ABSTRACT
This chapter applies the epistemological and ontological premises of Charles Sanders Peirce and Carl Gustav Jung toward a fuller understanding of the nature of conviction. Conviction, the subjective sense of surety or reasonable certainty about one's interpretation of experience, is analyzed both as a general feature of our navigation of reality, and more specifically as it is situated within religious sensibilities. In their own language, Peirce and Jung argue that productive, fruitful thinking originates in a stance of receptive attention to the natural unfolding of experience, that is, its telos, and a willingness to suspend a priori judgements about its meaning(s) and truth-claims. Rather, such judgements are most credible when formed a posteriori or “after the fact”, based upon our experience what they actually do to enrich our lives. Further, in both Peirce and Jung the state of being convinced, that is, of “having conviction”, has a religious or non-specific “spiritual” dimension. These two seminal thinkers are unique among modern intellectuals in that their epistemologies are grounded in what I call a revelatory metaphysics of cognition, namely, that the processes and final ends of thinking itself are an emanation and signifier of a metaphysical Absolute. Ultimately, both theorists posit that perceptive thinking about thinking can lead us to a clearer understanding of the nature of Being, and the generative, sustaining actions of an intelligent Absolute that is both its source and teleological goal.
