Peirce’s Esthetics of Freedom: Possibility, Complexity, and Emergent Value

According to Peirce, the value of the idea of freedom arises only to oppose the idea of necessity. Freedom emerges as a working value, a primary esthetic principle, in response to that which is perceived as fixed, determined, necessary, absolute. The idea of Freedom materializes, assumes a million appearances, wears its ten million masks…Freedom as the Freedom-to-Focus is a Peircean esthetic process that becomes realized through the three stages of Fragment/Fractal, Fact, Form. This triadic process corresponds to the semiotic functions of Icon, Index, Symbol. Freedom’s course is nonlineal, self-corrective, dynamic, open: Freedom is the occasion for Chaos, and Chaos is the locus of Form.