Semiotics and philosophy: Working for a historical reconstruction of human understanding
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Susan Petrilli
Abstract
Four ages by John Deely contributes to demonstrating the centrality of the theory of sign to the history of philosophy. The notion of sign and its foundation in a theory of sign together constitute the vital context of the specific perspective of our present for a new understanding of the history of philosophy as a whole. Human understanding (Locke) is possible because man is a semiotic animal, but also a “political animal” (Aristotle). Otherness and civilization: in Deely's view these are the basic elements of the origin of philosophy, which does not have a precise beginning, any more than the experience of the other as other, or of the “Other in its otherness,” as Deely puts it, has a precise beginning. The other is necessary to the constitution of the objective world in its species-specifically human form. The relation with the other as other, the “otherness relation,” irreducibly transcends the realm of knowledge. The relation with the other in its otherness constitutes an ethical foundation. This relation is involvement, exposition, responsibility, non-indifferent proximity of one-for-the-other. The ethical perspective is the very perspective from which we have read John Deely's Four ages.
© 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
Artikel in diesem Heft
- The concept as a formal sign
- Charles Peirce's understanding of the four ages and of his own place in the history of human thought
- Semiotics and philosophy: Working for a historical reconstruction of human understanding
- Is there purely objective reality?
- Platonic reflections upon Four ages of understanding
- Christian philosophy in John Deely's Four ages of understanding
- Semiotics or metaphysics as first philosophy? Triadic or dyadic relations in regard to Four ages of understanding
- After Deely: If I walk the “way of signs,” where am I going?
- Semiosis and the elusive final interpretant of understanding
- Semiotics and human nature in postmodernity: A consideration of animal semioticum as the postmodern definition of human being
- The history of philosophy conceived as a struggle between nominalism and realism
- From here to the Latin Age and back again: A four-cause category-based exploration of Adrian J. Walker's article on von Balthasar's concept of “love alone”
- The review essays in paraleipsis: Looking forward while looking back
Artikel in diesem Heft
- The concept as a formal sign
- Charles Peirce's understanding of the four ages and of his own place in the history of human thought
- Semiotics and philosophy: Working for a historical reconstruction of human understanding
- Is there purely objective reality?
- Platonic reflections upon Four ages of understanding
- Christian philosophy in John Deely's Four ages of understanding
- Semiotics or metaphysics as first philosophy? Triadic or dyadic relations in regard to Four ages of understanding
- After Deely: If I walk the “way of signs,” where am I going?
- Semiosis and the elusive final interpretant of understanding
- Semiotics and human nature in postmodernity: A consideration of animal semioticum as the postmodern definition of human being
- The history of philosophy conceived as a struggle between nominalism and realism
- From here to the Latin Age and back again: A four-cause category-based exploration of Adrian J. Walker's article on von Balthasar's concept of “love alone”
- The review essays in paraleipsis: Looking forward while looking back
