Though “semiotics” is a word coined only in the late 17th century—and used consistently and meaningfully beginning only in the late 19th—the study of signs and their actions goes back millennia. During those thousands of years, some of the most important contributions were made during the age often called “Medieval” (though it would be better termed “Latin”) and especially by the Scholastic thinkers. Listen to this two-part podcast as Brian Kemple joins Hunter Olson to discuss the key figures and ideas from this period.
And be sure to check out all the great interviews on the Dogs with Torches podcast!
Within current philosophy, David Clarke has made a belated attempted to define semiotic itself in the restrictive terms already established as proper to semiology: an “attempt to extend analogically features initially arrived at by examining language use to more primitive signs, with logical features of language becoming the archetype on which analysis of these latter signs is developed”. It is simply a misnomer to title a book based on such a thesis Principles of Semiotic. To try to reduce semiotic to the status of a subalternate discipline within the dimensions of current linguistic philosophy already evinces adherence to the modern perspectives of idealism which semiotics points beyond.
Among modern philosophers, the one who struggled most against the coils of idealism and in the direction of a semiotic, was Martin Heidegger. His failure to free himself from the modern logocentrism is, to be sure, a testimony to its pervasiveness in modern culture, and to the scale of the task semiotic in its fullest possibilities has to face. Yet in the debate between realism and idealism, he is the one who perhaps most clearly brough tot he fore the fact that, whatever its drawbacks and “no matter how contrary and untenable it may be in its results”, idealism “has an advantage in principle” over realism. That advantage lies in the simple fact that whenever we observe anything that observation already presupposes and rests within a semiosis whereby the object observed came to exist as object—that is to say, as perceived, experienced, or known—in the first place.
No one, including Heidegger, realizes this fact better than the semiotician. Indeed, at the heart of semiotics is the realization that the whole of human experience, without exception, is an interpretive structure mediated and sustained by signs. So it is perhaps not surprising that much of the original semiotic development in our time has taken place along the tracks and lines of a classical idealism in the modern sense, an environment and climate of thought within which the structuralist analysis of texts and narratives is particularly comfortable.
Yet we are entitled to wonder if such a perspective is enough to allow for the full development of the possibilities inherent in the notion of a doctrine of signs—to wonder if the “way of signs” does not lead outside of and well beyond the classical “way of ideas” of which Locke also spoke. We are entitled to wonder if what we need is not rather, as the recent collaborative monograph by Anderson et al. calls for, “a semiotics which provides the human sciences with a context for reconceptualizing foundations and for moving along a path which, demonstrably, avoids crashing headlong into the philosophical roadblock thrown up by forced choices between realism and idealism, as though this exclusive dichotomy were also exhaustive of the possibilities of interpreting human experience”.
Such a development seems to be what is taking place in the tradition of semiotic. This tradition, in fact, given its name by Locke, had reached the level of explicit thematic consciousness and systematically unified expression only very late—as far as we currently know, not before the Tractatus de Signis essay in 1632 by the Iberian philosophy of Portuguese birth, John Poinsot.
On 26 November 2022 at 11am ET (see event times around the world here and join the live Q&A here), Dr. Brian Kemple will present on “Poinsot: The Essence of the Sign”. Dr. Kemple holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of St. Thomas, in Houston TX, where he wrote his dissertation under the inimitable John Deely. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Lyceum Institute.
Philosophical interests and areas of study include: Thomas Aquinas, John Poinsot, Charles Peirce, Martin Heidegger, the history and importance of semiotics, scholasticism, phenomenology; as well as ancillary interests in the liberal arts, technology, and education as a moral habit. He has published two scholarly books—Ens Primum Cognitum in Thomas Aquinas and the Tradition (Brill: 2017) and The Intersections of Semiotics and Phenomenology: Peirce and Heidegger in Dialogue (De Gruyter: 2019), as well as a number of scholarly articles, popular articles, and his own Introduction to Philosophical Principles: Logic, Physics, and the Human Person (2019; 2nd edition 2022) and the forthcoming Linguistic Signification: A Classical Course in Grammar and Composition (2021).
2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website
This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.
Due to unforeseen yet gratifying work commitments, Professor Doctor Javier Clavere requested a postponement of the lecture entitled “Anthroposemiosis, Augustine, Poinsot, Peirce and Deely and the Production of Human Knowledge and Experience”, the date of which shall be made public as soon as possible.
To all of you we beg for understanding, and please be tuned to the Auditorium on our website (https://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief/act/io2s/auditorium/) as well as our email announcements, especially but not only if you intended to participate in today’s session.
