730
Geschichtsschreibung dcr Semintik
34. History and historiography of semiotics
1. On the subject matter
1.1. Natural versus human sciences
1.2. Semiotics
1.3. Reasons for an ostracism
2. Sources
2.1. Explicit general semiotics
2.2. Explicit particular semiotics
2.3. Cosmological semiotics
2A. Implicit semiotics
2.5. Insights from semiosic experiences
3. The comparability of theories
3.1. An example: symbol � a web of
ambiguities
3.2. Greece
3.3. Mediaeval pan-semiotic metaphysics
3A. Scriptural interpretation
3.5. The Thomistic reaction
3.6. Dante
3.7. Renaissance Hermetism
4. Secondary sources
5. Conclusion
6. Selected references
6.1. Sources
6.2. Secondary literature
I. On the subject matter
A history of semiotics should be a critical
survey of all the cases in which a given au­
thor or a group of authors have explicitly or
implicitly dealt with the proper object of
semiotics.
111is definition sounds merely truistic since
one knows that there is a continuing debate
on the definition of the object. It would cer­
tainly be sufficient to accept the guideline
proposed by the editors of this Handbook
(cf. Art. 1) and to recognize as a characteriza­
tion of the proper object of semiotics the no­
tion of sign. Semiotics should therefore be
identified as a theoretical approach to the no­
tion of sign. In this sense a semiotic investiga­
tion is witnessed every time someone is theo­
retically concerned with the definition of
signs, their structure and function, and the
processes in which signs are involved. In
other words it could be said that a history of
semiotics is interested in all the cases in which
an author critically focuses on the process of
semiosis and/or the sign-systems that make
semiosis possible. Every instance of such crit­
ical attention can then be defined as a (partial
or global) semiotic approach. The historian
is entitled to consider also the cases in which
the semiotic approach is neither systematic
nor explicitly presented as such but meets
V.
certain requirements of originality, perc¢ptiv­
ity, and suggestive force.
Unfortunately, those attempting to inYesti­
gate semiotic ideas can easily discover that
many authors who arc certainly concerned
with signs (at least from the point of view of
the investigator) (i) do not mention the ,.:-on­
cept of sign; (ii) challenge the very notic111 of
sign; (iii) say that semiotics is concerned with
something different from signs; (iv) maintain
that signs are only a subspecies of semiotic
entities and that semiotics concerns a broader
field of interrelated phenomena; (v) blatantly
deny the existence of a unified field of mter­
ests labelled as semiotics; (vi) are polemically
assuming that their approach has nothing to
do with semiotics.
1. l. Natural versus human sciences
The natural sciences are in a better situation.
Take for instance the case of chemistry (cf.
Art. 135). The members of the scientific com­
munity have a clear idea about the nature of
chemical phenomena as they are recognized
and studied today. They also know where
their discipline overlaps other sciences, that
is, they know that there are certain bound­
aries to their science which remain or are
increasingly becoming sub iudice, and others
that are definitely accepted as unchallenge­
able (at least until the unpredictable adwnt
of change of paradigm). Thus a historian of
chemistry knows that he can take into ac­
count the history of alchemy insofar as Iii it
represents a series of unscientific attempts
which encouraged or delayed the arrival of
modern chemistry, (ii) it can be revisited in
order to discover that it in some way posired
problems which are still unsolved or suggest
possible criticism to the present state of the
art.
The humanities enjoy (or suffer fromJ a
different situation, for here the state of the
art as a whole is constantly in question , .:f.
Art. 33). The natural sciences are bodie� �1f
notions that can be studied and enlarged ::1-
dependently of their own history. It is p,Js�
sible to be a good researcher in chemistry ( if
probably not the best mind in the field) wuh­
out knowing the story of the now obsoltte
phlogiston theory. It is impossible for a gol•d
student in historiography to ignore the hi:-­
tory of historiography, just at it is impossibl e
for a good cultural anthropologist to ign�'tl'
 34. History and historiography
the way in which the first European explorers
approached and described non-European
cultures. The erroneous theory of phlogiston
did not affect the present structure of physi­
cal bodies, while the behavior of Hernando
Cortez, of Walter Raleigh or of the Jesuit
missionaries affected the actual structure of
non-European societies. A human science is
always obliged to comprehend its own his­
tory.
The development of the natural sciences is
cumulative but very seldom does such a cu­
mulation proceed by a piling up of notions:
usually a science proceeds by subtraction and
addition. At every step certain notions are re­
jected as obsolete, some are radically revised,
many are added ex nova. In the natural sci­
ences it is clear what has been rejected and
what has been added, and according to the
dominant paradigm it is unusual to recover a
rejected scientific principle. It is improbable
that modern astronomers will return to the
Ptolemaic system; at most one rediscovers
neglected ideas and cautiously considers the
possibility of alternative approaches (for in­
stance, Chinese acupuncture can be seriously
·'·'.�
considered as complementary to some pro­
cedures of Western medicine).
In the human sciences the process is far
more ambiguous. From an idealistic point of
view the history of a discipline, like history
as the whole process of human events, has
been seen as a dialectics between revision and
reformulation: human thinking challenges an
old idea and produces a new one which, in a
certain sense, does not destroy the previous
one but re-elaborates it at a higher degree of
theoretical awareness.
Modern historians are less confident in a
linear progress of both human thought and
social history. It is readily agreed that con­
temporary physics is better (more explana­
tory) than Greek physics, but any ethical or
political science can today discover that the
Greek idea of polis or the Aristotelian idea of
prudence are still more appropriate that
many modern doctrines. The idea of eros in
Plato is not necessarily obsolete if compared
with the idea of eras in de Sade. The most
advanced contemporary views on rhetoric
are more similar to the classical views than
to those of the I 9th century.
The human sciences have dealt with these
problems in various ways. A historian of
historiography can start from the very toler­
ant assumption that there is historiography
every time an author relates what has hap-
731
pened in a given part of the world. FurtherM
more the historian will be interested in distin­
guishing between different ways of telling the
past, different criteria for ascertaining the
historical truth, for trusting or distrusting
traditional data, or for identifying a docu­
ment as being authentic. However, he will
probably not deny that Xenophon and Thu­
cydides ought to be duly considered in the
first chapters of his work, and that Homer
should be discussed in a chapter on the bor­
derlines between historiography, myth and
poetry (cf. Art. 147 as well as Art. 89 § 6.1.).
A historian of philosophy will have a more
difficult task (cf. Art. 40, 49, 62, and 74). Ac­
cording to present standards, Aristotle was
undoubtedly a philosopher (even though it is
debatable whether his Historia animalium is
as philosophical or less or more philosophical
than his Rhetorics). Porphyry's Isagoge is a
philosophical text but few histories of philos­
ophy take into account his De antro Nympha­
rum, which appears to be a piece of literary
criticism ante litteram or of mythological in­
terpretation. In spite of this common opin­
ion, De antro Nympharum had a remarkable
impact on the development of the allegorical
tradition, and within this tradition many
philosophical problems were debated, from
Philo of Alexandria to contemporary and
modern hermeneutics.
What should a historian of philosophy do
with an author who speaks against philoso­
phy? Certainly the historian can decide, on
the grounds of an explicit theoretical assump­
tion, that even the assertion "philosophy is
impossible" is a philosophical one. As for au­
thors who do not define themselves as philo­
sophers, the historian can decide that, in the
light of his own preliminary definition of phi­
losophy, they are in fact contributing to the
progress of philosophical research, or that
they have in some way profoundly influenced
other philosophical theories. But he must
also decide how indirect an influence can be
tolerated in order to be recognized as a 'phil­
osophical' influence. Comenius's thought was
undoubtedly influenced by the death of his
wife and children during the Thirty Years'
War but no one would recognize these events
as having had a philosophical influence.
However, Comenius was also influenced by
the Rosicrucian controversy. Is the RosicruM
cian utopia a philosophical matter? Should
the Fama and the Confessio (cf. Andreae
1614-15 = 1972-73) be quoted and ana­
lyzed within a history of philosophy' Alchc-
732
mists call themselves "The Philosophers",
even when they are only speaking of practical
procedures for distilling herbs. Is that termi­
nological self-appointment a sufficient reason
for devoting a consisten·t chapter to them?
