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Hellenistic (Patristic/Rabbinic) Prototypes of

Peirce's Pragmatic Semeiotic:

A Presentation to the Center of Theological Inquiry Oct, 1990

© 1990 Peter Ochs, University of Virginia

Dear CTI Colleagues,

By way of a letter addressed to you, here is an invitation to enter into a conversation I have been

monitoring of late between the philosopher-logician Charles Peirce and some Hellenistic/Biblical

antecedents. From what Peirce's writings reveal (written between the 1860's and 1914, his last year

among us), he was mildly aware of participating in this conversation, but certainly not so keenly aware of

it as I portray him to be. I'll offer some words below about what it might mean to be "undisclosed," as for

example being part of a conversation without knowing it fully (and I won't be claiming with

Schleiermacher to know this author better than he knew himself; nor with Freud or Habermas to have

other sorts of privileged entree to the undisclosed substance of an author). For now, I'll just note that such

a conversation requires three partners, not just two and that, in this case, I am one of them: the one for

whom this hint of a conversation has becomes a powerful symbol, which means a hint that is not merely

absorbed in its object but that commands a reality of its own.

Now, I've invited you to enter this conversation not only because it fits the occasion of this paper,

but also because the theory of conversation requires it. If I am a third to Peirce's dialogue with the Bible

(you'll note that the relative number three takes on qualitative status here: a third is a mediation), then

there must be a third to my dialogue with Peirce. Speech and writing are directional. As I understand it,

this means that they are incomplete: symbols of lack or need. The symbol seeks an other. But not just

any other, only the other it needs. Since all reality, as Peirce says, has generality in it, there will likely be

more than one other of this kind, but not an indeterminate number. I am therefore addressing you, in

particular: not just one type of person, but not a whole lot either. I wouldn't expect a whole lot to tolerate

this kind of inquiry, let alone to respond. The lot I am addressing is the sort of "postcritical" scholar I

have pleased to find at CTI. This means either scholars who believe their critical inquiry contributes to

valuational or, in particular, theological practices whose premises fall at some point beyond the ken of

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their critical tools; or scholars who believe their valuational or theological practices require the service of

critical inquiry. Perhaps this means academics who also judge themselves to be creatures. I am not sure;

you'll see that part of the inquiry is to inquire after the hidden premises or deep-seated rules of this kind

of scholarship. So the inquiry is, in its implications, partly about what I understand you to be.

Of course, if you disclaim membership in this lot I am addressing, then either you are free of the

request to respond, or else I have something else to learn. By the way, within that lot, you will note that

most of you are Christian text scholars; I am a Jewish philosopher. So, the need expressed in this writing

is, in part, simply the need to fill in ignorances. But not only that.

*

OK, then, let me tell you a tale about one of the world's great philosophers, a chemist,

mathematician, and philosopher of science, whose logic turns out to be, in part, a theo-logic or, to use the

ingenious term of Michael Raposa's, a theosemiotic. The tale has two parts, corresponding to the two

parts of the book I have been completing here at CTI. The first part narrates the inner drama of Peirce's

own logical thinking as, over forty years, he wrested what I call his pragmatic semeiotic from the

"Cartesianism," or foundationalism, of his philosophic heritage. In the book, this is a very long part,

completed before I came to CTI and focusing on detailed rhetorical analyses of Peirce's pragmatic studies

of logic and sign theory. You'll be relieved to know that, here, I will offer an overview that omits much

of the technical stuff and focuses on the drama (dramatic, for a philosopher, that is). The second part of

the tale is the fruit (still not fully ripened, but scheduled for picking by the time I return this summer) of

my work at CTI this year. In contrast to the analytics of the first part, this is a brief, broad, speculative

survey of what in the world may have prompted Peirce to refine the modernist, empiricist logic of science

into a theologically suggestive doctrine of signs. I'm not offering demonstrations here, only opening up

possibilities: including the possibility that Peirce's semeiotic (as he preferred to spell it) may itself be

interpreted as a somewhat veiled symbol of a grand dialogue between the practices of Scriptural

hermeneutics and of philosophic definition. To some ears, this may sound like a dialogue between the

idealized types of "Hellenic" and "Hebrew" thinking. If you take away the ideological hype,

exaggeration and obscurantism that tends to accompany comparisons of Athens and Jerusalem, then I'd

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say that there is some truth to this appearance. I will explain in a round-about way, by giving an

overview of my whole reading of Peirce's pragmatism.

Before I begin, a warning: this essay is too long for you to read in a week. But it's presented as a

collection of items of which you may find some of interest, some not. If you don't read much philosophy,

then I'd suggest you start with Part II, reading about Augustine and the Rabbis, then go back to Part I for

as much time as you have; see if Peirce makes any sense. Part III — about Aristotle, Philo and such — is

extra, in case you might ask, "but what of Aristotle, Philo and such?"

I. From Pragmatism to Pragmaticism: Peirce's Redemptive Logic

Rational inquiry may legitimately offer many answers to any question. As pragmatist, Peirce was

concerned only about the claims inquirers make in order to reduce the outcomes of rational inquiry to

one: that is, to claim that some answer is "true." Pragmatism is on one level a claim that rational inquiry

finds a reliable criterion of truth-or-falsehood only in the contribution it would conceivably make to

resolving fundamental problems of everyday living. Independently of its contribution to such problem-

solving, rational inquiry will give rise to a plurality of legitimate outcomes. Any other way of reducing

the many to one turns out to be a way of forcing many under some one concept, inevitably giving rise to

some contrary one with its competing many. Pragmatic semiotics presents the claims of pragmatism in

terms of a description of rational inquiry as a mode of interpreting "real" signs, or signs about matters of

fact. Such real signs, which Peirce called genuine symbols, are polysemic, generating a plenum of

possible meanings, depending upon the perspective or context out of which they are interpreted.

Pragmatic semiotics is, on one level, a claim that, in any particular case, interpreters may reduce that

plenum toward one if they ask how the interpretation of the symbol may contribute to the resolution of

problems of everyday living that beset the interpreters. According to this claim, if there is any ultimate

resolution (or "interpretant") of the meaning of a symbol, it will be found in the resolution of some

problem in our way of living.

The view I have just ascribed to Peirce represents an aspect of the "pragmaticism" he articulated

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in the later years of his career (1905 until his death in 1914). This pragmaticism was his way of restating

and, in fact, reforming the pragmatism he had originally presented decades earlier (the classic statement

came in 1877-8) and which had since given rise to a variety of what he considered misinterpretations.

One thesis of the analytic part of my book is that Peirce's earlier pragmatism was an unsettled doctrine, at

odds with itself, which, like some double-coded symbol, warranted various, contrary readings of itself.

As pragmatic reader of Peirce, I claim that, if one wants to reduce the plenum of conflictual readings of

Peirce toward one, then the way to do it is to ask how an interpretation of Peirce's pragmatism may help

resolve the problems of actual practice of which that pragmatism is a symbol. The "actual practice" I

examine is Peirce's practice of philosophy, as an interpreting symbol of the modern, empiricist practice

of philosophy. (In the book, I shy away from claims about conflicts in Peirce's everyday practice,

because the preliminary as well as most reliable evidence for that lies in his philosophic writing and

because I had enough work to do on that writing. If I shy away from such claims next year, then it will

be out of some lack of courage and inclination to enter into the more uncontrollable and controversial

areas of biographical interpretation. ) My pragmatic reading is that the apparent conflicts in Peirce's early

pragmatism are symptoms of a conflict of interpretive tendencies in his early thinking. There are

"modernist" tendencies, on the one hand, very much like the ones he criticized in his "Cartesian" peers;

and there are what I label "pragmatic" tendencies on the other hand, those expressed in his critique of

Cartesianism. I argue that the of kind of modernism Peirce both criticized and practiced accompanies a

sterile, or non-productive dialectic of competing, dogmatic positions. These appear under various guises,

which means in a variety of binary pairs. Among prototypes are the pairs "empiricism/rationalism,"

"idealism/materialism," or "transcendentalism/ consequentialism." I argue, further, that, under the strong

influence of his modernism, Peirce's pragmatism displayed itself by way such pairs. A prototypical

example is the pair I label "pragmatic transcendentalism (or conceptualism)/ pragmatic

consequentialism." For those unfamiliar with Peirce, I will offer descriptions of his pragmatism in a

loong footnote.* In this main body of the essay, I will now continue the overview.

The pragmaticist writings of Peirce's mature years offer a convenient test of my pragmatic

reading, for, as I read them, they represent the result of Peirce's own pragmatic reading of his earlier

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work. As I read him, in other words, Peirce is his own pragmatic interpreter, and pragmaticism is his

way of resolving the plurality of possible interpretations to which his earlier pragmatism gave rise. For

now, I will mention only aspect of this resolution: Peirce presents some of his strongest pragmaticist

writings in the form of dialogues. Even when he is not writing dialogues, moreover, his argument gives

rise to dialogic interpretations: differing tendencies of interpretation that are not conflictual (logical

contraries, dogmatically universal and mutually exclusive) but complementary in their difference (logical

contradictories, each falling outside the domain of the other). This is the signal difference between his

pragmatism and his pragmaticism: the one has the potential to generate within the community of

pragmatists just the kind of endless, sterile debate that, according to the pragmatists, accompanied

Cartesian or foundationalist theories; the other offers ways of engaging potential adversaries in

constructive dialogue. Pragmatism, in other words, identifies unresolved disputes; pragmaticism offers a

rule for resolving them. The rule itself is dialogical, displaying in its own self-presentation the dialogic

practice it recommends.

I confess that, in his pragmaticist writings, Peirce does not spell out everything I have just

attributed to him. (Otherwise, I wouldn't have felt the need to write such a long study!) To spell it out, I

offer another pragmatic reading of his words. This time, however, the purpose of the reading is not to

resolve conflicts, but simply to ask questions of Peirce's argument different than the ones he asked. As I

will illustrate below, my conclusion is that, if analyzed in the manner I analyzed his pragmatism, Peirce's

pragmaticism displays a dialogue between what I label transcendental-mathematical and hermeneutical-

logic tendencies of pragmatic interpretation. I argue that each of these tendencies contributes to

pragmatic inquiry questions the other cannot ask, but which cannot be answered fully without referring to

the other. Each tendency represents, moreover, a pragmatic transformation of one pole of

pragmatism's modernist debate into one partner of a pragmaticist dialogue. The modernist's

transcendentalism doesn't just go away, for example, but is resolved into the pragmaticist's mathematical

approach to inquiry (and the modernist's consequentialism is resolved into a logical approach).

