Publication Details

Abstract

The author questions the traditional views of pragmatism and semiotics as having originated independently one from the other; i. e. that of Peirce creating semiotics first and pragmatism following afterwards, or vice versa. For him it seems more plausible that semiotics and pragmatism were just two parts of Peirce’s early project which brought together philosophy and science. This provided the basis for what has yet to be developed, namely the project of “semiotic pragmatism”, or, more generally, the “semioticization of philosophy”. The article outlines this very project, which R. Rorty had misunderstood and therefore completely ignored. The author contends that pace Rorty, the meaning of semiotics is as important to pragmatism as the meaning of pragmatism is to semiotics. He shows, however, how these two seemingly antagonistic versions of pragmatism could be reconciled.