Most of the histories of philosophy either ig­
nore them, or mention them only in passing.
On the other hand, the same handbooks deal
consistently with mystics, or with scientists
who have never proclaimed themselves to be
philosophers.
Thus a history of philosophy usually opens
with a sort of comprehensive, tolerant and
frequently tentative definition of its own ob­
ject, and deals with different, if not mutually
incompatible ideas of philosophy. In other
cases the historian assumes that the subject
matter of philosophy is the ens in quantum
ens, and drastically reduces the scope of his
reconstruction.
However, a historian of philosophy is
helped by the fact that - at least from the
time of Aristotle - when people argue about
the definition of philosophy they use the
name, and are generally agreed that philo­
sophers do indeed exist. Moreover, people
continue to follow the Greek tradition in
their acceptance of the idea that philosophy
is a way, albeit obscure and never definitely
defined, of approaching our human experi­
ence.
A more dubious case is that of a history
of aesthetics (cf. Art. 50, 63, 75). Aesthetics
as a discipline, or at least as the investigation
of a certain field of phenomena, is a rather
recent approach and the word itself was only
coined during the 18th century. Naturally,
since we know that America existed long be­
fore it was discovered and named, we are en­
titled to ask what happened beyond the At­
lantic ocean before Columbus' travels: we ac­
cept the idea of a history of the American
continent before its so-called discovery. But
a discipline is not a continent. In order to
say that Plato speaking of the beauty of the
natural world, Aristotle speaking of the rules
for a good tragedy and Pseudo-Longinus
speaking of the feelings aroused by poetry
were all discussing aesthetic problems (with­
out using such a denomination), the historian
must provide a definition of aesthetics. We
know how controversial any definition of
aesthetics can be. Croce (1902) assumed that
aesthetics is the philosophical speculation
about creative intuition or about "the lyrical
expression of human feelings": thus his his­
torical reconstruction of the discipline takes
V. Gcschichtsschreibung dcr Semiotik
int? serious c?nsideration oply those cases in
wh1ch .
the .obJect of �esthet1cs comcide
_ s with
philosophical reflectron on art, and disposes
of every theory of natural beauty and practi:
cally every theory of art before Baumgarten
as a sort of naive attempt to discover the verv
nature of aesthetic experience.
On the other hand, Bosanquet (189"·
ch. l) assumes that even if "it was not bef'o�
the latter half of the eighteenth century thai
the term 'Aesthetics' was adopted with the
meaning now recognized [...} the thing ex­
isted before the name [...]. If, then. 'Aesthet­
ics' means the Philosophy of the Beautiful.
the History of Aesthetics must mean the His­
tory of the Philosophy of the Beautiful; and
it must accept as its immediate subject-matter
the succession of systematic theories b,·
which philosophers have attempted to ex­
plain or connected together the facts that re­
late to beauty".
Notwithstanding, Bosanquet was bound to
the reconstruction of explicitly philosophical
views, and had a very peculiar idea of what
a philosophical discourse is. Thus he devoted
no more than ten pages to the period from
Augustine to Dante. De Bruyne (I 946) wrote
three impressive volumes on the same period
which showed that important ideas about
artistic, natural and divine beauty, as well as
about artistic procedures, can be found in the
work of the Schoolmen, of the rhetoricians.
of the artists reflecting on their own work. In
this sense De Bruyne not only wrote a history
of philosophical doctrines, but also of gene­
ral aesthetic sensibility and of the implicit
theoretical awareness displayed by artists
concerned with the nature of their practical
activity.
In spite of the many difficult methodologi­
cal choices that historians of aesthetics must
make, there are at least two facts that can
help them: even though the sense of many
terms has changed during the course of his­
tory, it is certain that Western culture has con­
stantly spoken of the experience of Beauty and
of the practice of Art. Certainly the Greek.
Latin, and Mediaeval cultures did not distin­
guish between art, crafts and technique, and
frequently did not clearly distinguish between
the beautiru! and the merely pleasurable.
However the historian is entitled to identify
an aesthetic discussion every time a given au­
thor speaks in terms of beauty or of art.
1.2. Semiotics
Semiotics is in an even more difficult situa­
tion because of a double embarassment:
(i) modern semioticians are still questioning
34. History and historiography
the main categories of the field and (ii) there
has been no common agreement in the course
of so-called semiotic investigations about a
reduced list of basic categories (as happened
for art and beauty in aesthetics).
With regard to (i), many contemporary au­
thors (for instance, Malmberg 1977: 21) have
decided to call every element representing
something else "a symbol" and to retain the
term "sign" to refer to "those units which,
like the signs of language, have a double ar­
ticulation and owe their existence to an act
of signification." Prieto (1966) has widened
the field of sign analysis by documenting the
existence of systems without articulation and
systems which have only a single articulation.
Buyssens (1943) maintains that for a semiotic
theory the format of the sign is far too min­
ute and that the problems of communication
must be investigated at least on the level of
larger units called "semes", which correspond
to sentences if not, as some would say today,
to large textual units (see Kristeva 1969:
69 fl). Cassirer ( 1923-29) identifies general
semiotics with a theory of every symbolic
form. Harman (1977: 23) says that general
theories of signs like that of Peirce "comprise
at least three rather different subjects: a the­
ory of the intended meaning, a theory of evi­
dence, and a theory of pictorial depiction".
As for (ii), the sign was not a comprehen­
sive semiotic category from the beginning of
Western thought (not to speak of other civili­
zations; cf. Art. 89-99). From early Greek
thought until Augustine there is a sharp divi­
sion between semeia (let us call them "natural
signs") and on6mata (linguistic signs or
words); see for instance Eco 1984: 26-34.
Many scholars today recognize that the
Sophists (cf. Untersteiner I 949-54) elabo­
rated in their own terms the first approach to
pragmatics, and at least from the time of
Morris (1938) there has been a line of
thought ranking pragmatics among the
branches of semiotics: but the Sophists -
who were interested in language - were not
interested in sc-;meTa as elementary linguistic
units, but rather in the perlocutionary force
of discourses.
In the Hippocratic tradition and subse­
quently in Galen (cf. Galen 1821-33 and Ed­
low 1977) there are many important observa­
tions about symptoms, but no attention was
given to linguistic phenomena. (Galen would
undoubtedly have been surprised to learn
that his ti:cl111i! stmehJtikiJ was connected with
the study of language.)
733
As for a comparison between (i) and (ii),
many contemporary authors complain about
the undue extension of the notion of linguis­
tic sign to other semiotic systems (for in­
stance Segre 1969: 43) while others (see Eco
1984: ch. l), maintain that the opposite hap­
pened, namely. that at the beginning there
was the original concept of a natural and
nonlinguistic sign which was further ex­
tended in order to explain even linguistic phe­
nomena.
If such is the state of the art, a historian
of semiotics must initially spell out what he
is looking for in the course of his exploration
through different disciplines and mutually
conflicting theories.
Let us say that semiotics is a Doctrine of
Signs (for historical reasons for this choice
see Jakobson 1974 and Sebeok 1976). But in
order to proceed in this direction one should
provide a very tolerant notion of sign to take
into account even those approaches where
the notion of sign is either ignored or chal­
lenged.
A starting point could be the assumption
made by Jakobson (1974) when opening the
First Congress of the International Associa­
tion for Semiotic Studies. Semiotics is any
type of study interested in a "relation de ren­
voi" ('a relation of referral'): wherever aliquid
stat pro aliquo there is a semiotic problem.
This definition is not dissimilar from that of
Peirce (1931-66: § 2.228.), according to
which a sign is "something which stands to
somebody for something in some respect or
capacity". The word dog stands for some­
thing else in the same way as the whole Iliad
stands for a series of facts, feelings and val­
ues. At this point, no preliminary decision is
necessary as to whether the something else is
a state of affairs, a thing, a truth or an idea, a
third-world entity, or a cultural unit resulting
from the ideal segmentation of our world ex­
perience.
Neither is it important to reach a prelimi­
nary decision as to what is the format of any
something which stands for something else.