Pragmaticism is, therefore, dialogical also with respect to what it criticizes: rather than abandon the

modernism it criticizes, it engages it in a hopefully transforming conversation. In fact, pragmaticism

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would fail if its criticism were not dialogical, since the modernism it criticises belongs to its own past: in

Peirce's case, the practice of an early pragmatism that he later sought to reform. If pragmaticism were to

abandon, rather than engage, its own past, well then it would behave just like the modernism that

characterized its past.

Let me explain this last point. One of Peirce's early and late criticisms of Descartes' own

Cartesianism was that, while justifiably critical of inadequacies in scholastic science, Descartes appeared

to argue as if he were abandoning this science rather than reforming it and as if, therefore, his own

science were generated de novo out of features of human experience per se. This was a misleading

appearance on at least two levels. On one level, it misrepresented the etiology and the character of

Descartes' argumentation, many of whose unspoken premises belonged, in fact, to scholastic science. On

a second level, it misrepresented the logic of philosophic inquiry more generally. If philosophic inquiry

were generated only out of generic features of human experience, then its premises would be universal

and, if its arguments were sound, its conclusions would be universal as well. If universal, then these

conclusions would be falsified by the discovery of any exceptions and, in case they were falsified, would

have to be replaced by competing universal claims. Perhaps you get the picture: in Peirce's view, such a

Cartesian philosophy would tend to be dogmatic and would tend to generate conflicts among contrary,

universal claims.

Peirce's pragmatic critique of Cartesianism was clear, but, until his pragmaticist writings, he

failed to offer a clear vision of the following alternative to Cartesianism. This was to conceive of any

broad practice of inquiry — such as "scholastic science" — as a two-tiered practice. One tier generates

immediately useful, publicly visible rules of acting (for Peirce, this includes rules of belief and of

thinking) which are subject to error and regularly in need of reform. The second tier generates rules of

acting that are generally non-visible, infallible and of little apparent use as long as the other rules are

operative. The function of these second tier rules is only to guide repair of the first tier rules. In these

terms, Peirce suggested that Cartesian criticisms applied only to the first tier of whatever system they

were addressing (for example, scholasticism or, in the case of Peirce's early work, Cartesianism itself).

Rather than identify the sources of their own rules of criticism within the second tier of that same system,

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Cartesian critics tend to search for their second tier or reparative rules in "universal human experience."

As pragmaticist, Peirce argued that such searches are made in vain. Such searches are species of rational

inquiry, and the conclusions of rational inquiry can be stronger than the premises only if those

conclusions are merely probable (as in the case of abductive, or hypothetical reasoning). Consequently,

Cartesians could conceivably locate the infallible rules they seek only in the premises of their inquiries,

not the conclusions. (Kant's transcendental inquiry represents a variant on the Cartesian search, for here

the end of inquiry is precisely to locate, or in Peirce's terms, "diagram" the premises. For Peirce, Kant's

approach suffered from some of the modernist illusions, but was redeemable as one element of

pragmaticist inquiry.) Transcendental methods aside, the root to these premises must include a

thoroughgoing study of whatever the critic does not in fact criticize within an antecedent system of

practice. This "whatever" belongs to the critic's own second tier of practice. Criticism is thus reform,

and the ultimate rules of reform belong to the system being reformed.

To return, then, to the case of Peirce's pragmaticism. As pragmatist, Peirce had sought to

abandon rather than resolve his own Cartesian tendencies, which was, as a mode of performance, to

retain them. As pragmaticist, he sought to reclaim rather than abandon his own earlier pragmatism, which

was, as a mode of performance, to reform it. In terms of the definition offered earlier ( p. 6), Peirce's

pragmaticism therefore represents a pragmatic reading of his earlier pragmatism: identifying that

pragmatism as a symbol of certain problems of practice and interpreting that symbol by attempting to

resolve those problems. The logic of this pragmatic reading is what I label a reparative, or redemptive

logic. It has four rules:

* Say that redemptive interpretation is called for when, if interpreted according to its

plain-sense, a symbol would appear to give rise to conflicting lines of interpretation. (This is

felicitous reading, for which Paul Grice provided a logic in his studies of "conversational

implicature.")

* Read a symbol of this kind as a symbol of unresolved conflicts or problems. (Grice's

rule, along with Peirce's basic logic of pragmatism.)

* Identify the meaning of such a symbol with the resolution of such conflicts. (ditto)

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* Interpret such a symbol only if you are prepared to contribute to this resolution. If so,

interpret the symbol by way of helping resolve the conflict, and help resolve the conflict by way

of interpreting the symbol. (Peirce's pragmatism, but tied to an implicit logic of compassion or

love, more appropriate to the faith of a Scripture reader than the inquisitousness of a laboratory

experimentalist.)

Following these rules is most poignant when, as if often the case, the interpreter is implicated in the

symbol: for example, when the symbol belongs to the interpreter's own discourse or, as in Peirce's case,

to the interpreter's own past. Then the rule of redemptive logic is to have compassion on ones self, for

only that way will ones self of the past be reformed rather than reiterated.

The question that underlies my work at CTI comes in right about now. By the logic of Peirce's

pragmaticism, if his reformed pragmatism also reforms Cartesian modernism, then it must retain its

"second tier," or infallible rules of reform from that modernism. And that it does, but in a subtle way. It

portrays modernism as simply an incomplete attempt to reform its own antecedents, of which

scholasticism is prototypical, and it claims that the incompleteness lies precisely in modernism's failure

to identify the infallible rules of reform it retained from its scholastic and other antecedents. This means

that pragmaticism may claim to be recovering its second-tier, modernist rules by way of recovering

modernism's own second-tier, pre-modern rules. The point, of course, would not be just to reclaim these

rules — for, in themselves, they are practically useless — but to re-employ them to the end of carrying

out the reforms the modernists' sought but failed to achieve. It may just be that Peirce has already

identified these pre-modern rules and then re-employed them and that the products are the logical and

mathematical and metaphysical studies with which he concludes his pragmaticist writings. My reading

of these writings favors another explanation. In the dialogic movement that characterizes Peirce's

pragmaticism, these writings speak to one side more than the other — the mathematical as opposed to

what I am calling the logical. As you'll see in a moment, this means that Peirce has showed us more

about how to bring the infallible rules of his inquiry to the light of day (how to make them clear and

distinct) and less about how to find them where they lay (how to locate their darker, uninterpreted

manifestations). He has, in fact, cut short the search, for the sake of leaving time to clarify what he

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already located. His pragmaticist work is not all mathematics, however, but offers significant clues about

what else he would locate if he had the time. My project (for now, a final chapter and an epilogue to the

book) has been to pick up these clues and suggest where else we might find manifestations of Peirce's

infallible rules of corrective inquiry. Since these rules are for the most part hidden, these manifestations

will serve as their signs.

So far, I have offered you a rather abstract overview of Peirce's pragmaticism — distant from its

technical details. Using the one illustration of his pragmatic semeiotic, I now want to show you how the

details can be filled in. Very briefly, I'll go back over the area I have already discussed and then, at

greater length, I'll go forward into the speculative inquiries I trust most of you will find more interesting.

Pragmatic Semeiotic

We might generalize Peirce's view of signs in the following way. The fundamental unit of

reference is the sign: a signifier which displays its object (reference or meaning) only with respect to a

particular interpretant (context of meaning, interpretive mind-set, or system of deep-seated rules).

Among types of sign, an index (deictic sign) refers to its object by virtue of some direct force exerted by

the object on the sign. In other words, an indexical sign is indifferent to its interpretant, the way modern

scholars suppose a referential text simply refers to some facts independently of any particular context of

reference. An icon (image) does not refer to its object ostensively; instead, it appears to its interpretant

to share certain characters with its object. The icon therefore displays its meaning metaphorically,

through similarity, the way modern scholars suppose a non-referential text is either silent or fully subject

to the interpreter's attributions. A symbol, finally, refers to its object by virtue of some implicit law that

causes the symbol to be interpreted as referring to that object. In other words, a symbol displays its

meaning only to a particular interpretant, but it is not fully subject to the interpreter's attributions.

Instead, a symbol influences the way its interpretant attributes meaning to it. The symbol therefore

engages its interpretant in a dialogue, the product of which is meaning. As agent of a semiotic law, the

symbol engages its interpreter in some practice, or what we may call a tradition of meaning. Transferring

agency to the interpreter, the symbol also grants the interpreter some freedom to transform the way in

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which that meaning will be retransmitted. In this way, the symbol is the fundamental agent of pragmatic

inquiry. It is itself the interpretant of some tradition's deep-seated rules of practice (its semiotic law), of

which it serves as an agent. At the same time, the freedom it grants its own interpreter serves as a sign

(technically, an index) that these deep-seated rules are also subject to and, we presume, in need of

change. In these terms, pragmatic inquiry may be redescribed as the simultaneously conservative and

reformatory activity of interpreting a symbol. In the process of inquiry, the interpreter can use his or her

freedom for naught — that is, without accepting the responsibility to hear the symbol's complaints, as it

were, and to determine what changes need to be instituted in its semiotic law. Or the interpreter can use

his or her freedom for the good of this law, inquiring after its needs for change.

Peirce's pragmatic semeiotic developed under the influences of two different interpretive

tendencies. The first appeared in his earlier work as transcendentalism, or a tendency to ask of any

concept formation "what formalizable laws did it presuppose?" The second appeared in this work as

consequentialism, or a tendency to ask "what are the observable, experiential consequences of any such

formation?" Asking and answering these questions independently of one another, Peirce tended to make

two different uses of his early semeiotic. Serving his transcendentalism, the semeiotic was often

indistinguishable from a phenomenological reduction of all aspects of experience to formalizable rules of

sign-relation: this, by the way, remains a tendency in some structuralist schools of semiotic inquiry.

Serving his consequentialism, the semeiotic was a less developed element of his critique of strictly

"mathematical" treatments of continuity (where mathematics referred to a science of discrete collections).