To you all, we extend our heartfelt gratitude for what is proving to be a breathtakingly rewarding year of joint learning on semiotics and celebrating the memory of John Deely.
Godspeed, semioticians.
On 12 November 2022 at 11am ET (see event times around the world here and join the live Q&A here), Javier Clavere will present on “Anthroposemiosis, Augustine, Poinsot, Peirce, and Deely”. Dr. Clavier holds the Mary W. McGaw Endowed Chair in Music at Berea College, and is an award-winning performer and scholar that crosses over the worlds of keyboard performance, music theory, music technology, sacred music, and semiotics. As a polymath, his research interests include semiotics, systems theory, entrepreneurship and the arts, semioethics, Stoicism and Christianity, sacred music and signs, popular music and semiotics, Foucault studies, semiotics and globalization, multi-modality, and the semiotics of educational processes. As an artist, Javier has performed in many prestigious concert series across the United States, South America and Europe performing with orchestras, in solo recitals and chamber music.
His research in educational leadership includes peace and conflict resolution-transformation through the arts, as well as leadership in systemic change, diversity and inclusion, higher education administration, assessment in higher education, and strategic program design. He is a member of the Diversity Scholars Network (DSN) and the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID), as well as a fellow at the University of Michigan, the New Leadership Academy, the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education, and the Salzburg Global Seminar’s “Culture, Arts and Society programs”, (Conflict Transformation Through Culture: Peace-building and the Arts), Salzburg, Austria.
In 2019, the government of his hometown, Rosario, Argentina, along with the state senate, recognized his professional accomplishments with a lifetime achievement award as a “Distinguished Musician.” The legislature, in an official governmental motion, ratified the award by vote and awarded Clavere at the Espacio Cultural Universitario of the National University of Rosario, Argentina.
Commentary will be provided by António Manuel Martins, Full Professor at the University of Coimbra and a member of both the Institute for Philosophical Studies and the Institut International de Philosophie. His main area of activity is Philosophy. His main research interests are: theories of justice; Ancient Philosophy; ethics; and epistemology. Expertise in: Philosophical Systems; Greek Philosophy; and Theory of Justice. Presently he is working on: Hellenistic Philosophies; Aristotle; Causality; and Categories. His book Logic and Ontology in Pedro da Fonseca (in Portuguese), jointly published in 1994 by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the now dissolved National Board for Scientific and Technological Research (Junta Nacional de Investigação Científica e Tecnológica), remains a seminal source for the latest studies on the Coimbra philosophical tradition.
Join the Live Q&A here.
2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website
This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.
On 10 September 2022, at 10am ET (see event times around the world here and join the live Q&A here), Mário Santiago de Carvalho will present on the tradition of semiotics connecting John Deely and Sebastião do Couto. Carvalho is Full Professor at the FLUC – Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, Scientific Coordinator of the Research & Development Unit IEF – Institute for Philosophical Studies, and author of more than 200 philosophy titles (among articles and monographs), published in Portuguese, English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Romanian and Mandarin; see: Scholarly Bibliography. He has already taught at several universities (in Porto, Lisbon, Azores, Salamanca, Luxembourg, Sun Yat-sen and České Budějovice), and, besides Portugal, he has been summoned to PhD examinations in Salamanca, Paris, Leuven and Macerata. In his teaching and research activity, Mário S. de Carvalho privileges the history of philosophy, metaphysics, and the philosophy of music. He is the director of the international online series Conimbricenses.org, as well as the coordinator of the bilingual edition of the “Jesuit Coimbra Course,” currently being edited by the Coimbra University Press.
Commentator: Hélène Leblanc
Hélène Leblanc is a historian of philosophy and of semiotics, working mostly on the Late Scholasticism of the 16th and 17th centuries, and on the Austro-German tradition, involving authors such as B. Bolzano, F. Brentano, E. Husserl, A. Marty, A. Meinong, and L. Wittgenstein. She has strong interests in philosophy of language and mind. In 2015, she earned her PhD on semiotic theories in Early Modern Philosophy, under the supervision of Philippe Hamou (Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense) and Giulia Belgioioso (Università del Salento – Lecce). Her major scientific achievement is her monograph on semiotic theories in the seventeenth century, titled Théories sémiotiques à l’âge classique (Vrin, 2021). She has also written several articles especially 1) on Scholastic and Early Modern philosophy and 2) on the Austro-German tradition. She collaborates with the ARC Schol’Art at the GEMCA, UCLouvain. This project, at the crossroad of History of art, French literature, and Neo-Latin literature, aims at highlighting the scholastic background of these fields. She is also a founding member of Inbegriff – Geneva Seminar for Austro-German Philosophy and she is a Co-editor of Studia Philosophica, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Philosophie, (with Janette Friedrich and Michael Festl).
