An impressive synthesis of semiotics and anthropology which puts human experience in a new light. Deely gives us the foundation for a new paradigm for anthropology. -Nathan Houser, Peirce Edition Project

In his 'Letter on Humanism' of 1947, Heidegger declared that the subject/object opposition and the terminology that accrues to it had still not been properly addressed in the history of philosophy, and he awaited a proper disquisition that resolved the problem. To date, that has not been provided. This volume explains and solves the prevailing problems in the subjectivity/objectivity couplet, in the process making an indispensable contribution both to semiotics and to philosophy. This book shows that what is thought to be 'objective' in the commonplace use of the term is demonstrably different from what objectivity entails when it is revealed by semiotic analysis. It demonstrates in its exegesis of the 'objective' that human existence is frequently governed by examples of a 'purely objective reality' - a fiction which nevertheless perfuses, is perfused by, and guides experience. The ontology of the sign can be mind-dependent or mind-independent, just as the status of relation can be as legitimate on its own terms whether it is found in ens rationis or in ens reale. The difference in the awareness of human animals consists in this very contextualization that Deely's writings in general have made so evident: the ability to identify signs as sign relations, and the ability to enact relations on a mind-dependent basis. Purely Objective Reality offers the first sustained and theoretically consistent interrogation of the means by which human understanding of 'reality' will be instrumental in the survival - or destruction - of planet Earth.

Peirce's (1906) proposal that the universe as a whole, even if it does not consist exclusively of signs, is yet everywhere perfused with signs, is a thesis that better than any other sums up the life and work of Thomas A. Sebeok, "inventor" of semiotics as we know it today. Semiotics - the doctrine of signs - has a long and intriguing history that extends back well beyond the last century, two and a half millennia to Hippocrates of Cos. It ranges through the teachings of Augustine, Scholastic philosophy, the work of Peirce and Saussure. Yet a fully-fledged doctrine of signs, with many horizons for the future, was the result of Sebeok's work in the twentieth century. The massive influence of this work, as well as Sebeok's convening of semiotic projects and encouragement of a huge number of researchers globally, which, in turn, set in train countless research projects, is difficult to document and has not been assessed until now. This volume, using the testimonies of key witnesses and participants in the semiotic project, offers a picture of how Sebeok, through his development of knowledge of endosemiotics, phytosemiotics, biosemiotics and sociosemiotics, enabled semiotics in general to redraw the boundaries of science and the humanities as well as nature and culture.

In his 'Letter on Humanism' of 1947, Heidegger declared that the subject/object opposition and the terminology that accrues to it had still not been properly addressed in the history of philosophy, and he awaited a proper disquisition that resolved the problem. To date, that has not been provided. This volume explains and solves the prevailing problems in the subjectivity/objectivity couplet, in the process making an indispensable contribution both to semiotics and to philosophy. This book shows that what is thought to be 'objective' in the commonplace use of the term is demonstrably different from what objectivity entails when it is revealed by semiotic analysis. It demonstrates in its exegesis of the 'objective' that human existence is frequently governed by examples of a 'purely objective reality' - a fiction which nevertheless perfuses, is perfused by, and guides experience. The ontology of the sign can be mind-dependent or mind-independent, just as the status of relation can be as legitimate on its own terms whether it is found in ens rationis or in ens reale. The difference in the awareness of human animals consists in this very contextualization that Deely's writings in general have made so evident: the ability to identify signs as sign relations, and the ability to enact relations on a mind-dependent basis. Purely Objective Reality offers the first sustained and theoretically consistent interrogation of the means by which human understanding of 'reality' will be instrumental in the survival - or destruction - of planet Earth.

