Abstract

Sini is well known in Italy for his original work on C. S. Peirce and his efforts to correlate Peirce's pragmatism with recent trends in Continental philosophy, especially phenomenology. In 1972 he published Pragmatismo americano, in which he argued for the continuity between the epistemology of Peirce, which gives priority to "evidence," and that of Husserl, which gives priority to "intuition." Seven years later, however, Sini rejected the possibility of a continuity between the two thinkers. Why? A more involved--or, in Sini words, a more hermeneutical--reading of Peirce's theory of signs convinced him that Peirce stood outside of the long tradition of western metaphysics in which Husserl remained firmly rooted.