Peirce's early critique of "Cartesianism" displayed elements of both approaches. As displayed in his

1878 theory of pragmatism, Peirce understood concepts about the world to be abbreviated symbols of

certain ways of acting in the world: "the diamond is hard," for example, would be an abbreviated symbol

of the experimental activity that would be necessary to observe the way diamonds scratch other objects

but are not scratched. This means that the symbol would display its meaning (about hardness) only with

respect to a certain interpretant (an understanding of the experimental activity). In these terms, Peirce

criticized the Cartesians for assimilating the interpretant to the meaning, as if concepts about the world

referred directly to their meanings. The Cartesian's sin was abstractness, or reducing a three-part

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semeiotic that includes a context-specific member; to a two-part semeiotic that lacks such a member (for

later discussion, note the Trinitarian implications!). Peirce's critique of Cartesianism thus displayed the

force of his consequentialism, but his alternative to Cartesianism was dominated by his

transcendentalism. He argued as if concepts about the world referred to their interpretants in ways that,

by dint of the scientific method, we could eventually - "in the long run" - define formally, that is,

reducing the plurality of possible interpretations of any symbol toward one. In a contemporary lingo, we

would say Peirce sought to reduce pragmatics (the study of context-specific meanings) to semantics (as if

there could be a dictionary of all possible contexts).

In Peirce's later work, these two tendencies emerged as complementary practices of mathematical

and logical inquiry. "Mathematics" does not refer here merely to its quantitative species, but more

generally to "the science of drawing necessary conclusions," which, in Peirce's creative formulation,

means the science of imagining merely possible things. Displaying what I consider the two sources of his

"second tier," or infallible rules of inquiry, Peirce wrote that this is the science, on the one hand, of

"making manifest the hidden"; and, on the other hand, of "drawing diagrams." I will read these phrases,

later, as signs of Peirce's semiotic/Scriptural and mathematical or formal-logical foundations. "Logic"

does not refer here merely to its formal species (which belongs, strictly speaking, to mathematics! -- a

critical place of overlapping inquiries), but more generally to the "normative" science of "how we ought

to reason" about the world. This science borrows its forms, or diagrams, from mathematics, which it then

adopts as sources of its "abductive" or hypothetical formulations of the rules that inform our actual

practices of reasoning. Logic describes the first-tier rules that inform our visible practices; it

recommends ways of reforming these rules, when appropriate, according to the second-tier rules that

inform logical science itself. I consider this to be the heart of pragmaticism: that, contrary to the claims

of relativistic philosophers, some pragmatists included, Peirce does not treat second-tier rules as if they

were non-existent or as if they were, like another form of first-tier rules, the fallible products of some

form of inquiry. Contrary to the claims of dogmatic philosophers, at the same time, Peirce does not

believe that second-tier rules can be formalized. For the pragmaticist, the power of philosophy lies in its

capacity to adopt these rules as its own rules of inquiry. But the mystery of philosophy lies in the way in

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which it adopts these rules. The adoption comes as the fruit of a way of living, including a way of

behavioral and intellectual training, including engagement in the dialogical relation between

mathematical and logical modes of inquiry and including a contemplative practice of "musement" that

Peirce illustrates in an essay on "A Neglected Argument for the Existence of God."

Allow me to illustrate for you how Peirce's pragmatic semeiotic is refined through a dialogue

between mathematical ("M") and logical ("L") inquiries. The illustration begins with an L assumption

already in place, and it is a major one: that inquiry about the actual world, which is the interpretation of

real symbols, is stimulated by something wrong, call it suffering (Peirce calls it doubt, Dewey calls it a

"problematic situation," and I won't take the time here to explain how I read "suffering" into Peirce's later

studies of doubt). Note here that real symbols are not mere indices of discrete data or icons of possible

images, but symbols of some activity independent of the interpreter that is now directed in some manner

to the interpreter and that implicates him or her: a human cry; a request for the time that indicates that

something more than the time of day is intended; an essay like this; a sermon; a Gospel. Say we

encounter the symbol. L says something needs to be done here. M sets the limited context for our present

discussion: that all we are going to contribute is a study of the form of what would be done. L asks what

is a form. Assuming some knowledge, M answers it is a predicate considered apart from the subjects that

might attach to it. L asks what possible predicates are there. M answers monadic (a simple quality, Q,

like -- is red), dyadic ( a simple relation, D, like -- hits --), or triadic ( a complete relation, T, like -- gives

-- to --; or -- means -- to --). M asks, so which of these is the form of the something that needs to be

done? L answers, well, there is a sign to us that something needs to be done, so this appears to fit your

triadic relation: (S) signifies (O) to (I). M asks how do you know what needs to be done? L answers, I

come to S with some assumptions; I assume S intends some response; I hope I read the intention

correctly. M says so, may we distinguish two ways in which the Symbol refers to its meaning (object,

O)?.... The immediate object (IO) is what S intends; the dynamical object (DO) is the actual force of S on

us. And may we distinguish three ways in which the symbol may be received?..... The emotional

interpretant is either the feeling or simple idea the symbol elicits in us. The energetic interpretant is the

action the symbol stimulates to us right now. The logical interpretant is the effect the symbol has not

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merely in a single moment but, more generally, its consequences for our way of acting now and in the

future: it is the way the symbol has made us different....

There is no conclusion to a dialogue like this, only interruptions made for the sake of some

moment's need for action (or for exhaustion!). For our needs to complete this essay, I would interrupt it at

a point when L says: so, the ultimate meaning of a symbol appears to be its ultimate, logical interpretant:

that is, the way its changes our way of behaving! (5.476). Understood formally, then, a symbol is a sign

of possible change in some practice. If it belongs to a meaningful universe of symbols, then that universe

provides for the possibility of enacting such change. That is, either this universe is defective (broken), or

there is an interpretant open to change corresponding to every symbol requesting it. If the request means

"suffering" and the change is "redemption," meaning "change made in response to suffering," then either

the universe is cruel, or there is in it some way of redeeming every suffering.

If you recall where we were six pages ago, it was with my hunch that Peirce's pragmaticist

writings are heavy on the mathematical side of the preceding dialogue, leaving us room to plumb more of

the logical side. This means to do more "listening to suffering" to complete the work he has done in

"imagining what possible ways there are to respond to it." As I suggested then, the listening is a matter of

reading symbols as signs of what conflict lies behind them, as well as of what actions lie forward. In the

terms we have now developed, this means to read symbols as interpretants of antecedent symbols: I will

call the latter "suggesting symbols," or, to prepare for what is to come, "typal symbols," or just "types,"

of which the symbols we have are "interpreting symbols" or "anti-types." You may get the drift. In his

pragmaticism, Peirce read his earlier pragmatism as a symbol of conflict: interpretant of an antecedent

modernism as well as symbol of a consequent pragmaticism. Read this way, however, it is unclear

whether or not a semiotic "antitype" reforms or simply imitates its type in a new context. Making use of

Peirce's notion of "two tiers," we could answer "both": we may say that an antitype/interpretant reforms

its type on the first tier and imitates its type on the second tier, offering a new embodiment, that is, of its

infallible rules. Pushing the logical side of Peirce's pragmaticism further, then, I want to search for these

types, on both levels.

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II. Hellenistic (Patristic/Rabbinic) Types of Peirce's Pragmatic Semeiotic

I propose to look at Peirce's pragmatic semeiotic as antitype of some as yet unidentified types of

semiotic inquiry -- or, otherwise stated, as interpretant of as yet unidentified, antecedent, suggesting

symbols. On the second tier, I assume a formal symmetry of symbol and interpretant, or type and

antitype. This means I am looking for suggesting symbols that display these fundamental characters: i)

triadicity in semiotic form: that is, a semeiotic that could conceivably be diagrammed by a mathematics

of triadic relatives; ii) a redemptive or compassionate logic: that is, a semeiotic that diagrams a

specifically pragmatic practice of inquiry, offered as a means of applying the instruments of reasoning to

the end of redeeming suffering or, that is, of repairing the conditions of life that give rise to suffering.

The formal aspect of this feature is the limited polysemy of real symbols. Symbols must determine a

plenum of possible, context-specific meanings, but if this plenum were unlimited, the symbol would be

reduced to a mere icon. Pragmatism offers a truth-conditions for limiting polysemy: as signs of suffering,

symbols are also signs of the redemptive action that would alleviate this suffering; interpretant may be

judged "true" to the extent that they contribute to this alleviation; iii) dialogic definition of a pragmatic

semeiotic: that is, the recognition that, as second-tier rule, this semeiotic cannot be defined

propositionally or monologically, but only by way of the dynamic interplay of its mathematical

(semiotic) form and its logical (redemptive) practice.

I do not number the explicitly theological, or theosemiotic, themes of Peirce's pragmaticism

among these characters, but adopt these themes, instead, as hints that the suggesting symbols of his

semeiotic may lie in practices of Scriptural as well as of philosophic interpretation, or, more simply, in

philosophic forms of Scriptural interpretation. I am not taking the time, therefore, to describe the

Scriptural terminology Peirce uses in his pragmaticist account of mathematics ("Prolegomena to an

Apology for Pragmaticism") or the theological terminology he uses in his pragmaticist account of the

foundations of logic ("A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God"). These explicit themes should

serve only as hints of deeper, inexplicit (second-tier) relations between his formal studies and Scriptural

hermeneutics. As for symbols of the first tier, I hope that, without a lot of explanation, it will make sense

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to you if I say that the first tier is already implicated in the "redemptive logic" of the second tier. If one of

the second tier rules is a rule for redeeming suffering, then this suffering must appear on the first tier, in

the form, for example, of errors, contradictory claims, or conflicting arguments. Any semiotic inquiry

that displays a redemptive logic will display it in the way it redeems, or prepares to redeem, symbols of

suffering. As for the "triadicity in semiotic form," furthermore, we should not expect antecedent

semioticians necessarily to have worked out the mathematics of the thing explicitly. What we need to see

is a tendency to interpret redemptive logic in a way that can be diagrammed by a triadic semeiotic.