This book redraws the intellectual map and sets the agenda in philosophy for the next fifty or so years. By making the theory of signs the dominant theme in Four Ages of Understanding, John Deely has produced a history of philosophy that is innovative, original, and complete. The first full-scale demonstration of the centrality of the theory of signs to the history of philosophy, Four Ages of Understanding provides a new vantage point from which to review and reinterpret the development of intellectual culture at the threshold of "globalization". Deely examines the whole movement of past developments in the history of philosophy in relation to the emergence of contemporary semiotics as the defining moment of Postmodernism. Beginning traditionally with the Pre-Socratic thinkers of early Greece, Deely gives an account of the development of the notion of signs and of the general philosophical problems and themes which give that notion a context through four ages: Ancient philosophy, covering initial Greek thought; the Latin age, philosophy in European civilization from Augustine in the 4th century to Poinsot in the 17th; the Modern period, beginning with Descartes and Locke; and the Postmodern period, beginning with Charles Sanders Peirce and continuing to the present. Reading the complete history of philosophy in light of the theory of the sign allows Deely to address the work of thinkers never before included in a general history, and in particular to overcome the gap between Ockham and Descartes which has characterized the standard treatments heretofore. One of the essential features of the book is the way in which it shows how the theme of signs opens a perspective for seeing the Latin Age from its beginning with Augustine to the work of Poinsot as an indigenous development and organic unity under which all the standard themes of ontology and epistemology find a new resolution and place. A magisterial general history of philosophy, Deely's book provides both a strong background to semiotics and a theoretical unity between philosophy's history and its immediate future. With Four Ages of Understanding Deely sets a new agenda for philosophy as a discipline entering the 21st century.

In a statement published for Paul Cobley's edition of Realism for the 21st Century. A John Deely Reader, Umberto Eco wrote that "John Deely has not only paid attention to the Second Scholasticism but also to the first one". In the present book, Deely goes one step further, by establishing the continuity of the Latin Age as a whole. He shows how the Latin thinkers demonstrated the presuppositions and created the framework of critical thought that made possible and inevitable the turn to science in the modern sense. The book thus shows how and why criticalachievements of the Latins remain requisite, even today, for the proper understanding of science and technology as offshot of the "Way of Signs" upon which all of thought, as also evikytuib as a whole, perforce travels. "With the sophistic modern and Enlightenment misconceptions about philosophy's nature and history daily crashing and burning around us, Deely's unconventional way of understanding medieval philosophy is like a breath of fresh air amid intellectual smog. This is a great book, the single most important study of medieval thought in half a century or more. It deserves an unbiased hearing by anyone today claiming to be a serious philosopher." - Peter A. Redpath Founding Chairman, Universities of Western Civilization Chairman of the Board, The International Etienne Gilson Society "Drawing upon the thought of John Poinsot and Charles Pierce, John Deely has opened a distinctively postmodern path to the metaphysics of being, at once illuminating much of this ancient tradition while casting new light upon it in the context of contemporary thought. His treatment notably of St. Thomas is not merely a return to an earlier thinker, but an opening to a different path, at once in profound agreement with St. Thomas and yet heretofore unexplored. This book, thus, not only constitutes a return to a past era, but shows this era in a new light that illuminates as well the contemporary scene." - Kenneth L. Schmitz Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, Canada Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, Washington, D.C.

