Peirce as Playful/Play as Pivotal

This paper offers a portrait of C. S. Peirce as a playful thinker but also an account of play as that upon which much turns. He was, after all, a philosopher who in his maturity insisted, "a bit of fun helps thought and tends to keep it pragmatical." In doing so, however, Peirce showed in his youth how evasions of responsibility might, in their own way, often be instances of engagement at once playful and more deeply responsible than any attempt to meet the formal expectations of external authority. For the account of play as pivotal, the author draws upon Cornelius Castoriadis and, to a far greater extent, John Dewey. Moreover, he explores an apparently stark contrast between the Peircean emphasis upon habit and the Derridean celebration of play, showing that the opposition is not as thoroughgoing as it might appear. Interweaving Dewey's insights with Peirce's, the author highlights the power of intense play to melt the rigidity of sedimented habits and, thereby, to generate opportunities for habit-change. This suggests that the capacity to act in an imaginative or creative way both ineluctably draws upon habits but also inevitably modifies, often in a dramatic manner, these habits. If the ultimate logical interpretant of a sign-process is, as Peirce suggests, a habit-change, then play is truly pivotal for seeing one of the most important ways in which such alteration takes place.