows Ketner to supply biographical information but also, along the way, to explicate Peirce's philosophical thinking up to that point in his life. This entertaining yet scholarly read would be accessible to the novice but could also prove useful and informative to the advanced student or professional philosopher. Highly recommended for academic and larger public library collections.?Leon H. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Mgt. Lib., Washington, DC
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press; 1st edition (August 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826513131
• ISBN-13: 978-0826513137
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #689,539 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Experience the Transforming Power of this book for yourself, January 10, 2000

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Tj Reilley "PhilosopherGal" (New Mexico) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: His Glassy Essence: An Autobiography of Charles Sanders Peirce (Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy) (Hardcover)

As a Peircean supporter of personal inquiry I can't in good conscience write a traditional "review" like the Kirkus one which dominates this page. I write to encourage everybody to disregard the Kirkus comments and explore His Glassy Essence (and their own, in turn) for themselves.

Having read the correspondence between Ketner and Percy in Thief of Peirce, I know that Percy commissioned Ketner to write this volume. That said, I believe that Charles S Peirce, Walker Percy, and Kenneth L. Ketner are all speaking to any person whose interests run toward open-minded, evaluative, and exploratory inquiry into Life. What better way to discover your own Way than to see it in the life of another, namely Peirce.

Personally, I have no doubt in my heart that Percy would be pleased with Ketner's first installment of the life of CS Peirce. But, by all means, don't take anyone's word for it --- be Percy's sovereign wayfarer, pick up a copy of HGE, and discover Peirce's transformative power for you own self!

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Glassy Essence" is a valuable resource, May 25, 2000

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Phyllis Chiasson "Phyllis Chiasson" (Washington State) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: His Glassy Essence: An Autobiography of Charles Sanders Peirce (Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy) (Hardcover)

For me the book, "His Glassy Essence," has been invaluable. Ketner has pulled together information about Peirce's early life that I could not possibly have gotten to on my own. Since I am not attached to any institution, I do not have access to any unpublished documents. I am not sure I would have been able to find the information Ketner has laid out in this book even if I had such access. He has pulled together a great deal of information from diverse sources and put these scattered pieces together in chronological and contextual order.

This book has been immensely helpful to me for coming to understand the provenance of Peirce's pragmatism. Now, it is obvious to me that there was no abrupt beginning to the development of Peirce's pragmatic theory. Now that I know of his early exposure to qualitative discernment and aesthetics, I can identify these as central to the evolution of his theory of abduction-something I have suspected all along, but had been unable to nail down because of the lack of a chronological and contextual framework for Peirce's early life.

The author did a fine job of referencing information, providing page by page notes at the end of the book. These references were noted in such a way that they do not interfere with the reading of the text--which unfolds in a story-like way, enabling me to see how Peirce fit within his context. The biographical and temperamental information concerning Peirce's father, for example, fleshed out the cultural and familial milieu in which he was raised-seemingly as a crown prince of the intellectual world for which his father was a sort of king.

Although there are minor discrepancies (such as a brother who seems to have been left out)and occasional confusions when following the story line, I think that this book is going to be very useful for anyone wanting to know about the early Peirce. I am finding "His Glassy Essence" especially useful as a reference tool. I suspect that other independent researchers, like myself, who are working with Peirce's ideas, but do not have access to unpublished materials by or about him will find this book useful as well.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An American Philosopher in the Grand Manner, June 17, 2003

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Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: His Glassy Essence: An Autobiography of Charles Sanders Peirce (Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy) (Hardcover)

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 -1914) was an eccentric American genius and the founder of the philosophy generally known as pragmatism. A difficult, erratic, and sometimes violent man, he was denied in his attempts to secure an academic position and spent the last several years of his life in near isolation at his home, called Arisbe, near Milford, Pennsylvania. Peirce may be America's most significant philosopher. Yet he never produced a book. His reputation, insofar as it is based on his written work, is based on essays he wrote throughout his life and on large manuscripts which his admirers saw through to publication beginning shortly after his death.

Professor Kenneth Ketner, the author of this "autobiography" of Peirce, is an acknoledged authority on Peirce's life and thought. He calls this book, "His Glassy Essence" an "autobiography" because it is based in large part upon a selection of Peirce's writings and letters arranged to tell the story of his life. As Professor Ketner states, however, the book is also in part fiction. It includes three fictitious characters, the narrator, Ike, a writer of mysteries, his wife Betsey, a nurse, and Roy, a Harvard PhD in philosophy who allegedly knew and studied with Peirce. The story line involves Ike taking an interest in Peirce based upon an old box of Peirce's papers that Betsey has inherited. Roy comes into the story to provide information about Peirce and, not accidentally, some excellent discussions on the nature of philosophy.

The mechanism creaks at times. The story line is artificial although Roy has many insightful things to say in commenting on Peirce. It is difficult to separate fact from fiction in the account of Peirce because many of his letters and essays seem to be melded together from sources written at different times and places. Ketner's protestations notwithstanding, it is difficult to be convinced of the accuracy of the account presented here as scholarly biography. Finally, this book covers essentially only the first 28 years of Peirce's life (with forwards to his death and to some of his subsequent writings.) There are two promised sequels which are to continue the story through the remainder of Peirce's life.

For all the difficulties, I came away from this book with a better understanding of Peirce and some inkling of the development of his thought. Peirce's own distinctive ideas beging to be developed only in the last third or so of this book. The earlier sections deal largely with Peirce's years in college when he was deeply under the influence of Kant.

The book makes a good case that Peirce's work is narrowed unduly when he is viewed simply as one of the first American pragmatists. He was in fact a philosopher in the large manner concerned about science, about logic and categories in an expansive sense of these terms, and about God. He was an empiricist in the broadest sense that William James developed with his term "radical empiricism". I also see strong parallels in the account of Peirce given in this book to Husserl's phenomenology.

Peirce tought the distinction between knowledge, or the accumulation of facts, and wisdom and meaning which cannot be learned from the books. He developed the philosophy of signs called semiotics and invented a personal and highly idiosyncratic philosophical vocabulary, including terms such as "Cenopythagoreanism" (see page 342) which stretch the casual reader' patience and may stretch the more serious reader's mind.

This book gives an excellent picture of the philosophic mind, in the person of Charles Peirce, and of the serious and consuming nature of philosophic inquiry. It is not a book to read for a full account either of Peirce's life or his thought. It does capture something of the spirit of the man and the thinker.

Readers who want a historically based account of Peirce and his times might enjoy "The Metaphysical Club" by Louis Menand. Ketner's book is cited in the references for Menand and it covers much of the same ground, Peirce's life, his relationship to his father, the mathematician Benjamin Peirce, the metaphysical club which met briefly at Harvard in the 1870s, the effect of the Civil War on American pragmatism, and much else. The distinctive value of Ketner's book, I think, is that for all its problems it will allow the reader to see Peirce from the inside out.