I am now at the penultimate stage of this final study. I have collected what I consider an adequate

sample of potentially suggesting symbols, and I have framed a reasonable hypothesis about how these

symbols could conceivably serve as types of Peirce's semeiotic. What remains for the immediate project

is to supply more documentation. For the longer range, I seem to have placed myself in an indefinitely

expanding project. It was formerly a dialogic study of the relation between rabbinic scriptural

interpretation and philosophic semiotics. Now it appears to be a trilogical study (how fitting!) of the

relation among those two and early Christian semiotics. I do not plan to take this on as a systematics, but

rather as a series of more modest semiotic readings of Scriptural texts in the light of rabbinic, patristic

and complementary, contemporary philosophic methods of interpretation. What I take to be the point of

this whole business will be evident in the next sentence.

This sentence presents the (interpretive) hypothesis that guides this part of my study: The

suggesting symbol of Peirce's semeiotic is a dialogical relation between a Hellenistic (or Mediterranean

basin) philosophic semeiotic and a trajectory of comparably Hellenistic Scriptural interpretation (the

latter including a dialogic, if at times more dialectical or even polemical, relation between rabbinic-

midrashic and patristic-allegorical modes of interpretation). This dialogical relation is, then, the symbol-

type of which the dialogical character of Peirce's pragmaticism is the interpretant-anti-type. No single

ancient interpreter or school of interpreters embodies this type perfectly, but a collection of interpreters

are prototypical. The most representative of these is Augustine, amplified by such examples as Origen

and Ephraim the Syriac, and read in dialogic relation to a strong tendency in the schools of second to

fourth century rabbinic midrash. Peirce scholars have devoted relatively little attention to these patristic

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types, tracing his semeiotic more proximately to scholastic types. The practice of searching for types

would lead us, however, from these cases to the antecedents I have mentioned. For the same token, this

practice would seem to lead us from the patristic types to successive antecedents. My initial findings,

however, are that, antecedent to Augustine and to a dialectic of Alexandrian and Palestinian schools of

interpretation before him, the search for types turns up material elements, rather than types. That is to

say, we will find there antecedents only of either partner to the semeiotic dialogue, rather than dialogic

types. In one direction, we will find triadic or quasi-triadic formal semiotics in Stoic linguistics and in

Aristotelian sign theory, but not in dialogue with a redemptive logic (I am just beginning to examine

schools of Homeric criticism from this perspective). In the other direction, we will find Philonic and

Trinitarian patristic hermeneutics that suggest a redemptive model of inquiry, but that tend toward dyadic

uses of a triadic semeiotic; we will find rabbinic hermeneutics that suggest both a redemptive and a

triadic logic, but that resist semeiotic formalization; we will find pesher interpretations that present

redemptive logic in a distinctly dyadic form; and we will find varieties of intra-biblical hermeneutics that

may anticipate rabbinic modalities, but in undeveloped form and of disparate etiology.

The consequence of extended studies based on this hypothesis would be to read Peirce's

pragmatic semeiotic as interpretant of a dialogic practice of philosophic Scriptural interpretation that

would resist attempts either to sever purportedly "Greek" from purportedly "Hebrew" thinking or to

reduce versions of either one to the other. This reading of Peirce would reinforce tendencies to look for a

Hellenistic/Mediterranean nexus of a shared, but dialogically dynamic type of Western/Biblical

philosophical theology and of theological or theosemiotic philosophy.

With limited space, and with my documentary researches still incomplete, I will conclude this

essay the way a bazaar salesman might spread his wares before you on a blanket: here, see all these

spices I have for you, here are just some samples, perhaps you would like to come in (later!) and the see

the whole collection? With these tidbits, I am obviously more interested in stimulating the imagination

than in satisfying the critical mind.

*The scholastic type more often considered by Peirce scholars:

Peirce made no secret of the pre-modern sources of his pragmatic semiotic:

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The works of Duns Scotus have strongly influenced me. If his logic and metaphysics,

not slavishly worshipped, but torn from its medievalism, be adapted to modern culture,

under continual wholesome reminders of nominalistic criticisms, I am convinced that it

will go far toward supplying the philosophy which is best to harmonize with physical

science. But other concepts have to be drawn from the history of science and from

mathematics. (CP 1.6:1903?).

Peirce dubbed himself, in fact, a "scholastic realist," even though he "clearly found the medieval systems

to be in need of serious repair" (Raposa, 16). For example, he found that the "medieval logicians were

able to deal [only] with propositions that involve monadic predicates" (Rap 17), while his logic made

room for dyadic and triadic predicates and, thus, for describing continuities in terms of relations and not

just discrete collections.

Some recent studies locate a prototype for Peirce's semeiotic in the semiotic practices of Peter of

Spain, Thomas of Erfurt, Roger Bacon and others, in addition to Duns Scotus. As I read them, however,

these examples call themselves for anterior prototypes: the scholastic systems are derivative.

* Augustine: The Single Most Suggestive Type:

Augustine's work displays the single most suggestive type I have found of Peirce's pragmatic

semeiotic. His Scriptural hermeneutic displays the outlines of a formally triadic semeiotic, the passion

and telos of a redemptive logic and the dynamics of a particularly revealing dialogue between Scriptural

and philosophic tendencies of interpretation. It is Augustine's example, in fact, that encourages me to

describe that dialogue as perhaps an elemental type of the dialogue between mathematical and logical

tendencies that animates Peirce's pragmaticism. I even see tendencies in Augustine to overemphasize one

side of the dialogue the way Peirce does: in Peirce's case, the emphasis is on mathematics; in Augustine's

case it is on the practice of monologic intellection, as opposed to the relinquishment of self to a dialogue

among equals. I hope you do not think I am criticizing such overemphases, for it is precisely such

imbalance which signals an author's, or a symbol's, incompleteness and, thus, its need for a dialogic

partner. Imbalance is part of a pragmatic semeiotic, as long as it is not reified into a dogmatic stance; I

do not observe such a stance in Augustine. The need to find Augustine's partner leads me to number

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rabbinic Scriptural hermeneutics as another major prototype, in dialogic relation to Augustine. While the

rabbis lack Augustine's philosophic (/mathematical) definition, as well as his capacity to work explicitly

on both Scripture and philosophy, they offer, in exchange, an explicitly dialogic practice that is lacking in

the performance as opposed to the theory of Augustine's redemptive logic.

Let me offer you a sampling of comments on the three aspects of the Augustinian type:

i) triadicity in semiotic form

On Christian Doctrine (OCD) will suffice as an illustrative source of Augustine's formal

semeiotic.

OCD offers two definitions of sign (signum): "signs... are things used to signify something" (I.II);

and "a sign is a thing (res) which causes us to think of something beyond the impression the thing itself

makes upon the senses".) Following the second, more detailed definition, a sign thus entails some thing

(res), some sensation caused (made) by the thing, and some thinking caused in us by the thing. There is a

triadic form suggested here, but more developed later. Augustine distinguishes two types of sign: signa

naturalia are natural signs which "without any intention or desire of signifying, make us aware of

something beyond themselves, as smoke signifies fire" (II.II); signa data are given signs (see Jackson p.

97), or "those which living creatures show to one another for the purpose of conveying, in so far as they

are able, the motions of their spirits or something which they have sensed or understood. Nor is there

any other reason for signifying, that is, for giving signs (significandi, id est signi dandi), except for

bringing forth and transferring to another mind (animum) what is conceived in the mind of the person

who gives the sign" (II.II). Only the latter are of interest to Augustine. Of these, we may infer a

distinction among sign (as res), sender of sign, intended receiver of sign, intended meaning in receiver's

mind (apparently identical to meaning in sender's mind), and (from the earlier definition) the actual

sensation the sign causes.

Of given signs, words may signify their objects by nature --that is, on the basis of some

compulsion from or similarity to things -- or merely by convention. One interpreter (Jackson) argues that,

in De dialectica, Augustine took a middle ground on this question "regarding some words as having a

natural rationale but consciously diverging from the Stoic view that all words have a natural origin" (97;

from VI). By OCD, he began to move further from the Stoic position, taking note of the purely

conventional semantics of certain signs whose usage is merely specific to specific languages. In general,

in fact, words tend to have meaning by agreement and consent (placitum et consensio).

Jackson and Markus attribute to Augustine the following ways of classifying the elements of

given, conventional signification. For Jackson,1 there are: i) the signifier as sensible or intelligible thing

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(signum as res, or uerbum); ii) apprehension, or the way the signifier is received, by sense of by

understanding (species as sensed in De Doct; motus animi, or movement of the mind) in De Doctr or

animus sentit in De Dial.; scientia in De Trinitata XV); iii) conception, or thinking caused by the

reception, giving rise to a sensible species or a known meaning or dicibile ( cogitatio in De Doct.; union

of memory, inner vision and will in De Trin,. XI.; --including sensory and intellectual cognition; dicibile

in De Dial. V -- as "what the mind rather than the ear gains from the word and is contained in the mind

itself...: what is understood in the word and held in the mind" ); iv) signifying or "giving signs"

(significandi in De Doct. II; dictio in De Dial. V, as a word spoken only to communicate; sonum in De

Doc).; v) communication to another mind, reiterating all the preceding steps (alterus anim in De Doctr

II).

For Markus,2 this process may be reduced to three essential elements: a sign is a thing that

"stands for something to somebody." Of signs, natural signs are what Markus calls "symptoms," or

"anything which `goes together with' that of which it is taken to be the sign. This would seem to imply

that "natural signa data' (above) are to be classed with natural signs (that have their meaning physei ), and

the class of signa data would be reserved for merely intentional and conventional signs, that have their

meaning thesei , or what Markus calls "symbols." Markus is making a judgment here about Augustine's

interpretive tendency, rather than simply about what Augustine may have claimed at different times, and

the tendency, it seems, is toward interiorizing the activity of genuine semiosis. Thus, in De Trin. XIII,

Augustine claims a word is a word only if it means something. Words do not, therefore, stand for things,

but only for their intended meanings (de Trin. XV), while signs in general will have meaning to the

interpreter for whom there is a meaning convention. Of symbols, then, we may distinguish the signifier

(signatum); the intended meaning or object (significatum); and "the subject to whom the sign stands for

the object signified" (74). Markus claims explicitly, in fact, that Augustine anticipates Peirce's

conception of a triadic semiosis. For Markus, Peirce's definition of "symbol" applies to Augustine's

signa data: "A symbol is a sign which refers to an object by virtue of a law, usually an association of

general ideas, which operates to cause the symbol to be interpreted as referring to that object."