2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website
This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.
The Latin Age of philosophy was one of the most productive, systematic, and insightful times of intellectual inquiry in human history—despite the oft-given reductive and willfully-ignorant treatment that labels all between the fall of Rome and the rise of the Renaissance as the “Dark Ages”—for which the first major figure was Augustine of Hippo. Most well-known for his Confessions and City of God, works both of a deeply spiritual yet profoundly philosophical nature, Augustine was a contributor the tradition in many other ways, including but not limited to his definition of the sign and distinction of signs into natural and given.
On 15 January 2022 at 11am ET (4pm UTC – check times around the world here), Dr. Brian Kemple (Lyceum Institute) will give a lecture on Augustine’s contribution as well as his errors, and discuss what Augustine’s work provides us both in its historical significance and its overall importance for an understanding of semiotics. Dr. Remo Gramigna will provide commentary. This presentation is open to the public and can be watched below (live as well as recorded).
2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website
This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.
Exercitium in Lingua Latina (2:00-2:30pm ET). Legemus ex Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata ut melioremus nostrum locutionem et augeamus familiaritatem vocabulis.
4/27 Tuesday
Ex Sancto Thoma Legimus (10:00-10:30am ET). Legemus ex Sancto Thoma et convertit in linguam Anglicam; practicum bonum et utile est!
Philosophical Happy Hour (5:30-7:00pm ET). Join us for drinks, conversation, lively debates, and get to know the Lyceum Institute and its members! Open to the public: all guests can use the “Send Us a Message” form here (write “Happy Hour” in the message box). We’ll be talking about philosophical psychology and its insight into the current instabilities of society.
4/28 Wednesday
Inquirere Session (9:30-10:30am ET). Our monthly Inquirere session for the Quaestiones Disputatae. In addition to the responses on current questions, there will be some discussion of the new structure.
Exercitium Lingua Latina (2:00-2:30pm ET). Legemus ex Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata ut melioremus nostrum locutionem et augeamus familiaritatem vocabulis.
4/29 Thursday
Ex Sancto Thoma Legimus (10:00-10:30am ET). Legemus ex Sancto Thoma et convertit in linguam Anglicam; practicum bonum et utile est!
4/30 Friday
Open Chat (9:30-10:15am ET). Our regular Friday-morning open chat, allowing conversation between those in the West and those in the East–bridging the international community of the Lyceum Institute.
Exercitium in Lingua Latina (11pm-12am ET). Etiam exercitium in Lingua Latina! Ista hora conveniens Orientalibus est (11am Manila time).
5/1 Saturday
Latin Class(10-11am ET). Legemus ex capitulo XIV in Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata et convertemus in linguam Anglicam. In istud capitulum de participiis cogitabimus!
Seminar Discussion Sessions. First, Semiotics: The Tractatus de Signis of John Poinsot will investigate the nature of concepts as formal signs (engaging in a careful discussion about the meaning and the nature of “formal awareness”); and second, Politics: Postmodern Culture and Principle will continue our inquiry into Jacques Maritain’s Integral Humanism, seeking an understanding of how his anthropological approach extends itself into our politics.
Exercitium in Lingua Latina (2:00-2:30pm ET). Legemus ex Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata ut melioremus nostrum locutionem et augeamus familiaritatem vocabulis.
4/13 Tuesday
Exercitium in Lingua Latina (10:00-10:30am ET). Legemus ex Sancto Thoma et convertit in linguam Anglicam; practicum bonum et utile est!
Philosophical Happy Hour (5:30-7:00pm ET). We’re back to Happy Hours! Happy Easter! Join us for drinks, conversation, lively debates, and get to know the Lyceum Institute and its members! Open to the public: tell your friends to use the “Send Us a Message” form here (write “Open Chat” in the message box) and we’ll see them on Teams! Dr. Kemple will be talking about the preservation and transmission of knowledge, which is to say (according to the original meaning of the word), small-t tradition–handing down not the matter of thought (books and words and “information”), but its form as well.
04/14 Wednesday
Exercitium in Lingua Latina (2:00-2:30pm ET). Legemus ex Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata ut melioremus nostrum locutionem et augeamus familiaritatem vocabulis.