In order to recognize a relation of referral it
is irrelevant whether the referring unit is a
minimal element (like a lcxematic unit in verM
bal language) or a maximal textual body. A
straight line in Euclidean geometry is as
much a sign as the Sistine Chapel. A simple
communicational strategy (like a courtesy
gesture) is as much a sign as a complex ritual.
This does not mean that semiotic theories
are not interested in ascertaining when semi-
734
otic units can be split into minor constituent
clements. Ii only means that one is entitled to
recognize primafacie a semiotic phenomenon
every time one witnesses a relation of refer�
ral, and a semiotic investigation every time
an author is concerned with the nature of
such relations (cf. Art. l -4).
Such a tolerant notion of sign can entitle
a historian to explore the whole of human
culture in order to identify all the cases in
which a relation of referral has become the
object of theoretical awareness, irrespective
of whether such an awareness is the explicit
subject matter of a theory, or should be in­
ferred by the historian as an evident back­
ground assumption and/or as the unavoid�
able consequence of other discourses.
1.3. Reasons for an ostracism
It seems rather evident that human cultural
life (not to speak of more controversial phe­
nomena taking place in the processing of in­
formation machines, in animal or vegetal so­
cieties, or at inter-organic levels) is mainly
based upon referral relations (cf. Posner
l 989). In other words it seems obvious that
the ability to produce, exchange and under­
stand signs represents a central feature of
mankind (so that even when one speaks of
semiosic processes in machines or animals,
one can do so in so far as one compares them
to a higher human semiosic behavior).
At the beginning of Western philosophical
speculation, when Aristotle establishes that
the subject matter of his "first philosophy" is
Being, the definition of such an object is a
semiotic one. It is told in Metaphysics (IV
l003 a2l ff) that "there is a science which
studies Being qua Beinf' and that "ro Os 6v
Uysra, µiv ,ro)J,aK6s", that is, that Being
is what is said in different ways. This state­
ment can be taken as the simple symptom of
a linguistic difficulty but can also be taken as
the assertion that Being is a semiotic effect.
In both cases, at the dawn of Western philo­
sophical speculation, there is a semiotic ques­
tion, and this question concerns the basic re­
lationship of thought, being, and language.
This should have been sufficient to show how
indispensable the existence of a discipline
studying every instance of such a constitutive
relationship is.
It cannot be said that this problem has
been eluded in the course of the following
two thousand years. But it is interesting to
note that it was not usually approached un­
der the heading of semiotics. Every time an
V. Geschichtsschreibung der Scmiotik
author has proposed a Doctrine of Signs or
even a name like semiology or semiotics (and
the list of such proposals is impressively
large, from Roger Bacon to Wilkins, from
Locke to Peirce and Husserl), the proposal
has been further repressed (in the Freudian
sense of Verdriingung).
The task of a history of semiotics is to re�
discover the various discussions on the na­
ture and function of semiosis, but its duty is
also to show: (i) when a given theory was in
some way transversally obsessed by the semi­
otic problem without daring to recognize it
as such; (ii) when a given theory explicitly ad­
vocated semiotic endeavor and the subse­
quent interpretations of that theory focused
only on its non-semiotic aspects (as was the
case of Locke and of many interpreters of
Peirce); (iii) why in both cases the semiotic
awareness was repressed.
A history of semiotics could then become
either the story of a millenary attempt to
avoid a definite commitment to the central
problem of human experience or the explana­
tion of the reasons why such a commitment
is far too difficult, or even impossible.
2. Sources
We should now decide what is meant by im­
plicit and explicit primary semiotic sources.
2.1. Explicit general semiotics
Certain authors have explicitly recognized
semiosis and signs as phenomena which recur
in the whole of culture (and maybe of nature)
and have chosen these phenomena to be the
main subject of their inquiry (or a relevant
part of it). Thus they have outlined a general
theory of signs or a project for it, considering
su.ch a theory as a crucial node for the human
sciences. The Stoics, Augustine, Roger Ba­ f,
con, Kircher, Locke, Lambert, Peirce, Saus­
sure, Hjclmslev, and Husserl as the author of
Semiotik, among others, belong to this
group.
2.2. Explicit particular semiotics
Certain authors have limited their study of
semiosis and signs to a few cultural systems
(for instance only to verbal language) and
may not have realized that their results can
be applied to other systems (they might even
have expl!citly denied that application to
other systems was possible). In any case they
were aware of the existence of semiotic phc-
34. History and historiography
norne na in spite of the limits of their investi­
gations.
We can rank in this category various au­
thors and cultural currents coming from dif­
ferent domains. To give only a few examples:
philosophers of verbal language, from
Plato, Aristotle, the Sophists, through
Boethius, Abelard, and Ockham to Frege
as well as Husserl as the author of Lo­
gische Untersuchungen, Wittgenstein, Car­
nap, and Analytic Philosophy in general;
classical, medieval and modern rhetorics;
most of the classical (Western and East­
ern) and modern linguistics, as well as the
medieval modistae and any advocate of a
universal grammar;
patristic and scholastic theories of scrip­
tural interpretation;
divination, oneiromancy, chiromancy,
metoscopy, physiognomies, and other
forms of interpretation by symptoms, in­
cluding medicine;
language of visions, prophecy, glossolaly;
the whole tradition of formal logic;
the Baroque theorists of wit, Witz, esprit,
aqudeza, concettismo, such as Tesauro
and Garcian;
iconology and emblematology;
the theorists of the ars magna from Lullus
to Leibniz, those searching for a lingua ad­
amica, of a characteristica universa/is /in­
guarum, the inventors of cryptographies,
steganographies, new general taxonomies
and of the around 200 international lan­
guages coined in the last two centuries,
etc.;
artes memoriae (from Rhetorica ad Heren­
nium to the 17th century);
philosophers of science of any age who
discussed analogy, metaphor, models, etc.
as tools for scientific discovery;
scientific formalization of languages;
ancient zoosemiotics;
all the other anticipations of contempo­
rary particular semiotics, such as kinesics,
proxcmics, musical, medical or architec­
tural semiotics, etc.;
psychoanalysis and psychological (as well
as neurological) investigation on lan­
guage;
military strategy;
scientific discussions on the revealing
power of visual prostheses (mirrors, tele­
scope, microscope, radar, etc.):
Baroque optical theaters and visual ma­
chines (from Kircher to Baltrusaitis);
735
theories of visual perception (from the
Vitruvian discussions through the theories
of perspective and anarnorphosis until Ge­
stalttheorie);
theories of poetry and literature:
theories of performing arts, from Aris­
totle, through his Renaissance commenta­
tors up to Ejzenstein, etc.
This list is obviously not complete.
2.3. Cosmological semiotics
There are entire philosophical, religious, and
cosmological world-views that are based
upon the assumption that the whole universe
is a semiosic process. These theories fre­
quently use terms such as "sign", "symbol",
"cosmis" or "divine language", but even
when they do not do so, they imply that the
universe is a divine writing (fiber scriptus di­
gito Dei) or a self-expressing system.
Among these world-views let us mention
at least:
Platonism as an interpretation of the
physical world as an image or an imita­
tion of the ideal world;
the Hermetic tradition, from the Corpus
Hermeticum (see Nock and Festugiere
1945-54) to the late alchemists, with their
attempt to interpret through symbols the
correspondences between micro- and mac­
rocosm;
various forms of neoplatonism (Pseudo­
Dionysius, Scotus Erigena, Ficino and
Pico);
astrological traditions, theurgy, the theory
of talismans as a powerful operative link
between the upper and lower worlds;
primitive magic and Renaissance magic in
particular, as far as it was concerned with
the whole universe as a network of signa­
turae (Paracelsus, Agrippa, Della Porta,
Crollius and so on);
Greek, Jewish, Patristic and Mediaeval
theories of universal symbolism and alle­
gorism (as well as their Eastern conge­
ners);
Kahhalah;
pansophic visions and projects of a the­
ater of the world (Camillo, Bruno, Fludd);
Berkeley and many idealistic systems:
contemporary interpretations of the cos­
mological structure in terms of a mathe·
matics of fractals.