Augustine's notion of significatum is the most telling for this study, since it indicates his

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distinguishing between a sign's intentional, or what Peirce called its "immediate" object, and its

"dynamical object," the res. Augustine could not consistently draw such a distinction without providing

for the sign's interpretant: what he calls "the subject for whom the sign stands...." This is a triadic,

pragmatic distinction.

Augustine's later tendency to (over-)emphasize the conventionality of verbal signs indicates a

tendency to assimilate intentional object and interpretant. This complements his tendencies toward

monologic interpretation: that is, to interiorizing semiosis and to reducing the triadicity of his allegorical

readings of Scripture. I trust this is an aspect of Augustine's writings you know very well and about

which you would not easily accept such bold claims! We would do best, therefore, with a dialogue at

this juncture. So, anticipating our gathering next week, I'll conclude here with a few sample proof texts

and an open question to you: ain't it so?

Illustration #1: Interiorized Semiosis (in theory):

Verily within me, within the chamber of my thought, Truth, neither Hebrew, nor Greek,

nor Latin, nor barbarian without the organs of voice and tongue, without the sound of

syllables, would say `He speaks the truth.' and I fortwith assured of it, confidently would

say unto that man of Thine, `Thou speakest the truth." Conf.XII.III.5

Here, the inner man has a pre-linguistic capacity which may mean only a capacity to house second-tier

rules, or it may also mean a capacity to know those rules foundationally. You are all familiar with a

broad literature arguing for either side. I will suggest here only that however much Augustine's theory

may remain non-foundational (as, for example, according to Mathews), his monologic practice of

interpretation encourages one-sidedly transcendental, if not also foundational, readings of him and

according to him.

Illustration #2: Reduced triadicity in Allegorical Practice:

My suspicion at this time is that Augustine's practice of allegorical reading tends to diminish the

triadicity he recommends in his semiotic theory. An explanatory hypothesis would be that the

monological context of his practice encourages this diminution. Without the kind of mediating

community of interpretation that accompanies rabbinic scriptural readings, we might expect him to

describe textual meaning as tending toward either strict polyvalence (independent of any particular

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interpretant) or univalence (either because its plain sense is clear, or because its interpretive sense is

delimited by a single, authoritative reader, human or divine). The studies of Genesis that conclude The

Confessions suggest this: the divine author alone appears as authoritative reader. If I understand the

notions of Incarnation in De. Trin. (and it is unlikely that I do in any adequate way), then the Trinity's

redemptive logic is potentially available to the interpreter (IX.ii), but by way of the mind's self-

knowledge: Peirce's triadicity as rule for transcendental reduction. And, even then, this trinity is but an

image (XV.xxii). There is another opening in Augustine's critique of platonic reminiscence: knowledge

of the inner, as Peirce says, comes by way of the outer, and the outer is socially mediated (Peirce, after

Aristotle). Peirce speaks of love as the rule of Thirdness (triadicity) itself, mediating sign and object (Cf.

XV.xix). But the question remains, whether this love has a text and, if so, a community of readers. If not,

then enigmas remain enigmas (Xv.ix); if so, then enigmas may become what I have called vague signs of

reality. That seems a rabbinic option, but not nearly so a patristic one, even for Ephrem. Church and

traditum seem to be the missing elements in this discussion, but I will wait to see how you integrate the

City of God into this discussion.

Illustration #3: Overlimited or Underlimited Polysemy:

Let me throw a technical distinction at you from Peirce's logic. It is among three modalities of

signification. The relation between a sign and its intended object may be determinate, indeterminately

general, or indeterminately vague or indefinite:

Peirce writes,

A subject is determinate in respect to any character which inheres in it or is (universally

and affirmatively) predicated of it, as well as in respect to the negative of such

character... In all other respects it is indeterminate .... A sign...that is in any respect

objectively indeterminate... is objectively general in so far as it extends to the interpreter

the privilege of carrying its determination further. Example: `Man [sic] is mortal.' To the

question, What man? The reply is that the proposition explicitly leaves it to you to apply

its assertion to [whom] you will.

A sign that is objectively indeterminate in any respect is objectively vague in so

far as it reserves further determination to be made in some other conceivable sign, or at

least does not appoint the interpreter as its deputy in this office. Example: `A man whom

I could mention seems to be a little conceited.' The suggestion here is that the man in

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view is the person addressed; but the utterer does not authorize such an interpretation or

any other application of what she says. She can still say, if she likes, that she does not

mean the person addressed. Every utterance naturally leaves the right of further

exposition in the utterer; and therefore, in so far as a sign is indeterminate, it is vague,

unless it is expressly or by a well-understood convention rendered general. (5.447)

Peirce adds that

Perhaps a more scientific pair of definitions would be that anything is general in so far

as the principle of excluded middle does not apply to it and is vague in so far as the

principle of contradiction does not apply to it. Thus, although it is true that `Any

proposition you please, once you have determined its identity, is either true or false'; yet

so long as it remains indeterminate and so without identity, it need neither be true that

any proposition you please is true, nor than any proposition you please is false. So

likewise, while it is false that `A proposition whose identity I have determined is both

true and false,' yet until it is determinate, it may be true that a proposition is true and that

a proposition is false. (5.448).

In these terms, the pragmaticist's real symbols are vague, rather than merely general, another way of

saying that their polysemy (indeterminateness) is limited: they refer to some real something (for example,

the redemption of this suffering), but the characters of this something will be revealed only by way of

future experience. In these terms, I find that, particularly as he tends to assign words to the realm of

merely conventional signs, Augustine tends to regard real symbols as general rather than as vague. This

limits the pragmatic force of his readings. For example,

But which of us, amid so many truths which occur to inquirers in these words,

understood as they as in different ways, shall so discover that one interpretation as to

confidently say "that Moses thought this...?" as confidently as he says... "that this is

true..." Although, whether it were one of these, or some other meaning which has not

been mentioned by me, that this great man saw in his mind when he used these words, I

make no doubt but that he saw it truly, and expressed it suitably..." Conf. xxiv

Augustine might only be providing space here for non-determinacy, but I suspect his intention may be,

beyond that, to favor the indeterminate kind. His allegorical readings of Genesis support this suspicion.

In the theory of OCD, furthermore, we have a distinction of literal and figural and ambiguous and

unknown meaning, but no clear notion as I can tell of the irremediably vague-yet-knowable. Figural

meanings are determinate if subtly so; ambiguous meanings appear to be indeterminately general, or else

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limited only by the authority of the individual interpreter. (II.xiff; III.xxivff).3

ii) a redemptive logic

The redemptive logic of Augustine's theory of language and signs is so evident in his writings as

well as in his hermeneutical practice that I will remind you only of one or two examples. In relation to

Peirce, a most powerful example comes in The Confessions, as Augustine contrasts his use of speech

before and after his conversion:

Turn us again, O Lord God of Hosts, cause Thy face to shine; and we shall be saved. For

withersoever the soul of man turns itself, unless towards Thee, it is affixed to sorrows,

yea, though it is affixed to beauteous things without Thee and without itself. And yet

they were not unless they were from Thee.... And even thus is our speech accomplished

by signs emitting a sound; but this, again, is not perfected unless one word pass away

when it has sounded its part, in order that another may succeed it....(IV.x)

In the light of his conversion, he saw the emptiness of his previous use of words as merely natural things

that lacked, we might say, the interpretant with respect to which they symbolized some one Reality rather

than a myriad of merely ephemeral possibilities. I think of Peirce as pragmaticist similarly looking back

at the modernism of his earlier years as a condition lacking such an interpretant --or what he often

referred to as the "key" to unlocking the mysteries of the universe. For Augustine, the Incarnation is this

key:

And I sought a way of acquiring strength sufficient to enjoy Thee; but I found it not until

I embraced that Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.... For the Word

was made flesh, that Thy wisdom, by which Thou createdst all things, might provide

milk for our infancy. (VII.xviii; Cf. X.xliii; OCD I.34)

And it seemed good to me, as before Thee, not tumultuously to snatch away, but

gently to withdraw the service of my tongue from the talker's trade. (IX.ii)... Let my heart

and tongue praise Thee (IX.i).

Colish writes, "The doctrine of the Incarnation and the manner in which Augustine understands

his conversion to it are ... essential to his conception of the redemption of language, which, he holds,

makes theology possible."4 I cannot avoid thinking of Peirce's pragmaticism as the sign of a comparable

conversion, if not to the external signs of a Christology, then at least to the inner logic of a trilogical

practice of living and knowing. His pragmatic speech was redeemed by his pragmaticist practice.

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iii) dialogic definition of the pragmatic semeiotic:

I will close this section without prooftexts, but only with a question to you who know these

writings so well: is there a better illustration in any literature of a semiosis whose form is defined not

merely through philosophic analysis (or any of its species) and not merely through the practice of

Scriptural interpretation, but through a dialogic interpenetration of the two?

(I am now in the middle of research in Origen and Ephraim the Syriac [the latter, thanks to

Kathleen McVeigh] that amplifies the significance of patristic semiotics for a study of Peirce as well as

of a dialogical relation between rabbinic and patristic semiotics. I won't take the time here to sample this

research, but I would welcome your discussing these interpreters as well.)

* The rabbinic type:

In this section, "rabbinic midrash" refers to the mode of Scriptural interpretation typical of the

Talmudic sages of the second to fifth centuries, approximately, with antecedents in the Tannaitic midrash

of the first century and, before that, in Second Temple intra-biblical and extra-canonical literature. I

employ the term "rabbinic midrash" to represent a type defined dialogically through the practices of both

homiletical and legal interpretations of Scripture. In my reading, the dialogical relationship between

these two corresponds, if distantly, to the dialogical relationship between logical and mathematical

tendencies in Peirce and between philosophic and Scriptural or also monologic and dialogic tendencies of

interpretation in Augustine. In the rabbinic literature, the homiletical practice represents the

mathematical or monological tendency; the legal practice represents the logical or Scriptural tendency. I

am suggesting that, whether or not there are analogues elsewhere, these dialogical relationships typify a

Hellenistic-Biblical form of inquiry, of which form patristic and rabbinic modes of interpretation

represent prototypes and Peirce's semeiotic represents an antitype. Of the two, the patristic type tends

relatively toward the monological or mathematical pole and the rabbinic type tends relatively toward the

dialogical or logico-social pole. At the same time, the patristic practice remains the more clearly typical

of Peirce's semeiotic, since both philosophic and Scriptural modalities are explicit in it. The function of

the rabbinic practice in this discussion is to illustrate in more detail the dialogical modality that is less

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fully developed in the patristic literature. One source of this development in the rabbinic literature is the

corporate authorship of the Talmudic literature, a product of the schools of study as well as of the artistry

of the redactor. In this literature, readings of the Bible that might otherwise tend toward an indeterminate

polysemy are reduced to a finite or indefinite polysemy through the cooperative dialogue that joins many

authors. I believe this is the key formal distinction between the rabbinic and patristic approaches.

