Understanding World, Other, and Self beyond the Anthropological Paradigm

A Signo-Interpretational Approach

Martin Pasgaard-Westerman

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783110591132
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Language in Philosophy

Pasgaard-Westerman rethinks the ontological and epistemological understanding of world, other and self by opposing the general anthropological paradigm within contemporary philosophy.

Signs and interpretations are not functions of Man; instead Man is conceived as certain "signo-interpretational" relations to world, other and self. Opposing more traditional hermeneutical approaches the signo-interpretational relations towards world, other and self are understood as a "skeptical disposition". This skeptical disposition undercuts usual epistemological problems of skepticism and instead designates the permanent incompleteness of the process of interpretation and formulates an ethical imperative. This ethical imperative aims at an active dissolution of fixed signs; an openness towards other signs; and the holding back of definite interpretations.

The book discusses how world appear as a sign-world, how the other appear within interpretational patterns, and how our signs of self are experienced. Discussing a wide range of epistemological and ontological questions and taking into account the perspectives of a broad range of philosophical traditions, a signo-interpretational account of reality, world-versions, other persons and self is presented.

1 Interpretation – Man – Skepticism

1.1 The Interpretational Turn

Interpretation may be said to be a key notion if not the defining concept in contemporary philosophy. In addition to the well-known linguistic turn, we may describe contemporary philosophical endeavours in their cohesive awareness of the interpretational character of perception, language, cognition and actions, as an interpretational turn. Still, have we not always interpreted our being in the world, our perceptions and thoughts? Without doubt! However, the crux is that the turn towards interpretation as foundational to our being in the world is not a mere addition to our perceptive, cognitive, linguistic and acting faculties, but rather constitutive for the relation to world, other, and self. The point of departure is in other words, that perception, cognition, language and actions are always and already interpretative and world, other, and self therefore are but signs; at the same time given and in the making.

The primacy of interpretation in our relation to world, other, and self is unthinkable without a conception of the sign. A connection perhaps most concretely expressed in the early work of Peirce, namely in the initial double insight, that 1) “we have no power of thinking without signs”1; understood in the wider sense, that “whenever we think, we have present to the consciousness some feeling, image, conception, or other representation, which serves as a sign”2; and 2) that any sign is part of a triadic relation between sign, object and interpretant3, whereby thinking as such is an unlimited semiosis or an infinite process of sign-interpretations.4

The signo-interpretational philosophy is not solely abstract theorizing about the nature of thinking in general or the conduct of scientific research in particular, but rather concerns how world other, and self are fundamentally constituted and working. In some way or another interpretations and signs are basic components when we think, communicate, act and perceive. Interpretation is thus a general conception covering a broad variety of activities e. g. creating and phrasing an argument; deciphering a text; proposing a hypothesis; playing a game; engaging in a conversation; seeing; sensing; hearing; being attentive; acting; ordering and systematizing; recognizing, identifying, delineating, etc. Correspondingly, signs are understood in a broad sense as something being meaningful. As such everything is a sign in so far as it is understood as something – as this and this – as so and so. Even when we do not understand or when something occurs to us as being meaningless, it is still in this broad sense a sign, namely in the sense of something without meaning. A sign thus does not merely serve as a representation for something else, but broadly refers to everything which in some way or another is something specific.

The interpretational turn is not only evident in explicitly semiotic approaches, but is further regarded as a natural point of departure within a variety of philosophies spanning from existentialism, phenomenology and hermeneutics to contemporary philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and pragmatism; within literary criticism, cultural studies, anthropology and even particular branches of the natural sciences. Nonetheless, the interpretational turn is of a much older province than its contemporary upsurge suggests.5 It belongs within a much greater philosophical tradition, which can be traced back from its contemporary representatives to the classical works of the 19th and 20th century; from early modernity, medieval and scholastic theories to the ancient sources in Greek philosophy.6

Of course, one could argue that the breadth of the definition and the commitment to such a wide heir evades any analytical rigor and conceptual precision. Notwithstanding, the following is an attempt to determine the notion of interpretation further and to oppose the customary (if not completely automatized) appraisal that the concept of interpretation is much too widely defined in order to have any distinguishing function. Exactly because of its breadth, the notion of interpretation proves its value as a thorough philosophical concept; one might say: exactly proven by its already widespread use. Yet, while a historical trace-search and the inclusion of a broad scope of scientific disciplines and philosophical traditions are of great relevance and interest, the aim of the following concentrates solely on a further analysis and discussion of the philosophical notion of interpretation with point of departure in the absolute pinnacle of its philosophical scrutiny, viz. contemporary philosophy of signs and interpretations.

