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John Deely

A Life in Books

  • Paul Cobley (b. 1963) is Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Foreign Language and Cultures, Nanjing Normal University; President of the International Association for Semiotic Studies; and Professor in Language and Media at Middlesex University. He is the author of a number of books, most recently Cultural Implications of Semiotics (2016) and Narrative (2nd ed., 2014), and is editor of a number of other volumes.
Published/Copyright: August 18, 2016
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Chinese Semiotic Studies
From the journal Chinese Semiotic Studies Volume 12 Issue 3

More than once, Tom Sebeok remarked, to me and others, that many academics are not interested in publishing. At first, this seems a nonsensical comment since most academics appear to be very much interested in getting their name in print and their ideas disseminated. It goes with the territory. Indeed, it is why a great many academics are in that territory in the first place. Yet, this was not quite what he was talking about. His point was that, while academics might be interested in getting their work published, few of them are sufficiently interested in the process – what goes on when the manuscript leaves their hands, the copy-editing, the typesetting, the proofing, the distribution, the marketing and, above all, the interaction with the employees of the publisher at all levels. This last was typical of Tom – a supreme ‘people person’ who recognized the human element in even the most mechanical social endeavors. Possibly, though, one must say that Sebeok was surpassed by John Deely, who has brought to the publishing venture an overwhelming and disarming charm, coupled with a depth of knowledge and engagement in quotidian publishing processes that is seldom if ever witnessed among ambitious intellectuals. Deely has always taken a holistic interest in publishing, experimenting with all manner of publishing software and formats, as well as utilizing his acute knowledge of copy-editing, typesetting (especially - see Deely), proofing, distribution, and marketing. In addition, he devised the Semiotic Society of America stylesheet, certainly the most logically consistent and efficient referencing procedure currently extant. He has sustained friendships as well as close working relationships with a number of publishers, choosing collaborators not simply in the interests of career advancement but for the purpose of creating the best possible product, both technically and in terms of intellectual substance. Indeed, we might even be able to talk about ‘Deely and his Marshalls’ (cf. Deely, 2004: 17n. 4) – Gallman in Bloomington, Fingerhut in South Bend, Gainey in Scranton, Schwartz in Berlin, Simeonov in Sofia, Sprocchi in Ottawa, and so on. And, note: all this is before we even begin to consider the wealth of epoch-making ideas for semiotics, philosophy, and Catholic thought in Deely’s writings.

What follows in this special issue of Chinese Semiotic Studies is a book-by-book review of Deely’s work (his scholarship apart from the production of book-length monographs must wait until another day for such a systematic review). Twenty-five scholars of contemporary semiotics have chosen a volume from Deely’s output and subjected it to a review-style analysis in terms of the volume’s contribution to semiotics and its place in Deely’s philosophical project. The books reviewed are, in chronological order and as they appear in this special issue, as set out in Table 1:

Table 1

The books of John Deely reviewed in this special issue

Date Title
1971 The Tradition via Heidegger
1973 The Problem of Evolution: Philosophical Repercussions of Evolutionary Science (with Raymond Nogar)
1982 Introducing Semiotic: Its History and Doctrine
1985/2013 Tractatus de Signis: The Semiotic of John Poinsot
1990 Basics of Semiotics
1994 The Human Use of Signs or: Elements of Anthroposemiosis
1994 New Beginnings: Early Modern Philosophy and Postmodern Thought
2001 Four Ages of Understanding: The First Postmodern History of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the 21st Century
2002 What Distinguishes Human Understanding?
2003 The Impact on Philosophy of Semiotics
2004 Why Semiotics?
2005 Thomas Albert Sebeok and Semiotics
2005 Defining the Semiotic Animal
2005 The Semiotic Animal (with Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio)
2007 Intentionality and Semiotics
2008 Augustine and Poinsot: The Protosemiotic Development
2008 Descartes and Poinsot: The Crossroad of Signs and Ideas
2009 Purely Objective Reality
2010 Semiotic Animal: A Postmodern Definition of “Human Being” Transcending Patriarchy and Feminism
2010 Medieval Philosophy Redefined
2011 Semiotics Seen Synchronically
2012 How Science Enriches Theology (with Benedict Ashley)

Among Deely’s books, it seems at first sight that Four Ages of Understanding in particular stands out. It is a volume that is clearly the major ‘postmodern’ contribution to the establishment of a crossroads for philosophy, semiotics, and Catholic thought. It is monumental in size and intellectual sweep. It completely re-draws the history of Western thought, especially in its ‘overturning’ of the modern period. And it also contains an index at the end, compiled at considerable length by Deely himself at the turn of the century and constituting a major contribution to the science of indexing. In fact, such a landmark has Four Ages of Understanding been that, on its own, it was the subject of a two-volume collection of essays in Semiotica in 2010.