2.4. Implicit semiotics
It is possible to infer a series of background
assumptions about signification and corn·
munication from every philosopher. even
736
when he never spoke ex professo of language
and other semiotic matters.
A typical example is provided by Kant. At
first glance it seems difficult to extrapolate
from his work a Kantian semiotics (cf. Art.
35 § 3.3.). However, the whole of the third
Kritik can be viewed as a theory of inter­
pretation, and the notion of reflecting judge­
ment can now be re-examined in the light of
the semiotic notion of abduction. Moreover,
many contemporary semantic theories, espe­
cially after the experiences of Artificial Intel­
ligence, are speculating again about the set
of mental categories which at the same time
govern our perceptual activity and the un­
derstanding of meaning. Independently of
whether these categories are intended as a
priori universals or as the effect of cultural
heritage, one can say that Kant posited (in a
nonsemiotic way) problems that are crucial
for a semiotic enquiry (cf. Art. 74 § 2.).
It is difficult to say whether similar theo­
ries presuppose an implicit semiotics as their
background or suggest a possible semiotics as
their consequence. In any case many of them
are more important than a good deal of the
explicit but repetitive semiotic theorizing.
The research on implicit semiotics should
start from a clear methodological assump­
tion: frequently a past theory becomes semi­
otically relevant from the point of view of
our present problems. Thus a historical re­
construction of semiotics should follow a
twofold path: (i) from the past to the present,
to discover archaeological evidence that can
better explain the present situation; (ii) from
the present to the past, to understand the
semiotic purport of theories which, when
they were elaborated, were extraneous to the
development of semiotics.
2.5. Insights from semiosic experiences
Every semiosic practice presupposes an ideal
awareness of its semiotic laws. This is true
not only for verbal language but for every
kind of signification system.
It is not necessary for the historian to
study the nature and function of every pos­
sible system or signification, from visual lan­
guage to lithurgy, from card games to eti­
quette. This is the task of particular semio-
tics.
However, in many cases certain authors
who provided rules and examples of specific
semiosic practices displayed a strong aware­
ness of their procedures. The Mediaeval trea­
tises on liturgy or on the interpretation of
V. Geschichtsschreibung dcr Semiotik
bestiaries and herbaries, the Renaissance art­
ists' reflexions on perspective, many arfes
poeticae, the discussions on theater, cinema
or other arts. are rich in theoretical remarks.
We know that many pages of Leonardo, Poe.
Strawinsky or Klee contain precious and per�
ceptive theoretical insights.
The historian of semiotics should not only
analyze what artists have written about their
art; equally perceptive insights on significa­
tion and communication can be extrapolated
from their poetic, narrative, pictorial or the­
atrical works. It is not preposterous to say
that important ideas on the way we under­
stand signs are provided by narrative pages
of Proust or Mann, that Joyce's Finnegan '.1·
Wake contains provocative suggestions about
the nature of language, that every play by
Pirandello represents an explicit reflection on
pragmatic and semantic problems, that the
last novels of Calvino are clear instances of
meta.narrative discourse, that Borges' stories
say more about intertextuality than many
theoretical treatises.
3. The comparability of theories
One of the tasks of a history of semiotics will
certainly be to show how and to what extent
certain ideas, frequently believed to be very
modern, have a millenary pedigree. It is fasci­
nating to discover that certain discussion� on
similitude and identity, on the differences be­
tween to-be-similar-to and to-be-an-image­
of, as well as on the difference between vari·
ous forms of so-called iconicity (imprints,
symptoms, ostension, and images) took place
during the Middle Ages (cf. Art. 60 § 4. 7. and
Art. 61 § 3.). The same set of basic concepts,
borrowed from Greek philosophy (cf. Art. 40
§ 3.), nourished the work of many different
authors. It is fascinating to discover that the
difference between signifier and signified was
absolutely clear to the Stoics, as well as the
notion of linguistic articulation ( cf. Art. 42
§ 2.1.4.).
But if the first task is to show the unity of
the semiotic tradition, the second is to stress
the differences, that is, to show when and in
which sense the same linguistic term con­
veyed ideas that. once inserted in a particular
theoretical framework, became very different
from each other (cf. Art. 35 § 2. -4.).
There certainly is a semiotirn perennis, but
mainly in the sense that certain basic prob­
lems were discu)scd in c\ cry historical period
 raphy
34. History and historiog
(cf. Art. 35 § 1.). Such a continuous appear­
ance of the same questions_ is surely proof
that they were and are crucial to the under­
standing of human and natural experience.
But there is a difference between the continu­
ity of a question and the continuity of a solu­
tion. The permanence of a term can fre­
quently be evidence of the continuity of the
question but not of the contmmty of the re­
sponse.
Many examples could be given. Let us fol­
low as a mere example for some centuries the
tortured story of the category of symbol.
3.1. An example:
symbol - a web of ambiguities
If we understand the term "symbol" in the
same sense as logicians and mathematicians,
then a symbol is known (i) as that which is a
signifier correlated to its meaning by a law
(by a precise convention) and as such is inter­
pretable through other signifiers, or (ii) as a
variable that can be bound in many ways but,
once it has acquired a given value, cannot
represent other values within the same
context. If we take symbol in the sense of
Hjelmslev (1943), then examples are the
Cross, the Hammer and the Sickle, emblems
and heraldic images. In this sense symbols
are allegories (cf. Art. 58 § 2. and 3. as well
as Art. 60 § 4.3.).
There is, however, a further sense of the
word, according to which symbols are signifi­
ers that convey imprecise clouds or nebulae
of meanings that are left unexploited or are
unexploitable.
According to Goethe "symbolism trans­
forms the experience into an idea and the
idea into an image, so that the idea expressed
through the image remains infinitely active
and unattainable [...]. Allegory transforms
an experience into a concept and the concept
into an image, but so that the concept re­
mains always defined and expressible by the
image" (Maximen und Reflexionen 1112 and
1113 in Goethe 1948- 71: IX, 639; cf. Posner
1982: 171 ff).
Goethe's definition seems perfectly in tune
with that advanced by idealistic philosophy,
even though the idealists did not fully agree
on the nature of the symbolism: for instance,
the symbol was identified by Schelling with
the higher form of art, while for Hegel it was
the form that art assumes at its lower and
more primitive stages. However, for both
symbolism was either the meeting point of
the finite and the infinite, or the moment in
737
which art, aiming at expressing the infinite,
shows the inadequacy of its own images and
alludes to something greater and higher,
without being able to express it fully.
In present times when we speak of symbols
in poetry, in psychoanalysis, and even in the
criticism of our unconscious ideological atti­
tudes, it seems we use this term in the Ro­
mantic sense. But when we speak of symbols
in logic or mathematics we use it in a totally
different way.
In order to understand the ambiguity of
the word "symbol" it is necessary to revisit
its origins. In this sense a historiographical
reconstruction helps us to understand what
happened in the past and also what is hap­
pening in the present.
3.2. Greece
Such ambiguity has its roots in the Greek
etymology (cf. Art. 39). Originally a symbol
was a token, the present half of a broken ta­
ble or coin or medal, that performed its so­
cial and semiotic function by recalling the ab­
sent half to which it could potentially be re­
connected. This potential was indeed crucial
because as the two halves could have been
reconnected if was no longer necessary to
yearn for reconnection. But the present half
of the broken medal evoked the ghost of its
absent companion and of the original whole­
ness, thus encouraging the formation of other
senses of "symbol". The verb symba/lein
meant 'to meet', 'to try an interpretation', 'to
make a conjecture', 'to solve a riddle', 'to in­
fer from something imprecise, because in­
complete, something else that is suggested,
evoked, revealed, but is not conventionelly
said'. In this sense a symbol was an ominous
and sudden experience that allowed vague
consequences to be tentatively forecast. It
was a semeion, but a Semefon of an impalpa­
ble quality.