4/15 Thursday
Exercitium in Lingua Latina (10:00-10:30am ET). Legemus ex Sancto Thoma et convertit in linguam Anglicam; practicum bonum et utile est!
4/16 Friday
Open Chat (9:30-10:30am ET). Our regular Friday-morning open chat, allowing conversation between those in the West and those in the East–part of the truly international nature of the Lyceum Institute. A good way to bring the thinking of one week to a close and launch into the next.
Latin (11pm-12am ET). An additional Latin class, suitable for those in Asia and other time zones (11am Manila time).
4/17 Saturday
No Latin Class. Taking a week off! We could all use a new break. Additionally, Richard Sharpe will be taking over as our resident Latin Fellow starting on 4/24.
Seminar Discussion Sessions. Semiotics: The Tractatus de Signis of John Poinsot (first at 1:00pm ET and again at 8:30pm ET) will dive into a consideration of the sign-relations whereby objects specify powers. Second, Politics: Postmodern Culture and Principles–delayed last week–will step into a consideration of dialectical materialism with a through looking at the work of Marx and his politics.
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What is a sign? It is a deceptively difficult question–deceptive because we think we know when we have never bothered truly to ask the question. We believe that we see and hear signs everywhere: guiding our use of streets, telling us where to exit, the location of the bathroom, what dangers might lie ahead, and so on. But in truth, though we experience signification in this instances, the things we identify as the “signs”–the on the street corner, the plastic “EXIT” over a fire door, the nondescript white silhoutte of a representatively feminine shape over one door, the print of a large clawed mammal in soft dirt–are only a part of the signs that we experience.
And so, you now stand today on the edge of a road: a road little used and oft neglected for the previous four centuries, but for the occasional intrepid traveller—its development abandoned very nearly at this spot where you stand today. Where does it go—where ought it to go? And from where does it come? To answer the latter, we must know something of the former: and it is this knowledge that the seminar intends to provide, with indications for where the road leads and where it ought to lead.
First Lecture, “An Abbreviated History” – Preview
There are few works which have received less of the attention they deserve than the Cursus philosophicus of John Poinsot—more commonly known as John of St. Thomas, for his professed fidelity to the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. Within this cursus—a tome spanning 2348 pages—Poinsot addresses logic both formally and materially, as well as many intricacies of natural philosophy pertaining to physics, life, and psychology. But dispersed through these considerations there exists an implicit treatise, one concerned with an element essential to understanding not only topics logical but also natural; namely, the treatise on signs. This treatise was extracted, translated, edited, and compiled by John Deely (following a cue from Poinsot himself) and published in 1985 under the title Tractatus de Signis: The Semiotic of John Poinsot, with a second edition released in 2013.
In this seminar, lasting 8 weeks (see here for more information on all Lyceum Institute seminars), we will carefully survey this text we will discover the Way of Signs—that long-abandoned road—and thereby reclaim not only the history of thought abandoned by modernity but find a way forward past its recalcitrance to the realist thought of semiotics. The instructor for this seminar is Brian Kemple, PhD, the Executive Director of the Lyceum Institute. You can read more about Dr. Kemple here.
WHEN: Saturdays from 20 March through 8 May 2021, from 1:00-2:00pm [Session 1] and 8:30-9:30pm [Session 2] Eastern Time US.
WHERE: on the Lyceum Institute platform run through Microsoft Teams.
Lyceum Institute seminar costs are structured on a principle of financial subsidiarity. There are three payment levels, with discounts for those who are professors and clergy (whose continuing education is not sufficiently prioritized by their institutions) and for students (who are already taxed excessively by the educational system). However, if you are part of the working world and wish to take a seminar but cannot afford the “standard” rate, it is acceptable to sign up at one of these discounted prices. The idea is: pay what you can. Those who can pay more, should, so that those who cannot pay as much, need not. Lyceum Institute members receive a further discount (see here for details).
[2021 Spring] Semiotics: The Tractatus de Signis of John Poinsot – Standard
Includes full access to the seminar and a free month at the Lyceum Institute. Price is suggested for those with full-time employment.
$135.00
[2021 Spring] Semiotics: The Tractatus de Signis of John Poinsot – Professor / Clergy
Includes full access to the seminar and a free month at the Lyceum Institute. Discount is suggested for professional academics and clergy.
$85.00
[2021 Spring] Semiotics: The Tractatus de Signis of John Poinsot – Student
Includes full access to the seminar and a free month at the Lyceum Institute. Discount is suggested for students and others with part-time employment.
on the street corner, the plastic “