However, unlike many scholars who produce a single landmark work, Deely has repeatedly published groundbreaking books and articles. Deely has excavated the scholastic grounds of sign study and his writings have been the philosophical touchstone for the epoch-making work of biosemiotics (Cobley, 2016). He has placed John Poinsot firmly among the pantheon of contributors to the doctrine of signs; he has widened awareness of the semiotic endeavors of Jacques Maritain; and has also elevated the status of the protosemiotics of both Augustine and Aquinas as major foundations of Western philosophy. As this special issue will testify, Deely has introduced or recovered and developed some of the key concepts, themes, and terms of contemporary semiotics. These include the idea of logic as semiotic, the postmodern moment (properly so-called), relation, the triad of sign/object/thing, physiosemiosis, the thorough recasting of objectivity and subjectivity and the formulation of the idea of the semiotic animal, to name but a few. An authority on the works of Peirce, Aquinas, and Sebeok, plus a major figure in both contemporary semiotics and Scholastic Realism, Deely’s thinking has demonstrated how awareness of signs has heralded a new epoch in the history of human thought. In this new epoch, the shackles of the modern – nominalism, Cartesianism, res cogitans – are thrown off, giving way to a period in which knowledge of sign functioning rejuvenates thought. Deely’s books thus present a full-blooded semiotic consciousness or ‘doctrine of signs’.

Born on 26 April 1942 in Chicago, Illinois, Deely was educated at the Aquinas Institute School of Philosophy, River Forest, Illinois, receiving a BA in 1965, an MA in 1966 (with his thesis published in article form the same year), and a Ph.D. in 1967 (with the thesis published in monograph form in 1971 as The Tradition via Heidegger). He held early positions at Saint Mary's College, South Bend, Indiana (1974–1976), University of Ottawa (1968–1969), St. Thomas University, Fredericton, New Brunswick (1967–1968) and St. Joseph's College, Rensselear, Indiana (1966–1967). Later, he was appointed at Loras College, Dubuque, Iowa (1976–1999), along with a number of visiting posts including Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil (Fall 1988–Spring 1989), Fulbright Professor; Pontificia Universidade de São Paulo, 22–26 May 1989, Fulbright-Garcia Robles Professor, Anáhuac University, México City (Fall 1994–Spring 1995). Since being appointed at the University of St. Thomas, Houston (1999–present), where he has held the Rudman Chair in Philosophy since 2007, he has been a visiting scholar at the University of Helsinki, Finland (Fall 2000), Visiting Fulbright Professor, Southeast European Center for Semiotic Studies, New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria (Spring 2005), and Visiting Professor of Semiotics, Tartu University, Estonia (2009 Spring). His book-length monographs are complemented by over 200 articles and a number of book series that Deely edited, including the yearbooks of the Semiotic Society of America (from 1980), The American Journal of Semiotics (from 2001), Sources in Semiotics (University Press of America/Rowman & Littlefield) and Approaches to Postmodernity (Scranton University Press 2007–2010).

Arguably, Deely has been the ‘philosopher in residence’ for contemporary semiotics. Although there have been some amazing theoreticians in the whole of semiotics, scholars and public figures with vision, drive, and commitment, it is difficult to find a thinker who matches Deely’s combination of attention to the minutiae of philosophical argument and breadth of understanding of the development of philosophical thought down the ages. For all his command of the paraphernalia of teaching, research, publishing, and networking, it might just be that the medium of the book turns out to be the best receptacle for this extraordinary combination. The contributions to this special issue that follow the present introduction effectively subject such an abduction to scrutiny.

