Peirce's Cosmological Argumentation: God as Ens necessarium

Abstract: Charles Peirce begins his best-known text about religious metaphysics by defining the proper name "God" as Ens necessarium . In two previously unpublished manuscripts, he advocates the hypothesis of such a "necessary being" as the only "rational explanation" that is "adequate to account for the sum total of reality," namely, "the three universes" that together encompass "all the phenomena there are." Combining key statements from those passages into a series of distinct steps yields a cosmological argumentation for this conclusion, one resembling that of Gottfried Leibniz. In conjunction with Peirce's other relevant writings, it has implications for the attributes of God, as well as for the relationship between God and the universe, while also raising questions that call for further study.