My own approach to rabbinic literature finds its prototype in the rabbinic studies of Max

Kadushin (d. 1980), my teacher at the Jewish Theological Seminary. In his studies on rabbinic

hermeneutics, Kadushin offers some hints of his interest in Peirce, but it was not until much later in my

study of Peirce's semeiotic that I learned how much of Kadushin's work was influenced by it. This

connection is the source of my initial orientation in this study.

Using the vocabulary we have already developed, I will try to reduce Kadushin's thesis to a few

sentences. Kadushin analyzed the corpus of rabbinic homiletical midrashim as a collection of discrete

interpretations of Scriptural texts. He labeled each interpretation an "haggadic statement" and conceived

of it as if it were the product of an individual interpreter's judgment. Each judgment displayed the

interpreter's understanding both of a biblical lemma in its broader textual context and of whatever

pertinence the message of that text might have to his Jewish community in its social and theological

context. Since the rationale for any midrash — its "hook" — was some apparent problem in the

semantics of the biblical text, we might say that the rabbinic interpreter read the text as a double symbol

of suffering: that is, a symbol of some problem in both the community and the text which the interpreter's

reading might help resolve. But how to pick one way of resolving it out of many possibilities? On the

one hand, Kadushin recognized the rabbis' understanding of textual polysemy, as taught in this

interpretation from Sifre:

In the school of R Ishmael it is taught, [Behold my word is like fire, declares the Lord],

and like a hammer that shatters rocks (Jer. 23.29). Just as a hammer breaks into several

shivers, so too one scriptural passage issues as several meanings.

Kadushin noted that, for example, in the midrash Mekhilta,

there are numerous consecutive opinions accounting for the crossing of the Red Sea....:

Because of Jerusalem -- R. Ishmael; God only fulfilled the promise He had made their

26

fathers -- anonymous..... Because they (Israel) trusted in me — Rabbi...5

On the other hand, Kadushin argued that the rabbis offered their interpretive judgments from out of a

finite and coherent universe of shared values: as a concomitant of the dialogic activity of the schools,

there was much argument about individual judgments, but also much agreement on the values that

underlay those judgments in general. Kadushin therefore conceived of each interpretive judgment as the

application to the details of a particular textual and communal situation of some one or some collection

of a finite group of values.

For example, in the midrashic collection on Genesis, Genesis Rabbah, we find this interpretation

of the Scriptural passage, "And God saw everything that [God] had made; and behold, it was very good"

(Gen. l.31)6:

(a)In the copy of R.[Rabbi] Meir's Torah (Pentateuch) was found written: 'And behold, it

was very (me'od) good': and behold,death (maweth) was good... .

(c)R. Johanan said: Why was death decreed against the wicked? Because as long as the

wicked live they anger the Lord, as it is written,'Ye have wearied the Lord with your

words'(Mal.2.l7); but when they die they cease to anger Him as it is written,'There the

wicked cease from raging"(Job 3.17), which means, there the wicked cease from

enraging the Holy One blessed be He....

According to Kadushin, these are two haggadic statements, each of which actualizes different elements

of the rabbinic value concept on the occasion of its interpreting the text of Genesis. Examining the first

text philologically, the text's modern editor observes, "This may mean either that Rabbi Meir's

manuscript read maweth ( "death") instead of me'od ("very") or that this was inserted as a marginal

comment."7 Kadushin might have said that, in either case, Rabbi Meir interpreted a textual idiosyncrasy

in a way that poses the question, "How can death be good?" As suggested by the second statement, his

rabbinic readers inferred the answer, "Death is a potent force for repentance."8 In other words, Rabbi

Meir's observing a textual idiosyncrasy became an occasion for the rabbis' actualizing such value

concepts that pertained to their communities' needs: such as Repentance (the wicked repent through their

death), The Wicked, Creation (God's creation includes death), God's Justice (the wicked are punished

through death), and God's Mercy (that punishment removes God's wrath).

In terms of the pragmatic semeiotic, Kadushin conceived of each value as a relative predicate for

which the context of text and community provided grammatical subjects. Otherwise put, each

interpretation displayed the meaning of a lemma for the interpretant that joined text and community

together in a dialogical relation. Since this interpretant — the universe of rabbinic values — was finite,

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the interpretation reduced the text's polysemy to a finite collection of mutually reinforcing possibilities.

In Kadushin's reading, the rabbinic commentary was therefore triadic in semiotic form, guided by a

redemptive logic (reducing polysemy toward one), and strictly dialogic in definition (only modern

interpreters like Kadushin, or medieval philosophers before him, would insert into the discourse formal

logical modes of explanation).

Kadushin's reading of the rabbis' universe of values tends to be overly synchronic. Nonetheless,

the work of other recent rabbinic scholars may reinforce his reading of the rabbis' pragmatic semeiotic.

One example is Steven Fraade, who, while disclaiming current interest in semiotics (and wary of any

structuralist aspects of it), writes of the "dialogic" character of the rabbinic commentaries in the Midrash

Sifre to Deuteronomy. He notes, as well, that the commentaries' multiple interpretations are presented as

the product of collective and cumulative, rather than of merely individual, activities of interpretation.

And he concludes that the commentaries effect a dialogical relationship between Scripture as a whole

and the interpretive rabbinic community, through which textual meaning and communal practice are

mutually transformative. I will not take more time here to illustrate his analysis, but I will return to it

later as a source of studying the rabbis' hermeneutical antecedents.

III. Material Elements of the Hellenistic Prototypes

As I suggested earlier, a search for types of the patristic or rabbinic types reveals only elements

of either one side of these types' dialogical practices. I will conclude with a sampling of these: from the

patristic, philosophic side, some notes on Stoic and Aristotelian semiotics; from the rabbinic/patristic,

scriptural side, some notes on Philo, the Dead Sea Scrolls and intra-biblical interpretation.

* Philosophical elements: Stoic

Peirce follows Cicero's lead, rather than Aristotle's, in giving priority to the semiotics of

probability rather than of demonstration. Going beyond Cicero as well, however, Peirce does not restrict

the study of vague signs to rhetoric, but to logic as well. For his metaphysics, in fact, vague signs and

not demonstrative ones are symbols of the real. As far as I can tell so far, we will find a prototype of

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that claim only in semiotic systems developed in the context of Biblical interpretation. Cicero's Stoic

sources contribute significant elements, however, to the formal study of semiotic triadicity. I will focus

here only on one semiotic concept, the lekton, or "sayable."

According to Sextus, the Stoics, after Aristotle, defined a sign as "an antecedent judgment in a

valid hypothetical syllogism, which serves to reveal the consequent" (Outlines of Pyrrhonism II.xi). They

linked three things together:

"the signification" (semainomenon), "the signifier" (semeinon) and "the name-bearer"

(tugkainon). The signifier is an utterance (phonen), for instance, "Dion"; the

signification is the actual state of affairs (pragma) revealed by an utterance, and which

we apprehend as it subsists in asccordance with our thought, whereas it is not understood

by those whose language is different...; the "name-bearer" is the external object, for

instance Dion himself. Of these, two are bodies -- the utterance and the name-bearer; but

one is incorporeal -- the state of affairs signified (semainomenon pragma) and sayable

(lekton), which is true or false. (Against the Prof. 8.11-12).

They say that a "sayable" (lekton) is what subsists in accordance with a rational

impression, and a rational impression is one in which the content of the impression can

be exhibited in language. (8.70)

Diogenes Laertius adds that, for the Stoa,

sayables are divided into complete and incomplete, the latter being ones whose linguistic

expression is unfinished, e.g., "[Someone] writes," for we ask "Who?" In complete

sayables the linguistic expression is finished, e.g., "Socrates writes." So incomplete

sayables include predicates, whereas ones that are complete include propositons,

syllogisms, questions and enquiries. (7.63)

It appears, then, that the Stoa, against Aristotle, interposed lekta between thoughts and the things

they signify. In these terms, Peirce's logic of relative predicates would include a logic of lekta. Unlike

the Stoa, however, Peirce would assert that such predicates refer to realia: and not only lekta, but

incomplete lekta to boot! For Peirce, "Someone writes" is a prototypically vague symbol, and such

symbols are protypical signs of realia. The Stoic trichotomy of sign, object and sayable does not exactly

correspond to Peirce's sign, object and interpretant, but it is close. The "sayable" displays elements of

what Peirce calls the "immediate object," or the object as it is intended, as well as of the "immediate

interpretant." From what we have to read, the Stoa did not develop the pragmatic character of this

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sayable, that is, its rule (or tendency)-bound relation to possible action as well as to the specific contexts

of action. It appears that they tended to reduce pragmatic to semantic meaning. Nonetheless, their

semantics remains richly suggestive for a pragmatic semiotic.

* Philosophical elements: Aristotelian

While Peirce is a careful and appreciative student of Aristotle's, Aristotle's semeiotic represents

an element rather than a prototype of Peirce's pragmatic semeiotic. It contributes terminology and aspects

of logical form, particularly with respect to the logic of probability, but it is not a source of the triadicity

of Peirce's relative predicates nor of Peirce's notion of the redemptive force of logic.

Here, I will offer some brief notes on the elements Aristotle does contribute. As logician,

Aristotle's interest in signs is limited to their role in inference. Some students of patristic semiotics tend

to separate such inferential treatments from those proper to the study of language and, within it, of

allegory. I believe Peirce's semeiotic requires integrating rather than severing the two approaches, since

a genuine symbol turns out to be a mode of interpretation, rather than a mere term. The limitation in

Aristotle's approach would come, then, not in its inferential conception of signs, but in its tending to link

signs with demonstration and tending to limit non-demonstrative, or probabilistic reasoning to the realm

of rhetoric rather than logic.

