Abstract

Peirce’ s intellectual debt to Kant’ s transcendentalism has been long recognized. In this essay I investigate Kant’ s thoughts on “what is pragmatic” as a source of inspiration for him. Peirce was well acquainted with this often neglected facet of Kant’ s philosophy, that influenced both the core idea and the lexical coinage of his pragmatism. Both thinkers drew attention to the consequences of cognition for human actions. Pointing at the definition of the meaning of a defined notion, however, Peirce narrows remarkably the domain of Kant’ s “pragmatic horizon”. Accordingly, Kant cannot be truly considered a forerunner of Peirce’ s pragmatism.