About the author

Paul Cobley

Paul Cobley (b. 1963) is Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Foreign Language and Cultures, Nanjing Normal University; President of the International Association for Semiotic Studies; and Professor in Language and Media at Middlesex University. He is the author of a number of books, most recently Cultural Implications of Semiotics (2016) and Narrative (2nd ed., 2014), and is editor of a number of other volumes.

References

Cobley, Paul. 2016. Cultural Implications of Biosemiotics (Dordrecht: Springer).10.1007/978-94-024-0858-4Search in Google Scholar

Deely, John N. 2004. “Tom Sebeok and the external world”, Semiotica 150 (1–4): 1–21.10.1515/semi.2004.044Search in Google Scholar

Petrilli, Susan and Hittinger, John. 2010. Four Ages of Understanding. Special double volume of Semiotica 178 (1–4)/179 (1–4): 1–365 and 1–336.10.1515/semi.2010.001Search in Google Scholar
Published Online: 2016-08-18
Published in Print: 2016-08-01

© 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Preface to the Special Issue
  3. The Three Voices of John Deely
  4. Introduction to the Special Issue
  5. John Deely
  6. Reviews
  7. John N. Deely: A Thomistic Voice for Semiotics
  8. Reviews
  9. The Sacred, Secular, Scholarly, and Scientific
  10. Reviews
  11. Archaeology of Concepts’ as research method
  12. Reviews
  13. John Poinsot Immer Wieder
  14. Reviews
  15. A Remedy for the Pars Pro Toto Fallacy in Chinese Semiotics
  16. Reviews
  17. Sign, Object, Thing
  18. Reviews
  19. A New Path to Postmodernity
  20. Reviews
  21. Opus Magnum
  22. Reviews
  23. Human Understanding in Light of John Deely, Charles Darwin, and Charles Peirce
  24. Reviews
  25. Awakening to “Reality”
  26. Reviews
  27. Why not?
  28. Reviews
  29. A Labor of Love and Friendship
  30. Reviews
  31. A Prelude to Wholophilia
  32. Reviews
  33. Semiotic Anima(l)
  34. Reviews
  35. Scholasticism
  36. Reviews
  37. The Holy Grail of Semiotics
  38. Reviews
  39. Back on the Right Track
  40. Reviews
  41. Semiotic Reconstructions of Reality
  42. Reviews
  43. Semiotic Animal: Waking up to Reciprocity
  44. Reviews
  45. On the Path of the Sign
  46. Reviews
  47. Synchronicity and Responsibility in Semiotics
  48. Reviews
  49. Pragmaticism, science and theology
https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2016-0025

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Preface to the Special Issue
  3. The Three Voices of John Deely
  4. Introduction to the Special Issue
  5. John Deely
  6. Reviews
  7. John N. Deely: A Thomistic Voice for Semiotics
  8. Reviews
  9. The Sacred, Secular, Scholarly, and Scientific
  10. Reviews
  11. Archaeology of Concepts’ as research method
  12. Reviews
  13. John Poinsot Immer Wieder
  14. Reviews
  15. A Remedy for the Pars Pro Toto Fallacy in Chinese Semiotics
  16. Reviews
  17. Sign, Object, Thing
  18. Reviews
  19. A New Path to Postmodernity
  20. Reviews
  21. Opus Magnum
  22. Reviews
  23. Human Understanding in Light of John Deely, Charles Darwin, and Charles Peirce
  24. Reviews
  25. Awakening to “Reality”
  26. Reviews
  27. Why not?
  28. Reviews
  29. A Labor of Love and Friendship
  30. Reviews
  31. A Prelude to Wholophilia
  32. Reviews
  33. Semiotic Anima(l)
  34. Reviews
  35. Scholasticism
  36. Reviews
  37. The Holy Grail of Semiotics
  38. Reviews
  39. Back on the Right Track
  40. Reviews
  41. Semiotic Reconstructions of Reality
  42. Reviews
  43. Semiotic Animal: Waking up to Reciprocity
  44. Reviews
  45. On the Path of the Sign
  46. Reviews
  47. Synchronicity and Responsibility in Semiotics
  48. Reviews
  49. Pragmaticism, science and theology
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