When in the Stoic milieu the first attempts
were made to read allegorically the old poets
in an effort to find evidence of natural truths
hidden within the myths, or when Philo of
Alexandria started lhe allegorical reading of
the Bible1 there was no clear-cut distinction
between symbol and allegory. Pepin (l 969)
and Auerbach (1944) say that the classical
world took "symbol" and "allegory" as syn­
onymous expressions and that they also
called "symbols" certain coded images pro­
duced for educational purposes. Behind such
a linguistic usage there was the idea that sym­
bols, too, were rhetorical devices endowed
738
with a precise meaning: obscurely given, but
precise when found. And the same was true
within the tradition of the Church Fathers
and within Mediaeval culture.
3.3. Mediaeval pan-semiotic metaphysics
ln the patristic and medieval tradition there
is an idea of symbolism as a way of speaking
of something unknowable: in the nee-Pla­
tonic line of thought, as represented by
Pseudo-Dionysius, the divine source of all
beings, the One, is defined as "the luminous
dimness, a silence which teaches secretly, a
flashing darkness which is neither body nor
figure nor shape, which has no quantity, no
quality, no weight, which is not in a place and
does not see, has no sensitivity, is neither soul
nor mind, has no imagination or opinion, is
neither number nor order, nor greatness, is
not a substance, not eternity, not time, not
obscurity, not error, not light, not truth[ .. .]"
(Theo/. myst., passim; cf. Art. 50 § 3. and
Art. 55 § 2.).
How can one speak of such a non-entity
and non-identity if not by a language whose
signs have no literal and univocal meaning
but are open to contrasting interpretations?
In his negative theology, Dionysius includes
symbols which are non-translatable allego­
ries. Since the neo-Platonists regard the
source of the cosmic emanation as being be­
yond any rational knowledge and appearing
to us as a mere Nothingness, we cannot help
but say something which is true and false at
the same time, when we speak of It (cf.
Art. 61 §I.and 2.). With its contradictoriness
the neo-Platonic symbol seems to have the
same ambiguity as the Romantic symbol.
Nevertheless, the neoplatonism of Diony­
sius - and furthermore that of his commen­
tators such as Thomas Aquinas - is not a
'strong' one: mediaeval neoplatonist philo­
sophers tried to translate the pantheistic idea
of emanation into one of participation. For
them, it is true that the One is absolutely
transcendent and infinitely far from us, that
we are made or different fabric since we arc
the mere litter of His creative energy, but He
is not contradictory in Himself.
Contradictoriness belongs to our own dis­
courses about Him and arises from our im­
perfect knowledge of Him. But the knowl­
edge He has of Himself is totally unambigu­
ous. This is a very important point because,
as we shall see, the Hermetic Platonism of the
Renaissance maintained that the very core of
every secret knowledge is the belief in the
V. Geschichtsschreibung der Semiotik
deep contradictoriness of reality (cf. Art. 62
§ 5.). Against . that_, for mediaeval theology
both contradtctormess and ambigu _
ity are
merely semiotic, not ontological.
Naturally, if we want to speak of the Un.
speakable, we name it "Goodness", "Truth "
"Beauty", "Light", ''Jealousy" and so on, bui
these terms, says Dionysius, can be applied
to Him only "supersubstantially". And what
is more: since the names that we attribu te to
God will always be inadequate, it is indis­
pensable to choose them accordin g to a
criterion of dissimilarity (cf. Art. 52 §2.).
It is dangerous to name God "Beauty" or
"Light", because one can believe that such
appelations do convey some of His real quali­
ties, which they do not. We should rather call
Him "Lion", "Panther", "Bear", "Monster"
we should apply to Him the most provokin�
adjectives so that it be clear that the sim­
ilarity we are looking for escapes us or can
only be glimpsed at the cost of a dispropor­
tioned proportion (De coel. hier. 2; cf. animal
symbolism in the Germanic and in the Judaic
tradition, Art. 37 § 7.1. as well as Art. 55
§ 4.2. and Art. 61 § 2.1., respectively).
However, this symbolical way of speaking
has nothing to do with the sudden illumina­
tion, with the cognitive ecstasy, with the
flashing vision of which the modern theories
of symbolism speak. The mediaeval meta·
physical symbol is neither epiphany nor reve­
lation of a truth concealed under the clothes
of a myth. Symbolism must make rationally
conceivable the inadequacy of our reason and
of our language. Challenged by this diffi­
culty, Dionysius' commentators tried to
translate his approach into rational terms:
when Scotus Erigena (De divisione naturae
5,3) says that "nihil enim visibilium rerum,
corpora/iumque est, ut arhitro1; quod non in­
corpora/e quid et intel/igibile sign/ficet" C'!
contend there is nothing among the visibk
and corporeal things which does not signify
something uncorporeal and intelligible"), he
is no longer speaking of a network of un­
graspab\c similitudes, but rather of the unin­
terrupted sequence of causes and effects that
will later be called the "Great Chain of
Being".
Thomas Aquinas was to definitively trans­
form this approach into the doctrine of ana·
logia entis, which aimed at being a propor­
tional calculus.
Thus at the very root of mediaeval
pansemiotical metaphysics, which was some­
times characterized as universal symbolism.
34, History and historiography
there is the quest for a code and the will to
transform a poetic approximation into a phil­
osophical statement (cf. Art. 50).
3.4. Scriptural interpretation
Parallel to the neo-Platonic line of thought
there is the hermeneutic tradition of scrip­
tural interpreters, interested in the symbolic
language by which the Holy Scriptures speak
to us (cf. Art. 58 § 4., Art. 60 § 4.3. and
Art. 61 § 1. and 2.).
The Holy Scriptures were two in number:
the Old and the New Testament. Initially the
Gnostics assumed that only the New Testa­
ment was true, and Origenes wanted to keep
the continuity between the two testaments,
but he had to decide in which way they said
the same things, since they seemed to be
speaking differently. Thus he made the deci­
sion to read them in a parallel way: the Old
is the signifier, the letter of which the New is
the signified or the spirit. At the same time
the New was the letter whose spirit concerned
salvation and moral duties.
Since the Holy Books were fundamentally
polysemic, their symbolical nature had to be
tamed, and in order to do so the symbolic
mode had to be identified with the allegorical
one. This is a very delicate point, because
without this profound need of a code, the
scriptural interpretation would look very
similar to our modern interpretative drift,
misprision, libidinal reading, free jouissance.
The Scriptures had potentially every pos­
sible meaning, but their reading had to be
governed by a code and that is why the Fa­
thers proposed the theory of the allegorical
senses. Later, according to verses attributed
to Nicholas of Lyra, "/ittera gesta docet quid
credas, allegorialmoralis quid agas, quo tendas
anagogia" ("the letter teaches what you
should believe, the moral allegory teaches
what you should do and the anagogy teaches
where you should head").
The theory of the four senses (cf. Art. 55
§ 2.4., Art. 58 § 4. and Art. 60 § 4.3.) provided
a sort of guarantee for the correct decoding
of the Books. But the Patristic and Scholastic
mind could never avoid the feeling of inex­
haustible profundity of the Scriptures, fre­
quently compared to a forest or to an ocean.
Gilbert of Stanford (In Cant. 20, 225)
compared the Holy Scriptures with a rapid
river that flows by producing new senses
which. as waves and whirls, come one after
the other in such a way that no single one
annuls the others; instead they accumulate
739
and increasingly enrich this immense treasury
of divine wisdom; everyone, according to
one's own intellectual ability, can glean some­
thing from this inexhaustible storage of
senses.
Once again we confront here something
which recalls the modern fascination of an
open textual reading and even the post-Hei­
deggerian (see Gadamer 1960) hermeneutic
idea that a text magnetizes upon itself, so to
speak, the whole of the readings it has elic­
ited in the course of history. But the Patristic
and Mediaeval problem was how to reconcile
the infinity of interpretation with the univo­
cality of the message; i. e., how to read the
books by discovering in them not new things
but the same everlasting truth rephrased in
ever new ways: non nova sed nove.