1.2 The Anthropological Paradigm

Alongside the interpretational turn a certain anthropological paradigm is evident within contemporary philosophy; a paradigm where the foremost philosophical interest is man. Again, it may be asked if not all philosophy, from the pre-socratic thinkers to present days, in some way or another, is about man? It is so! Yet, the anthropological paradigm manifest in major parts of contemporary philosophy sets man as the main concept to which everything else become secondary. It is possible to trace back this tendency to the early modernity,7 if not further, and regardless whether its contemporary rise is a direct result of a more general experience in “our time”, viz. the lack of a uniform idea of man (Scheler)8; or as a natural consequence of our increasingly autonomous epistemological stand9; it defines our present philosophical view and understanding of the world. As such I use “anthropological paradigm” as a general label in so far as the main concern is man whether positive or negative, hence comprising both the seemingly contradictory attempts to formulate a genuine philosophical anthropology10 as well as the endeavours to grasp thinking and world beyond any anchoring in anthropological categories altogether.

Now, in order to undercut the inherent dichotomies and dead-ends traditionally emerging within the philosophical anthropology and within the anti-anthropological approaches (e. g. Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault), another approach is proposed, namely that of an anthropological philosophy. With the title, anthropological philosophy, the focus is on philosophy, rather than on what counts as anthropological. It is thus more a label of a way of doing philosophy, than a title of a specific field within philosophy; a way of thinking which is mainly concerned about how man is thought. The main question within such an anthropological philosophy may thus be formulated in the traditional Kantian version: what is man?11 – albeit focusing on the very character of the question, rather than its possible answers. This question is posed by man and concerns man itself, whereby an initial self-referentiality is proposed and addressed at the same time. Consequently, a hesitant stand towards the very formulation of the question is taken: should we not rather ask who or how man is? Anthropological philosophy thus exceeds the scientific enquiries of man, which in its numerous descriptions of man’s distinctive physical, biological and neurological marks or cultural achievements necessarily presumes a determination of man in order to describe it. Further, the proposed anthropological philosophy exceeds the traditional philosophical anthropology, which understands man fundamentally as a living creature and thus with a phrase from Heidegger, in a sense already knows what man is, and therefore cannot ask how or who it is.12 Furthermore, the anthropological philosophy necessarily exceeds the futile engagement in receiving and answering the arrival of a Heideggerian being, i. e. the attempt to let thinking take place beyond any anchoring in man, whether this thinking is understood as “thinking of being”(Heidegger), deconstruction or discourse. The anthropological philosophy is in other words the overall endeavour to address the initial self-referentiality in the question about what, who or how man is, whereby the original matter is the self-interpretation(s) of man.

