Neglected Again? Peirce's "Neglected Argument" and the Theory of Religion Today: 2025 Presidential Address of the Charles S. Peirce Society

Abstract: This essay has its point of departure in an observation: The monumental history of philosophy that Jürgen Habermas has published has as its guiding thread the relationship between religion and philosophy, faith and knowledge. It culminates in a presentation of the philosophy of Charles Peirce. But, oddly, it has nothing to say about Peirce's own understanding of religion and the relationship between religion and philosophy. The essay briefly summarizes the present state of knowledge on Peirce and religion and then confronts it not so much with debates in theology or philosophy of religion, as others have done in the last decades, but with the interdisciplinary empirical study of religion. This happens in five steps (situated creativity, formation of beliefs with existential relevance, sacredness, the God concept, the ideal of universalism), The essay concludes with a short reflection on how Habermas's narrative would have had to change if the author had taken Peirce's contribution as seriously as it deserves.