The task of the Church Fathers was to re­
duce the openness of the symbolic language
by providing rules for a non-literal inter­
pretation. Augustine was the first to put forth
a list of interpretative procedures for ascer­
taining whether und when a fact told by the
Scriptures had to be taken not literally but
figuratively (cf. Art. 40 § 4.L and Art. 49
§ 2. L). Augustine knew that verbal tropes
such as metaphor can be easily detected be­
cause, if we take them literally, the text would
look mendacious. But what was to be done
with a report of events that make sense li­
terally but could still be interpreted symboli­
cally? Augustine says that one is entitled to
smell a figurative sense every time the Scrip­
tures say things that are literally understand­
able but contradict the principles of faith and
morals. Jesus at one point allows himself to
be honored and ointed by a courtesan, and it
is impossible that our Savior encouraged
such a lascivious ritual. Therefore the story
stands for something else. In the same way
one should smell a second sense when the
Scriptures play upon inexplicable superflui­
ties or use literally poor expressions, such as
proper names or series of numbers. This ea­
gerness to conjecture the presence of a sym­
bolical mode when facing trivial events or
blatantly useless details cannot but recall
modern poetic devices such as the Joycean
epiphany or Eliot's objective correlative. We
look for the symbolic mode not at the level
of rhetorical figures but at the level of a more
macroscopic textual strategy, when a text dis­
plays a sort of uncanny liberality, of other­
wise inexplicable descriptive generosity.
It should be clear from this that Augustine
looked for symbols not in the case of verbal
740
machineries but in the case of trivial events.
From the beginning, scriptural symbolism
aimed at privileging the allegoria in factis
over the allegoria in 11erbis. The words of the
Psalmist can certainly be read as endowed
with a second sense - because the Holy
Scriptures frequently recur to rhetorical de�
vices; but what must necessarily be read be�
yond the letter are the series of historical
events told by the Scriptures. God has predis­
posed the sacred history as a book written by
Himself, and the characters of the Old Testa­
ment were pulled to act as they did in order
to announce the characters and the events of
the New one.
Augustine took from the classical tradition
the rhetorical rules allowing him to decode
the allegories in verbis, but he did not have
precise rules for the allegories in factis. Thus
in order to understand the meaning of the
facts told by the Bible, Augustine had to
understand the meaning of the things that the
Bible mentions. This is the reason why the
Mediaeval civilization, extrapolating from
the Hellenistic Physiologus or Pliny's Natu­
ra/is historia, elaborated its own encyclope­
dical repertories, bestiaries, herbaries, lapi­
daries, imagines mundi, in order to assign a
symbolic meaning to every piece of the furni­
ture of the real world (cf. Art. 57 and 58).
In these encyclopedias the same object or
creature can assume contrasting meanings,
but the work of the mediaeval commentators
was to provide rules for a correct textual
disambiguation. Symbols were ambiguous
within the paradigm, never within the syn­
tagm. An elephant, a unicorn, a jewel, a
stone, a flower can assume many meanings
but when they show up in a given context
there is only one possible way of decoding
them correctly.
Thus the rise of a scriptural hermeneutics
encouraged the growth of a universal sym­
bolism and the real world became as much
'perfused with signs' as the Holy Scriptures;
but in both cases one should more rigorously
speak of scriptural and universal allegorism.
The Middle Ages could not understand the
antinomy outlined by Goethe.
3.5. The Thomistic reaction
This the universal allegorism did, however,
implement a sort of hallucinatory experience
of the world according to which mundane
creatures and historical facts did not count as
'these' creatures and 'these' facts, but insofar
as they \Vere standing for something else.
V. Geschichtsschreibung der Seiniotik;..;
Such an attitude could not be accepted by th e <
naturalism of the 13th century.
Thomas Aquinas was harshly critical of '
profane poetry and allegorism in verbis. B ut · ;
since he was a poet himself, and a gifted one :
he admitted that sometimes divine mysteries' i:
insofar as they exceed our comprehe nsion' f
must be revealed by rhetorical figures (Sum,n� :J
Th. I, I, 9). However, concerning the Holy
Text, he recommends looking first of all for
its literal or historical sense. When the Bible
says that the Hebrew people escaped from
Egypt, it literally tell& the truth. Only when
one has grasped this literal sense can one
catch, through it and beyond it, the spiritual
senses, that is, the senses that the scriptural
tradition assigned to the sacred books
namely the allegorical, the moral and the an'. ''
agogical or mystic ones.
Up to this point Aquinas does not seem
to have been so original with respect to the
previous tradition (cf. Art. 49 § 10.). But he
makes two important statements:
(a) The spiritual sense only holds fo r the
facts told by the Scriptures. Only in the
course of the sacred history has God acted
upon mundane events so as to make them
signify something else. There is no spiritual
sense in profane history, nor in the individ­
uals and facts of the natural world. There is
no mystical meaning in what happened after
the Redemption. Human history is a se­
quence of facts and not of signs (Quad/. VII,
6, 16).
The universal allegorism is thus liquidated.
Mundane events are restituted to their natu­
rality. If they are meaningful, then only in the
eyes of the philosopher who sees them as nat­
ural proofs of the existence of God, not as
symbolic messages. With Aquinas one wit­
nesses a sort of secularization of the post-bib­ ·.�l
lical history and of the natural world.
(b) If there is a spiritual sense in the Holy
Scriptures, where facts mean something else,
there is no spiritual sense in profane poetry.
Poetry displays only its literal sense. The po­
etical second sense is a subspecies of the li­
teral one, and Aquinas calls it "parabolic".
This sense (the one of tropes and allegories)
"non supergreditur modum litteralem" ("does
not transcend the literal mode") (Quodl. VII,
6, 16). It is simply a variety of the literal
sense. When the Scriptures represent Christ
using the image of a goat one is not facing a
case of allegoria in factis but of simple alle­
goria in 11erbis. In this case, "goat" is not a
fact that symbolizes future events but only a
J4. History and historiography
word that parabolically (literally) stands for
the name "Christ" (Summa Th., I, I, 10 ad 3).
This statement seems undoubtedly too
crude and radical; however, in order to
understand this point, one must understand
what Aquinas meant by "literal sense". He
meant the sense "quem auctor intendit". The
literal sense is not only the meaning of a sen­
tence, but also the meaning of its utterance.
Clearly for Aquinas sentence meaning and
utterance meaning belong both to the literal
sense, since they represent what the utterer of
the sentence had in his mind. Thus the sense
conveyed by tropes and allegories, insofar as
it represents exactly what the author wanted
to say, can be easily reduced to the literal
sense.
The spiritual senses of the Scriptures are
not equally literal because the biblical au­
thors were unaware of conveying through
their historical report the senses that (in the
mind of God) facts should assume for the fu­
ture reader able to read, in the Old Testa­
ment, the forecast of the New. The authors of
the scriptures wrote under divine inspiration,
ignorant of what they were really saying.
It does not seem that Aquinas' proposal
was very influential, however. A first disqui­
eting instance of it is given by the theory of
allegorical reading put forth by Dante in the
"Epistula XIII" of his Divina Comedia.
3.6. Dante
When presenting his poem to Cangrande
della Scala, Dante makes immediately clear
that it has to be read as a "polisemos" ('poly­
semic') message. One of the most celebrated
examples of what Dante means by polysemy
is given in his analysis of some verses of
Psalm 113, In exitu Israel de Aegypto. Fol­
lowing the mediaeval theory, Dante says con­
cerning the first verse of the Psalm: "If we
look at the letter it means the exodus of the
sons of Israel from Egypt at the time of Mo­
ses; if we look at the a!legory, it means our
redemption through Christ; if we look at the
moral sense it means the conversion of the
soul from the misery of sin to the state of
grace; if we look at the mystical sense it
means the departure of the sanctified spirit
from the servitude of this corruption to the
freedom of the eternal glory."
Apparently there is nothing, in this analy­
sis, which contradicts the main lines of the
scriptural tradition. But many interpreters
sensed something uncanny. Here Dante (who
is usually supposed to be a faithful ThomistJ
741
is taking a way of reading the Bible as an
example of how to read his own mundane
poem!
The most obvious solution according to
some interpreters, is that the letter had to be
a forgery. This was indeed the case. but the
forgery had been taken as authentic from the
beginning, which means that it did not sound
repugnant to the ears of Dante's contempo­
raries. Moreover, the Convll'io is certainly not
a forgery and in this treatise Dante provides
clues for interpreting allegorically his own
poems - even though maintaining a distincw
tion between the allegory of poets and the
allegory of theologians, which the "Epistula
XIII" disregards.