Whilst abstaining from speculating about the possible causes and interdependency of the surge of the interpretational turn and the anthropological paradigm, it is sufficient to state their simultaneous occurrence and reciprocity. Hölderlin’s famous line “We are a sign, impossible to interpret”;13 Peirce’s concept of man as a sign14; Nietzsche’s characterization of man as sign-inventing being;15 or Cassirer’s definition of man as animal symbolicum;16 may stand out as exemplary cases, yet the interchange of the turn towards interpretation and signs on the one hand and the rise in philosophical enquiries of man on the other hand, is evidently a general tendency. However, although thinking man as an interpretative and semiotic being, a certain naturalism is nonetheless manifest within this tendency, namely a naturalistic understanding of sign and interpretation and thus of man. I set apart a conception of naturalism in a narrow and a broad sense. In a narrow sense, naturalism is equivalent to a form of materialism where man is comprehensible in all its aspects by means of explanations and descriptions carried out within the scope of the natural sciences. In a broad sense, naturalism is the understanding of man as a living creature and as such part of life or nature, within which man’s nature is seen in relation to life as a whole, whether understood teleologically, as strive for preservation, fight for survival or generally as biological, cognitive, psychological and cultural evolution. Now, the naturalistic tendency within the effort of conceiving man as an interpretational and semiotic being corresponds to this latter broad sense of naturalism. It is evident in a predominant figure of grasping man as well as the act of interpretation and the particular signs on the basis of some initial life-sustaining needs. This naturalism is not only consistent with explicit materialistic-evolutionary conceptions of man, but further constitutive in philosophies normally regarded as de-naturalized approaches, such as phenomenology and hermeneutics. Here a certain naturalization is evident exactly in the anthropological categories of finitude, deficiency, alienation, vulnerability, openness, contingency and chaos on the one hand and categories of compensation, reconciliation, mastering, individuating and ordering on the other hand. These anthropological categories all repeat a certain understanding of the man-world relation consequent of a more fundamental naturalistic explanation of man as an instinct-lacking animal or an incomplete being in need of compensations. Perhaps this naturalism lies inherent in the notions of interpretation and sign – namely as an inherent naturalistic suggestion, when conceiving interpretation and sign as functions. Interpretation is thus traditionally “explanation of” or “clarification of”17, i. e. an act with the goal or function of explaining or clarifying something as “something”. In a similar vein, the sign is originally seen – from Parmenides to contemporary semiotics – as having an epistemic function, whether serving as proof (Parmenides), prognosis (Hippocrates), indication (Cicero), medium of knowledge (Augustine, Leibniz), communication (Hobbes, Locke), expression of meaning (Frege, Wittgenstein), intentionality (Husserl), showing, orientation (Heidegger), linguistic value (Saussure), trace (Derrida) or social code (Eco).18 On the basis of such functionalistic understandings, both interpretation and sign adhere to a wider naturalistic perspective as functions of life without further difficulty. This kind of naturalism is predominantly apparent in the various philosophical anthropologies from Scheler, Gehlen and Plessner to contemporary enquiries as a double determination of man as both natural (“life” or “animal”) and transcending this mere natural “animal being”, regardless that the “animal being” is thought a-substantial and regardless how this “more”, this secondary quality, is understood.19 The main problem within this naturalistic scheme is that any self-determination becomes nothing but an arbitrary and intelligible addition to our animal/natural being.20 Yet, that we are such animals/natural beings is taken as a matter of fact and not questioned further. The assignment is in contrast to think man’s self-determination beyond the duality of a “natural” and a “conceptual”/ “intelligible” layer and therefore not to add yet another secondary quality to our fundamental “animal” being, but rather to elaborate that what we understand as natural and how we understand ourselves as animal or life, are also merely interpretations, i. e. certain self-determinations and as such man-signs.

1.3 The Skeptical Challenge

Together the interpretational turn and the anthropological paradigm echo the increasing attention to not only specific skeptical problems within an epistemological perspective, but also the renewed concentration on skepticism as a general method of philosophical enquiry and/or skepticism as way of life. When everything, which is, is by way of interpretation, then any ontological difference is abandoned in favour of a signo-interpretational difference and any idea of the “real” or “things themselves” is not only unattainable but as such futile concepts. The interpretational turn describes that when everything is understood as merely interpretations, then everything could have been different. When furthermore every interpretation is bound to man as interpreter, yet even this self-referential proposition is nothing but interpretation, we face an augmen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Interpretation – Man – Skepticism
• 2 Philosophy of Signs and Interpretations
• 3 Self-Referentiality as Signo-Interpretational Process
• Part I “Who Interprets?” Agent, Process and the Ending of the Semiosis
• Part II Man as Signo-interpretational Being – The Skeptical Disposition towards World, Other, and Self
• Literature
• Subject index
• Index of names