Music theory: Peirce and Kantian chords
As a philosopher of his time, Peirce was working in the shadow of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). When writing to philosophers, Peirce could assume his audience was familiar with Kant’s theories.
With some exceptions, Peirce does a good job of making his own writing standalone, and I want my cover versions to be even more self-contained.
However. You get more from Peirce’s originals if you catch his allusions. For example, in the next essay, he argues that two concepts – space and time – are learned from experience. If you know Kant’s “the thing in itself” (Ding an sich), you’ll get a little frisson: “Oh ho! I know why he picked those two particular concepts. Bold!” – even though Peirce doesn’t mention Kant at all. You can get by without that, but it helps show where Peirce is heading: toward a completely different architectonic system than Kant’s.
So I toyed with writing occasional “music theory” posts to capture some background, something like how Kirk Hamilton, on his Strong Songs podcast, will refer to a pop musician using a Lydian chord to achieve a certain effect: you can enjoy the song without it, but you’ll enjoy it more when you know how the musician is working with a tradition – and why. While debating such posts, I happened to start rereading The Thing Itself (2016) by Adam Roberts. It’s a science fiction novel whose plot hook is “What if Kant got it right?” Early in the first chapter, Roberts gives a dandy explanation of Kant’s Ding an sich. So I’m going to quote it here, then I’ll briefly talk of two related topics.