In the Convivio Dante explains what he in­
tentionally meant in writing his poems (the
allegorical sense of his poems is still a para­
bolic one because it represents Dante's in­
tended meaning). As against that, the exam­
ples he gives in the letter make one think of
blatant cases of a//egoria in factis. Further­
more, we know that Dante had always read
the facts told by mythology and the works of
classical poets as if they were a//egoriae in
factis. In such terms he speaks of the poets
in De vulgari e/oquentia, and in the Comedy
it is said that Statius is "as the one who pro­
ceeds in the night and bears a light, not for
himself but for those who follow him" (Pur­
gatory XXII, 67-69). This means that Stat­
ius was conceived by Dante as a seer: his po­
etry, and pagan poetry in general, conveyed
spiritual senses of which the authors were
not aware.
Thus for Dante poets are continuing the
work of the Holy Scriptures, and his poem is
a new instance of prophetical writing. His
poem is endowed with spiritual senses in the
same way in which the Scriptures were, and
the poet is divinely inspired. If the poet writes
what love inspires in him, his text can be sub­
mitted to the same allegorical reading as the
Holy Scriptures, and the poet is right in invit­
ing his reader to guess what is hidden ··.1·otto
ii velame delli versi strani" ("'under the veil of
the strange verses").
Thus, just at the moment when Aquinas
devaluates the poetical mode, poets, escaping
from his intellectual influence, start a new
mystical approach to the poetic text, opening
a new way of reading that, through various
avatars, will survive until our times (cf.
Art. 33 § 1.3.J.
What makes Dante remain mediaeval is
the fact that he still believes that a poem has
742
no infinite or indefinite meanings; Dante
seems to maintain that there are four spiri­
tual meanings, and that they can be encoded
and decoded according to encyclopedical
conventions.
3.7. Renaissance Hcrmetism
A relevant epistemological break (cf. Art. 35
§ I .) was to take place during the Renais­
sance. The heraldic world of bestiaries and
lapidaries had not fully lost its appeal. The
natural sciences were on the verge of becom­
ing more and more mathematically oriented;
Aristotle seemed not to have anything more
to say, but the new philosophers begin ex­
ploring a new symbolical forest where living
columns whisper, in Baudelarian terms, con­
fused but fascinating words, coming from a
Platonism revisited under the influence of the
Kabba/ah and of the Corpus Hermeticum. In
this new philosophical milieu the very idea of
symbol underwent a profound change (cf.
Art. 61).
In order to conceive of a symbol as some­
thing that sends one back to a mysterious re­
ality that cannot be conceptually expressed
since it is self-contradictory, one needs a 1very
strong' neoMPlatonism. The mediaeval neoM
Platonism was not strong enough, because it
was moderated by a strong idea of the divine
transcendence. On the contrary the original
neo-Platonism, at least until Proclus, and its
gnostic versions, is 'strong' because it holds
that at the top of the Great Fall of Beings
there is a One who is not only unknowable
and obscure but who, being independent of
any determination, can contain all of them
and is consequently the place of all contra­
dictions.
If we merge these three lines of influence,
namely, (i) the neo-Platonic doctrine of ema­
nation (where there is a continuity between
every element of the world and the original
One), (ii) the idea that this One is self-contra­
dictory and that in it one can find coinciM
dent/a oppositorum, and (iii) the idea that the
One can only be expressed by negation and
approximation (so that every possible repreM
sentation of It cannot help but refer back to
another representation, equally obscure and
contradictory), then we meet the requireM
ments for the development of a philosophy,
of an aesthetics, and of a secret science of
symbols as intuitive revelations that can be
neither verbalized nor conceptualized.
The main features of the so-called Her­
metic tradition, which spread out from the
V. Geschichtsschreibung der Se, ·
n10 �
Renaissance and permeated Romantic h)
los?phy and man� contemporary theorie� �.
. _
art1st1c mterpretatwn, are:
a rejection of the metric measure, and a� -'
opposition of the quantitative to the quat'!}
itative, as well as the belief that nothing it_
stable and that every element of the uni�- J
verse a.cts over any other through re cipro� :;
i--;,
cal actwn;
a rejection of causalism so that the rccip- -_
rocal action of the various elements of the
universe does not follow the linea r se­
quence of cause and effect .but rather �
sort of spiral-like logics of mutually sym.
pathetic clements (if the universe is a net� t
work of similitudes and cosmic sympaM '.�
thies, there are no longer privileged
causa1 chains);
a rejection of dualism, so that the very
identity principle collapses, as well as the
one of the excluded middle, and tertium
datur;
a rejection of agnosticism (Hermetic
thought is 'gnostic', in the sense that it reM
spects the whole of traditional wisdom so
that even where there is contradiction be�
tween different assumptions, each of them
can bear part of the truth, truth being the
whole of a field of contrasting ideas).
The Hermetic tradition is based on the
principle of similitude: sicut superius sic infeM
rius ('as above, so below'). And once one has
decided to fish for similitudes, one can find
them everywhere: under a certain description,
everything· can be seen as similar to everyM
thing else.
Renaissance symbols were thus inexhaustM
ible (like the old ones, and unlike the mediae­
val allegories), full of half glimpsed mean­
ings, self-contradictory. They were so fraught
with meanings that one could never say what
they definitely mean. Such a vagueness was
so constitutive of their nature that, according
to traditional Hermetic principles, in order to
preserve their unrevealed secret they had to
borrow from exotic cultures. since an exotic
image or sentence, insofar as it looks unfa­
miliar, stil! keeps an aura, a mona. If a so­
called symbol became univocally interpret­
able, it had lost its pmver. So the Renaissance
Magus re-discovered the leroglyphica of
Horapollus (see Boas 1950) or the Chaldaic
Oracles and worshipped everything written
or spelled in Hebrew.
Thus a new symbolism grew up in the Her­
metic atmosphere, from Pico dclla Mirandola
 oriography
34. History and hist
. from Reuch­
, , and Ficino to Giordano Bruno,
lin and Robert Fludd up to French Symbol­
ism, Yeats and many contemporar y theories.
Speaking of_ the uns_haped, symbols cannot
have a definite meanmg.
At the very moment in which theology,
with Thomas Aquinas, was destroying the
bases of universal symbolism and allegorism,
and the new science began to speak of the
world in quantitative terms, a new feeling was
born among poets, Platonic philosophers,'reli­
gious thinkers, magicians and Kabbalists.
The new symbolism meant a new quest for
analogy and universal kinship that influenced
the new theories or the new practices of po­
etry and art, as well as new theories of myth.
It definitely provided a new religion for many
laymen who, in a secularized world, no
longer believed in the symbols of theology
and needed some other form of worship (cf.
Art. 62 § 5. and Art. 63).
4. Secondary sources
This overview of the concepts of symbol and
allegory aimed at being a mere example of
the incompatibility of theories which at first
glance make use of the same terms.
At the same time this example shows at
least two other things: (i) a historical recon­
struction of semiotic concepts is not only an
erudite contribution to archives for histori­
ans, but is one of the ways to clarify many of
our present theoretical puzzles; (ii) in order
to understand what happened to the concept
of symbol between the Middle Ages and Re­
naissance one is obliged to take into account,
among other things, philosophical and
theoretical texts, pieces of scriptural inter­
pretations, and reflection of poets on their
own work.
A historical reconstruction of semiotics
must be an interdisciplinary enterprise which
requires the identification of many primary
sources that escape the competence of a sin­
gle scholar. This means that the complete
identification of the primary sources must be
mediated by a comprehensive survey of sec­
ondary sources, that is, many historical
works in various disciplinary fields.
It ought to be stressed that many second­
ary sources relating to non-semiotic disci­
plines are more revealing than the few exist­
ing semiotic sources.