In the Prior Analytics, Aristotle defines a sign (semeion) as "a demonstrative proposition

necessary or generally approved: for anything such that when it is another thing is, or when it has come

into being the other has come into being before or after, is a sign of the other thing's being or having

come into being" (II.27). For Peirce, we may note, the premise of a syllogism is, similarly, a sign of its

conclusion, but the syllogism may be necessary (deductive) or probable (inductive or abductive). For

Aristotle as for Peirce, the syllogistic function of a sign already involves the sign in a triadic structure: a

sign may function either as first, middle or third term. The triadicity of Peirce's symbols belongs to a

particular kind of triadic structure, however, one which Aristotle's system allows but does not specify.

Aristotle relegates probable inferences to the enthymemes of rhetoric, which may be true or,

more usually, merely probable. Restated in the form that anticipates Peirce's discussion, Aristotle

diagrams three ways "a sign may be taken" in an enthymeme (Rhet I.2 1357; Prior An II.27 70):

I "Irrefutable Syllogism" If a woman has milk, she is with child.

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Woman has milk. Hence, woman is with child. II "Sometimes Refutable Syllogism" Pittacus is wise. Pittacus is good. Wise men are good. III "Always Refutable Syllogism" (Prior An; but in Rhetoric= only "Refutable") If a woman is with child, she is pale. This woman is pale. This woman is with child.

In Peirce's terms, I is deduction and is necessary; II is induction and is probable; III is abduction, and it is

also probable, rather than "always refutable." For it may or may not be the case that she is with child:

this is the form all hypotheses take, subject to inductive testing. There are three kinds of sign, then:

infallible (contributing to necessary inferences) or fallible (contributing to probable inferences; or, for

the Prior. Anal. to probable or false inferences).

Aristotle describes words as kinds of sign. In De interpretatione :

Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols

of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same

speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same

for all, as also are those things of which our experience are the images. (I.1; 16; cited in

Jackson).

... By a noun we mean a sound significant by convention.... The limitation "by

convention" was introduced because noting is by nature a noun or name -- it is only so

when it becomes a symbol. (I.2) .... The expression "not-man" ... [is] an indefinite noun.

... A verb is always a sign of something said of something else.... Verbs in and by

themselves are substantial and have significance, for he who uses such expressions

arrests the hearer's mind, and fixes his attention. (I.3)

.... Every sentence has meaning ... by convention. Yet every sentence is not a

proposition; only such are propositions as have in them either truth or falsity. (II.4 17)...

Everything must either be or not be, whether in the present or in the future, but it

is not always possible to distinguish and state determinately which of these alternatives

must necessarily come about. Let me illustrate. A sea-fight must either take place to-

morrow or not, but it is not necessary that it should take place to-morrow neither is it

necessary that it should not take place, yet it is necessary that it either should or should

not take place tomorrow. (9 18).

In sum, for Aristotle (as summarized in Jackson), written words (grammata) are signs of spoken words

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(phonai ), which are signs of experiences of the soul (en te thyke), which are signs of the objects

(pragmata) of those experiences. Linguistic terms signify by convention, but they also have performative

force (they grab attention) and truth (if ordered and performed correctly, they may refer accurately to real

objects). Propositions are signs that may be true or false. Among them, some may be indefinite (vague in

Peirce's terms), that is, like the sea-fight that is tomorrow, they may refer independently of the principle

of contradiction (a and -a).

* Scriptural elements: The pesher element or counter-type

According to rabbinic scholar Steven Fraade, mentioned earlier, the prophetic pesharim of the

Dead Sea Scrolls exemplify a non-triadic type of Scriptural interpretation. He writes that the pesharim

interpret the actual words of [the prophetic books], sentence by sentence or phrase by

phrase in succession, as signifying the events, groups, and personages that play key roles

in the sacred history of the Dead Sea sect.... The group's understanding of the revealed

nature of these commentaries is best expressed in the following piece of pesher

commentary:

And God told Habakkuk to write down the things that are going to come upon

the last generation, but the fulfillment of the end- time he did not make known to

him. And when it says, 'So that he can run who reads it' (Hab. 2.2), the

interpretation of its concerns (pisro 'al ) the Teacher of Righteousness, to whom

God made known all the mysteries of His servants the prophets (1QpHab 7.1-5)9

By way of the pesher commentaries, the Teacher of Righteousness revealed to his sectaries the hidden

meanings of Scripture's veiled messages. These meanings all served to confirm the sect's understanding

that they were "God's elect, for whose sake history, as foretold in the scriptural prophecies, was rapidly

approaching its messianic vindication and consummation" (6). Fraade offers this commentary on

Habakkuk as a prototypical illustration:

[A] When it says, "For you have plundered many nations, but all the rest of people

will plunder you" (Hab 2:8a), the interpretation of it concerns (pisro 'al) the last priests

of Jerusalem, who amass wealth and profit from plunder of the peoples; but at the end of

days their wealth together with their booty will be given into the hand of army of the

Kittim [=the Romans]. For they are 'the rest of the peoples.'

[B] "On account of human bloodshed and violence done to the land, the city, and all

its inhabitants" (Ibid., 8b). The interpretation of it concerns the [W]icked Priest, whom

— because of wrong done to the Teacher of Righteousness and his partisans... — God

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gives into the hand of his enemies to humble him with disease for annihilation in despair,

beca[u]se he had acted wickedly against his [=God's] chosen ones. (1QpHab 9.3-12).

Fraade interprets,

By dividing the verse (Hab 2:8) into two halves and providing different significations for

each, the pesher has the verse refer both to the officiating Jerusalem priests of his own

time .. and to the Wicked Priest in the time of the ... Teacher of Righteousness. (5)

Following the terminology of Michael Fishbane,10

Fraade calls this a "deictic" type of

interpretation: "characterized by a demonstrative terminology that links, in direct correspondence, each

discrete segment of the prophetic base-text to its decoded signification" (7). In the terms I am using, this

means that the base-text serves as an indexical signifier with a univalent referent. This is the limit case

of the allegorical reduction of a dense symbol's potential triadicity to the dyad relation of one sign to one

meaning.

* Scriptural elements: Philonic

In the same study, Fraade contrasts the "deictic" commentary of the Dead Sea Scrolls to what he

calls the "dialogic" commentary of Philo:

Philo sought into the dialogical structure of commentary, itself adapted from wider

Greek usage, a performative instrument with which to link for his readers the language of

Jewish Scripture to the philosophical language of high Greek culture as he understood,

without dissolving the difference between them and while asserting the primacy of the

former and the derivativeness of the latter. Through a rhetorical give and take not only

with the plurality of Scripture's text, but also with a plurality of post-biblical interpretive

voices, Philo's commentaries might draw his community into a dynamic engagement and

identification with both Moses' Torah and its philosophically attuned, allegorical

translation. (13)

As prime illustration, Fraade cites Philo's commentary on Gen 15:15, where God promises Abraham, "

Thou shalt depart to thy fathers nourished with peace, in a goodly old age":

After "thou shalt depart" come the words "to thy fathers." What fathers?... Moses could

not mean those who had lived in the land of the Chaldeans, who were the only kinsfolk

Abraham had, seeing that the oracle had set his dwelling away from all those of hid

blood (Gen 12:1,2).... No, by "fathers" he does not mean those whom the pilgrim soul

has left behind..., but possibly, as some say, the sun, moon and other starts to which it is

held that all things on earth owe their birth and framing, or as others think, the archetypal

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ideas which, invisible and intelligible there, are the patterns of things visible and sensible

here — the idea in which, as they say, the mind of the Sage find its new home. Others

again have surmised that by "fathers" are meant the first principles and potentialities,

from which the world has been framed, earth, water, air and fire. For into these, they

say, each thing that has come into being is duly resolved.... These all belong to the body,

but the soul whose nature is intellectual and celestial will depart to find a father in ether,

the purest of the substances.... (Her. 277-83)

For Fraade, the dialogic character of this commentary is displayed in its entertaining a plurality of

interpretations, progressing dialectically, in this case,

from the first rejected meaning ("fathers" as Abraham's biological ancestors), through a

series of more symbolic but not yet allegorical meanings suggested by other exegetes

("fathers" as, successively, the heavenly bodies, the archetypal ideas, and the physical

elements), and finally to what we must presume is Philo's own allegorical preference

("fathers" as the heavenly ether from which the perceptive world was born and to which

the soul seeks to return. This exegetical progression through multiple interpretations

parallels, in a sense, the journey of the soul itself as it leaves its physical confines in

order to return to its spiritual source. (11).

While Philo prefers the spiritual level of interpretation, "it cannot be attained without first

engaging the text of Scripture and its literal meaning," the same way Philo allegorizes the

commandments but also counsels literal observance as well (12, on Mig. 89). As a result, Philo's

commentary displays elements both of deictic allegorizing, in which some hidden but now revealed

meaning is preferred, and a tendency to anticipate rabbinic midrash: that is, to preserve the plain sense

while also departing from it to display context-specific, symbolic meanings (in the words of the b.

Talmud, Shabbat 63a, "the plain sense of a Scriptural passage is never superceded" eyn mikra yotse midei

peshuto). Questions about the plain sense give rise to allegorical interpretations that respect the text's

polysemy and, thus, remain ever-incomplete.

* Scriptural elements: Intra-biblical

If any Scriptural hermeneutic is to serve as a prototype of Peirce's pragmatic semeiotic, it could

not be one that is either strictly literalist or strictly univalent (such as a strictly deictic allegorical reading)

34

or indeterminately polyvalent (imposing no significant restrictions on the range of possible readings). It

must therefore be one that regards the Scriptural text as polysemic but yet circumscribed in its meaning:

in the terms I introduced earlier, one for which the text is vague symbol of some particular yet

indefinite meaning, which meaning is defined only with respect to rules of conduct specific to its

communities of interpretation, and which meaning is clarified only in the long run and ultimately

clarified only in the end of days in the messianic community of interpreters. With some limitations,

we will find such prototypes in early rabbinic and in early Church readings of Scripture, but those

readings will prompt us to ask whether or not "the Scripture itself" recommends the readings. If this is a

foundationalist question about whether or not the literal sense of Scripture requires a certain hermeneutic

and only that hermeneutic, then our answer must be "Not!" There is another way to ask the question,

however, for which the answer may be "may be." This is to ask: is the plain-sense of Scripture only

passively or also actively polysemic? Passively polysemic means that it suffers or tolerates a variety of

readings; actively polysemic means that it recommends a variety of readings. Now, the text can

recommend readings only if it reads: that is, if there is "intra-Biblical interpretation." This is precisely

Michael Fishbane's claim, in his classic study of Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. It is a study of

what he calls the genres of inner-biblical exegesis: the variety of ways in which Scripture interprets itself.