In a time when the relation of theology to science is in question, due in part to the unwitting fideism of religious fundamentalists and, conversely, as a result of the equally fundamentalist diatribes of the so-called "New Atheists," How Science Enriches Theology provides a much-needed demonstration of the possibility and necessity for dialogue and integration between the two perspectives or fields of inquiry. Far from being in the unhappy throes of divorce, theology and science must renew their common commitment to the use of reason! This work is written by two formidable thinkers who have each written extensively on the foundations of natural science and related issues - including the inherently evolutionary nature and development of the cosmos. Now they team up to show the fruitful impact of science on theology as a use of reason in the service of Christian faith. In its philosophical or 'cenoscopic' foundations, science can support the truths of monotheistic faith and provide a corrective to both materialist and spiritualist forms of monism. Meanwhile, with the advance of science in the modern sense, the special sciences as 'ideoscopic,' we can see not only the traces of God's existence, but of the Trinitarian nature of God, the Divine Persons of the Godhead, as proposed in Christian faith. Make no mistake, the authors are sure to uphold the indemonstrability of Christian-specific doctrines, such as the Trinity and the Incarnation; but, with Augustine and Aquinas, they affirm that creation is rife with traces of the divine. The validity of theology does not reduce to the deliverances of the modern sciences, but the latter can undoubtedly aid the person of faith in the "evolution" of his or her theological understanding and embrace of faith as beyond - but not contrary to - reason properly exercised. For example, the immensity and depth of our universe, as indicated alike by relativity theory and quantum theory, along with the biological, chemical, and physical diversity and dynamic stability contained within the universe's vast limits, enrich our understanding of God the Father. Our universe's order, uniqueness, and intelligibility suggest how we may better understand the Divine Logos, Jesus Christ. While further the evolution, freedom, and plenitude of the cosmos reveal the character of God the Holy Spirit. In How Science Enriches Theology, Ashley and Deely present a veritably "theosemiotic picture" of the universe, and one which avoids the naive reductionisms of mind to matter, culture to society, biology to physics, and cenoscopic to ideoscopic science. But not only do the authors of this stellar book explore the diverse riches of creation's many nooks and crannies; they do not balk at concluding with the speculative but inevitable question, Where is creation headed?, while also providing a tentative answer to how we might reconcile the inevitable consequences of the Second Law of Thermodynamics with the Book of Revelation's eschatological promise of a New Heavens and a New Earth.

This is a corrected second impression of the original bilingual critical edition of Poinsot's work on signs completed in 1632. New materials include a new "Foreword" by the translator and a full table of correlations between the independent Tractatus edition and the original Cursus Philo-sophicus from which that edition was established. The Cursus Philosophicus was one of the two great syntheses of Latin thought made in the lifetime of Descartes. Yet only that of Francis Suarez in 1597, the Disputationes Metaphysicae, was destined to be read by the early moderns. This is a work of immense erudition that synthesizes the matter of signs philosophy from Aristotle and his successors in Greece and Rome to the pre-eminent St. Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages and so on through the leading schools of Renaissance thought. Poinsot was instrumental in the twentieth-century revival of Thomism led by Jacques Maritain. His seminal Introduction to the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas (St. Augustine's Press, 2004)

Semiotics is rapidly establishing itself as one of the most fruitful and exciting fields of intellectual inquiry. Literary scholars, philosophers, social scientists, and students of linguistics and communication are all finding something of value in the various insights and approaches to knowledge that are included within the general field of semiotics. This significant new collection contains some of the most important contemporary work by modern pioneers in the field together with a few formative statements from earlier thinkers such as John Locke and Jacques Maritain. The volume covers in five parts the nature of semiotics, semiotic systems, various developing themes, traditional concerns of semiotics, and future directions.

The appeal of semiotics lies in its apparent ability to establish a common framework for all disciplines, a framework rooted in the understanding of the sign as the universal means of communication. Introducing Semiotic provides a synoptic view of semiotic development, covering for the first time all the previous epochs of Western philosophy, from the pre-Socratics to the present. In particular, the book bridges the gap from St. Augustine (5th c.) to John Locke (17th c.). It delineates the foundations of contemporary semiotics and concretely reveals just how integral and fundamental the semiotic point of view really is to Western culture. Because of its clarity of exposition and careful use of primary sources, Introducing Semiotic will be an essential textbook for all courses in semiotics.

"Realism for the 21st Century" is a collection of thirty essays from John Deely - a major figure in contemporary semiotics and an authority on scholastic realism and the works of Charles Sanders Peirce. The volume tracks Deely's development as a pragmatic realist, featuring his early essays on our relation to the world after Darwinism; crucial articles on logic, semiotics, and objectivity; overviews of philosophy after modernity; and, a new essay on 'purely objective reality'.