One of the best introductions to the rela­
tionship between language and Being is Bren-
743
tano's Von der mannigf'achen Bedeutung des
Seienden nach Aristote/es (1862). Semioticians
will find many clues (concerning sixteen cen­
turies of Western and Arab cultural history)
in the seminal History of Magic and Experi­
mental Science by Thorndike ( I 923-58). In
order to understand at least half of the semi­
otic problems that haunted the Mediaeval
mind, three historiographical works may
prove useful: De Bruyne's Etudes d'Esthe­
tique Medievale (1946), De Lubac's Exegese
Medievale (1959) and Bochenski's Forma/e
Logik (1956, parts 1-3). None of these three
studies deals explicitly with semiotics.
To understand many fundamental semiotic
aspects of Jewish Kabbalism, one should
start with Scholem's Kabba/ah (1974) as well
as with all the other works of this author.
This list could be continued ad libitum.
One could say that the same holds for the
history of philosophy, of literature, of art.
Naturally, no discipline is straightforwardly
separated from the rest of culture and every
thinker in every domain receives innumerable
and imponderable influences from every­
where. A history of philosophy must take
into account scientific sources, and a history
of literature must take into account the fact
that many Romantic novelists were influ­
enced by Lavater.
However in our case it is not only a ques­
tion of documenting remote influences. The
secondary sources mentioned above do not
document lines of thought that in some way
influenced semiotic writers. They deal with
genuine semiotic problems, sometimes explic­
itly recognized as such, sometimes implicit,
disguised, repressed, concealed. They are do­
ing what a still non-existent historiography
of semiotics did not do.
Since they are doing it marginally, and
in an incomplete way, they remain only
'sources' for the future historians of semi­
otics. But they can tell them many things that
present-day semiotic theories have forgotten
or are still searching for.
5. Conclusion
It is probably too early to expect a complete
and coherent historiographical monument in
our field, since a complete history of semio­
tics cannot be undertaken by a single author.
But the above remarks can he read as guide­
lines for a collective work in progress, a col­
lection of documents, a still uneven map of a
 744
still largely unknown land (cl'. Chapter VI­
X!, Art. 36-99 of this Handbook).
We should not expect this work to be de­
finitive, because the field will u ndoubtedly
change under the pressure of new historical
discoveries: the historical survey modifying
the present status of semiotics, this latter will
in turn intluence the future of the former.
6. Selected references
6.1. Sources
Andreae, Johann Valentin (1614f), Fama Fraterni­
tatis R. C 2nd edition 1614. - Confessio Fraterni­
tatis. 1615. - Both works are included in: Johann
Valentin Andreae (I972-1973): Werkausgabe in
drei Biinden. Ed. and introduced by Richard von
Diilmen. Stuttgart.
Aristotle (1965-1970), Historia animalium. In
three volumes. With an English translation by
A. L. Peck. Vol. I 1965. Vol. II 1970. London:
Heinemann, and Cambridge MA: Harvard Univer·
sity Press 1965-70. [� The Loeb Classical Library]
(The Historia animalium, m:pi �©cov io"top{a, is a
medieval collection of zoological writings; most of
them are by Aristotle but there are also some which
are nowadays considered to be of other origin.)
Aristotle (1967), Rhetorica. Ed. L. Cooper. New
York.
Aquinas, cf. Thomas Aquinas.
Augustine (1841-I864), Opera omnia. In vols.
32-47 of Patrologiae cur.ms completus. Series I:
Ecclesia latina. Ed. by J. P. Migne. Paris.
Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb (1750-1758),
Aesthetica. 2 vols. Frankfurt a. M. Reprint Hildes·
heim 1961.
Boas, George (1950), The Hieroglyphics of Hora·
po!lo, Translated. New York.
Bochenski, Joseph I. M. (1956), Formate Logik.
Freiburg and Munich[= Orbis Academicus. III.2.]
- English translation: History of Formal Logic. Ed.
and translated by Iva Thomas. Notre Dame 1961.
Bosanquet, Bernard (1892), A History of Aesthet·
ics. 2nd edition 1904. London. Reprint New York
1966.
Brentano, Franz {1862), Von der mannigfachen Be·
deurung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. Freiburg.
Reprint Hildesheim. New York and Darmstadt
1962.
Cassirer, Ernst ( 1923-1929), Philosophie der
symbolischen Formen. 3 vols. Berlin.
Cornificius (1969), Rherorica ad C. Herennium. Ed.
G. Calboli. Bologna.
Croce, Benedetto (1902). Estetica come scienza def.
/'espressione e lb1K11istica genera!e. Teoria e storia.
Milano.
V. Geschichtsschrcibung der Semiotik
Dante Alighcri ( 1956 ff), Opere di Dante ( Aligheri).
Ed. Vittore Branca, Francesco Maggini and Bruno
Nardi. - Vol. 4 and 5: ConviJ,io. Vol. 6: De vufgari
e!aquentia. Florence.
Dante Aligheri ( 1977), The Divine Comedy. Italian
and English. Translated, with commentary, by
Charles S. Singleton. 6 parts in 3 vols. Princeton
NJ.
De Bruyne, Edgar ( l 946), Eludes d'Esthhique
MMil!rale. Brugge.
De Lubac, Henri {1959), Exc;gi::se Medii:vale. Les
quatre sens de l'Ccriture. 4 parts in 2 vols. Paris.[===
Theologie. 59]
Edlow, R. B. (1977), Galen on Language and Am·
biguity. An English translation of Galen's "De cap·
tionibus (On Fallacies)" with Introduction, Text
and Commentary. Leiden.
Gadamer, Hans.Georg (1960), Wahrlieit und Me·
thode. GnmdzUge einer philosophischen Hermeneu�
tik. Ti.ibingen.
Galen (1821-1833), Opera omnia. 20 vols. Ed.
C. G. Ki.ihn. Leipzig. Reprint Hildesheim 1964-
1965.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1809-1832), Ma­
ximen und Rejlexionen. In: J. W. von Goethe, Ge·
denkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gespriiche. 27
vols. Zurich and Stuttgart 1948-71.
Hippokrates (1923-1931), Hippocrates. 4 vols. Ed.
W. H. S. Jones and E. T. Withington, with an Eng­
lish translation. London.
Hjelmslev, Louis (1943), Omkring sprogteoriens
grundlaeggelse. Copenhagen. English by F. J.
Whitfield: Prolegomena to a Theory of Language.
Madison 1961.
Husserl, Edmund (1890), "Zur Logik der Zeichen
(Semiotik)". Published in: Husserliana. Vol. 12.
The Hague 1970: 340-373.
Husserl, Edmund (1900-1901), Logische Unter­
suchungen. - Vol. I: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik.
Halle 1900. 2nd ed. 1913. - Vol. II: Unter­
suchungen zur Phiinomenologie und Theorie der Er·
kennrnis. I. Tei!. Halle 1901. 2nd ed. 1913. 2. Tei!
(Elemente einer phiinomenologischen Aujkliirung der
Erkenntnis). Halle 1901. 2nd ed. Halle 1921. -
Engl. translation: Logical Investigations. 2 vols.
London and New York 1970.
Kant, Immanuel (1790), Critik der Urtheilskrajf.
Berlin and Ubau. 2nd edition Berlin 1793. 3rd edi·
tion Berlin 1799. - Kritik der Urteilskraft. 7th edi·
tion. Hamburg 1990.
Lavater, Johann Caspar (1834-1838), Siimmt!iche
Werke. 6 vols. Augsburg and Lindau.
Morris, Charles W. (1938), "Foundations of the
Theory of Signs". In: Otto Neurath (ed.), lnterna·
tional Encyclopedia of Un{/ied Science, vol. 1,
no. 2. Chicago.
Nock, Arthur D. and Andre J. Festugiere
(1945-1954), Corpus Hermeticum. 4 vols. Paris.
2nd edition 1962.
Semiotik
Semiotics
Ein Handbuch zu den zeichentheoretischen
Grundlagen von Natur und Kultur
A Handbook on the Sign-Theoretic
Foundations of Nature and Culture
.�rr:.:-��:..;·"<.';=-A�
Herausgegeben von / Edited by
Roland Posner, Klaus Robering, Thom ;{j ,,,. k
/fA.)r11101 J,; r!f.'
3. Teilband / Volume 3 -'i1.:>1ro1u:,1
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2003