Abstract
This review argues that the notion of the semiotic animal as the most characteristic one for human activity has a long and disputable history, not in Deely’s writings only but in philosophy in general. The idea of the three co-authors of the book under review, taken from “the air”, ripens and expands with unexpected meaning with respect to its origin, appropriateness, and ongoing novelty. The strongest argument for coining the new definition was found by Deely in Peirce’s semiosis and in Poinsot’s way of sign, a road that had not been taken in the history of knowledge.
Article note: Deely, John N., Susan Petrilli, and Augusto Ponzio: The Semiotic Animal. New York: Legas, 2005, pp. 241, ISBN: 1-894508-80-7.
About the authors
Ivan Mladenov (b. 1953) is a Full Professor at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. His chief interest is the philosophy of Charles S. Peirce on which he published a book Conceptualizing Metaphors: On Charles Peirce’s Marginalia (2006, 2014), Japanese translation (2012). Recent publications include a book in Bulgarian: The Deviated Literature: A Pragmatist Overview (2011), as well as the multi-lingual collection of Bulgarian and international scholars The Out-of-Literariness (2012).
Reni Iankova (b. 1985) is an Associate Professor at the New Bulgarian University. Her chief interest is Charles S. Peirce’s philosophy on which she wrote her Ph.D. dissertation Semiotics and Pragmatism: Habit, Norm, Ritual in Charles Peirce’s Philosophy (forthcoming as a book). Her current research is focused on the problems of interpretants, habit, and habit change in the recent publication (in English) in Statues of Thought: In Honorem Professor Ivan Mladenov (2016).
References
Deely, John. 1990. Basics of Semiotics (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press).Search in Google Scholar
Deely, John. 1994. New Beginnings: Early Modern Philosophy and Postmodern Thought (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).Search in Google Scholar
Deely, John. 2001. Four Ages of Understanding: The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-First Century (Toronto Studies in Semiotics) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).10.3138/9781442675032Search in Google Scholar
Deely, John. 2004. “The semiosis of angels”, The Thomist, 68 (2): 205–258.10.1353/tho.2004.0027Search in Google Scholar
Deely, John. 2005. Defining the Semiotic Animal: A Postmodern Definition of “Human Being” to Supersede the Modern Definition as “res cogitans” (Sofia: Tip-Top Press).10.5840/acpq200579329Search in Google Scholar
Deely, John. 2010. Semiotic Animal: A Postmodern Definition of “Human Being” Transcending Patriarchy and Feminism (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press).Search in Google Scholar
© 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
