Scholarlink

<p>While references to John Dewey abound in the literature on early American institutionalists, references to Charles S. Peirce are much rarer, even in the case of John R. Commons who refers to Peirce explicitly notably in his <i>Institutional Economics</i> as reported by Commons (Institutional economics. Its place in political economy, Macmillan, Transaction Publishers, New York, New Brunswick, 1934a). In this article, we aim to show that when Peirce’s conception of the normative sciences and his semiotic theory of phenomenological categories are considered, Peirce’s contributions permeate Commons’ institutional economics well beyond his explicit statements, and that paying attention to them improve our understanding of many Commons’s important concepts and insights. There are many examples, and several are displayed in the introduction (Sect.&#xa0;1), but the article is focused on the concept of reasonableness which occupies a fundamental place in <i>Institutional Economics</i> and is also at the heart of the three normative sciences of aesthetics, ethics and logic that Peirce integrates into his pragmaticism. Section&#xa0;2 is concerned by what is reasonableness for Commons and presents its ambivalence as both a positive-empirical and normative-idealist concept—Commons speaks of “pragmatic idealism”. Section&#xa0;3 is concerned by Peirce’s conception of reasonableness that is the subject of his triad of normative sciences. Section&#xa0;4 compares the two approaches and concludes to their proximity, despite the difference of points of view; thus the peircean approach not only gives pragmatist scientific bases to the use of the concept of reasonableness by Commons, but also, due to its antecedence, may be considered as a source of his social philosophy of reasonable capitalism.</p>

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

On the Peircian foundations of Commons’ institutional economics: the case of the concept of reasonableness

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年4月30日

查看全文
  • Bruno Théret

摘要

While references to John Dewey abound in the literature on early American institutionalists, references to Charles S. Peirce are much rarer, even in the case of John R. Commons who refers to Peirce explicitly notably in his Institutional Economics as reported by Commons (Institutional economics. Its place in political economy, Macmillan, Transaction Publishers, New York, New Brunswick, 1934a). In this article, we aim to show that when Peirce’s conception of the normative sciences and his semiotic theory of phenomenological categories are considered, Peirce’s contributions permeate Commons’ institutional economics well beyond his explicit statements, and that paying attention to them improve our understanding of many Commons’s important concepts and insights. There are many examples, and several are displayed in the introduction (Sect. 1), but the article is focused on the concept of reasonableness which occupies a fundamental place in Institutional Economics and is also at the heart of the three normative sciences of aesthetics, ethics and logic that Peirce integrates into his pragmaticism. Section 2 is concerned by what is reasonableness for Commons and presents its ambivalence as both a positive-empirical and normative-idealist concept—Commons speaks of “pragmatic idealism”. Section 3 is concerned by Peirce’s conception of reasonableness that is the subject of his triad of normative sciences. Section 4 compares the two approaches and concludes to their proximity, despite the difference of points of view; thus the peircean approach not only gives pragmatist scientific bases to the use of the concept of reasonableness by Commons, but also, due to its antecedence, may be considered as a source of his social philosophy of reasonable capitalism.