ABSTRACT
The resurgence of pragmatism has taken various forms, from neo to paleo, from a development within analytic philosophy to a broadside against the dominant tradition in Anglophone philosophy. A Peircean version of pragmatic realism must be one in which his three categories play a prominent role. These categories are not primarily ontological or cosmological, although their deployment in the fields of both ontology and cosmology goes some distance toward revealing their power and fecundity. Kant tried to conjoin empirical realism and transcendental idealism, Hegel what might be called experiential realism with absolute idealism and Charles Peirce the abstract definition of reality as that which is independent of finite thought with the pragmatic clarification of reality as that which infinite thought would disclose in the indefinite long run of experimental inquiry. At the center of Nicholas Rescher's constructive engagement with the pragmatist tradition, there is a defense of realism. It is hybrid in character, just as Peirce's own apologia was.