For a semiotic study, the implication is that Scripture's polysemy is not merely a polysemy of terms or

even of individual propositions, but also of logoi: of modes of interpretation, which are modes of

reasoning, which, in the terms to be introduced below, are full symbols, as opposed to icons and indices.

This is not to say that Scripture recommends only one logos (to claim that would to make a

foundationalist claim of a logicist sort) but, rather, that a pragmatic semeiotic may be a legitimate (or

even the strongest known) interpretant of intra-biblical logoi.

I will take time here to note only a few of the logical types Fishbane observes at work within

what I'll dub the "thick" plain-sense of Scripture — thick, that is, with logical as well as terminological

levels of meaning. I'll place in an endnote my longer description of the force of Fishbane's claim. 11

According to Fishbane, the genres of inner-biblical exegesis are "scribal," "legal," "aggadic," and

"mantological. Illustrations of these are scribal correction, "lemmatic legal exegesis" (where the exegesis

35

is bound to an authoritative legal text), analogical aggadic exegesis, and the recontextualization of

historical narratives into oracular exegesis. The legal exegesis, to take one example, anticipates features

of rabbinic midrash: in the "lectionary-plus-interpretative mode reflected in Neh. 8:13-16,

first the text is read; and then a portion of it is explained, as is necessary. The

interpretation is thus not an explanation or reinterpretation of the entire passage, but only

of that section of it requiring exegetical comment. There is thus an atomization of its

content.(266)

This content is interpreted according "to an authoritative traditum," suggesting that the lemma, as

symbol, displays its performative meaning, for a particular, interpreting community as guided by its

interpretive tradition.

Of particular interest for our own study are Fishbane's claims that inner-biblical legal exegesis

displays a "triadic structure" relating the "mental, textual and social-historical" modes of interpretation

and that the common-denominator underlying these modes is conflict (70-71). Exegesis is stimulated by

conflicting claims, whose resolution reforms the traditum while preserving the authority of Scripture as

suggesting symbol. Fishbane makes similar claims about aggadic exegesis in the Bible: about its triadic

structure and about it helps resolve conflicts by contributing to the transformation of social, mental and

literary context (408ff: examples are Jer. 2:26,34; Deut 7.9-10, reinterpreting Ex. 34:6-7).

As a mode of conflict resolution, the inner-biblical exegesis displays the redemptive logic of

interpretation; and its "triadic structure" corresponds to the formal triadicity of a (literary) text's relation

to its intended (mental) object and (socio-historical) interpretant.

* The first stage of Peirce's pragmatic thinking was his critique of what he called "Cartesianism." In his

Journal of Speculative Philosophy papers of 1868-9, he identified Cartesianism with intuitionism, the assumption

that there is a "cognition not determined by a previous cognition of the same object, and therefore so determined

by something out of consciousness" [5.213: references are to Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, eds.

Charles Harteshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, Mass., 1934,5)]. He argued against intuitionism by adducing

empirical and logical arguments in favor of a non-intuitionist epistemology. He offered what amounts to a

cognitivism, claiming that all our cognitions are determined by previous cognitions and that "our whole

knowledge of the internal world is derived from the observation of external facts" (5.244).

In his Popular Science Monthly papers of 1877-8, Peirce offered a different method for criticizing

Cartesianism. This is the method of pragmatism, which he first articulated as a corollary of the motivational

36

theory of doubt and belief he adopted from the psychologist Alexander Bain. According to this theory,

intellectual activity is stimulated by real doubts we have about how to act in the world, which are themselves

symptoms of our behavioral errors. The intellectual activity fulfills its pragmatic function when it recommends

means of resolving the doubts by repairing the behavioral errors. Often, however, we fail to take cognizance of

the doubts that actually motivate us and therefore pursue intellectual activity as if for its own sake. This kind of

activity has no explicit ground and, therefore, no explicit end. Rather than resolve the doubts that motivate it, it

masks them, preserving them, unintentionally, as stimuli for ever-renewed and unresolvable intellectual ventures.

As pragmatist, Peirce examined Cartesianism as a "method of fixing belief" — a particular response to

real doubt. He says that the scholastics fixed belief by appealing to authority, but that the Cartesians believed that

none of the prevailing traditions of inquiry adequately guided their explorations into previously unexamined

dimensions of experience. He says that the Cartesians therefore abandonded the scholastics' method of authority

in favor of what he had previously called intuitionism. As pragmatist, Peirce relabeled the Cartesian

epistemology a priorism. He then criticized a priorists for masking the motivational ground of their intellectual

activity. The Cartesians' intuitions function, he says, only as hypotheses about how to repair the scholastics'

errant traditions of inquiry. As a priorists, however, the Cartesians portray these intuitions as if they were sources

of immediate knowledge of the objects of inquiry. They therefore pursue their intellectual activity as if for its

own sake and fail to re-direct it to the end of repairing the errors, and thus resolving the doubts, which gave rise

to it.

In his 1878 papers, Peirce argued that the "scientific method of fixing belief," alone, resolves the doubts

that stimulate the Cartesian project. Like the Cartesians, scientists want to remove inquiry from the constraints of

traditional authority. Unlike the Cartesians, however, scientists identify the objects of inquiry with the as yet

unknown sources of our doubts about traditional knowledge. To identify the objects of inquiry is, thus, to resolve

the doubts which stimulate inquiry. Scientists regard mathematical and cognitive intuitions as hypothetical

constructs which they employ when framing explanatory theories. They claim that these theories identify the

objects of inquiry, but only to the degree that the theories are verified through rigorous procedures of empirical

testing. Empirical tests are performed publically — that is, by what Peirce calls the community of scientific

inquirers. Peirce added that this is an "indefinite community,"which means that all theories are fallible, except

those that stand the test of an indefinite process of verification.

Peirce's celebrated Pragmatic Maxim provided a means of evaluating whether or not an inquirers new

beliefs fulfilled the function of repairing the real doubts about the world that stimulated inquiry in the first place.

In 1878, Peirce stated the Maxim this way:

Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive of the object of our

conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.

(5.402)

37

According to this statement, we may evaluate the new beliefs by asking what we would conceive their practical

effects to be. We may judge the beliefs to be adequate if they would conceivably resolve the doubts that

stimulated inquiry.

Allan Perreaih, for example (1989 25.1), examines the following medieval models of various aspects of Peirce's

semeiotic. i) Peirce's "views on the pure meaning of signification of a sign closely resemble the central concept of

signification (significatio) in speculative grammar," for example, Thomas of Erfurt's Grammatica Speculativa (44);

ii) "The medieval texts routinely define supposition (suppositio) as "that property of a categorematic term which

`stands for'(supponit pro) some thing or things in a proposition" (Paul of Venice, Logica Parva)" (44). Peirce knew

these sources and described signification in these terms; iii) "Peirce's own conception of reasoning divided into

formal and material agrees with the medieval division of inferences (consequentiae) into formal and material" (46);

iv) "Peirce's notion of logic as normative and his use of `good' and `bad' as evaluative terms in logic follows the

medieval practice...."; iv) "Peirce's use of all of these devices in the conduct of probable argument is very close to the

medieval practice of dialectical reasoning" (46). See, among others, John Boler, "Peirce, Ockham and Scholastic

Realism," Monist Vol 63 (1980): 290-303; Emily Michael, "Peirce's Earliest Contact with Scholastic Logic,"

Transactions of the CS Peirce Soc. 12 (Winter, 1976): 46-55.

1 B. Darrell Jackson, "The Theory of Signs in De Doctrina Christiana," in R.A> Markus, Augustine (Garden City,

1972):92-148).

2 R.A. Markus, "St. Augustine on Signs, Ibid., 61-91.

3 Louis Kelly's associating Augustine's semiotics with de Saussure's would, if warranted, increase this suspicion,

since Saussure tended to reduce triadicity to dyadicity ( "Saint Augustine and Saussurian Linguistics," Aug. Stud 6

(1975): 45-64.

4 Marcia Colish, The Mirror of Language (New Haven, 1968), p.22.

5 Max Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind (New York, 1972), pp. 74-5.

6 From Midrash Rabbah I-X, Freedman and Simon, eds. (London: Soncino Press, 1939, 1961).

7.Ibid, I, pp. 66-67.

8. Ibid.

9 Steven Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary, Torah and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy

(Albany, 1991), p. 4.

10 Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford, 1985), pp. 44-55.

11 Fishbane's thesis in Biblical Interpretation, as well as in Part I of The Garments of Torah (Indiana, 1991) is that

the revealed word is in its depths a revealed activity of interpretation: or, in the terms of a postcritical semiotics, a

revealed process of semiosis. As symbol, the Scriptural text is not a mere index ( a merely referential sign) nor a

mere icon (a merely imitative sign), but a genuine symbol, meaning a living process of semiosis conceptualized as

"symbol," in linguistically finite ways, only when glimpsed in its relatedness to finite contexts of meaning. The

process may be conceptualized as a dynamic relationship among the material elements of the text (graphemes)

38

ordered syntactically, the range of referential capacities of these elements as ordered, and the range of interpretive

processes with respect to which these capacities may be and have been both actualized and transformed. This

dynamic relationship is not instantiated in individual textual elements or in individual referents, but only in particular

interpretive processes — the practices of biblical hermeneutics of which we have historical evidence. FIshbane

argues that Judaism has made hermeneutics its principle meaning-bestowing activity and that, as revealed source, the

Bible is a prototypical practice of hermeneutics, rather than a mere subject for subsequent and potentially extraneous

interpretive activity. We may consider this his response to Hans Frei's question about how the Bible can disclose

itself to us without being reduced to the conditions of our understanding. It discloses its hermeneutics intratextually

to the interpreting mind as patterns among its textual elements, which patterns can be retrieved as the kinds of logia

Fishbane calls the genres of inner-biblical exegesis: "scribal," "legal," "aggadic," and "mantological."