On the Medieval Theory of Signs

235 Pages·1989·22.56 MB·English

by  Umberto Eco

ON THE MEDIEVAL THEORY OF SIGNS
FOUNDATIONS OF SEMIOTICS
General Editor
ACHIM ESCHBACH
(University of Essen)
Advisory Editorial Board
Herbert E. Brekle (Regensburg); Geoffrey L. Bursill-Hall (Burnaby, B.C.)
Eugenio Coseriu (Tübingen); Marcelo Dascal (Tel-Aviv)
Lambertus M. de Rijk (Leiden); Max H. Fisch (Indianapolis)
Rudolf Haller (Graz); Robert E. Innis (Lowell, Mass.)
Norman Kretzmann (Ithaca, N.Y.); W. Keith Percival (Lawrence, Kansas)
Jan Sulowski (Warszawa); Jürgen Trabant (Berlin)
Volume 21
Umberto Eco & Costantino Marmo (eds)
On the Medieval Theory of Signs
ON THE MEDIEVAL THEORY
OF SIGNS
edited by
UMBERTO ECO and COSTANTINO MARMO
University of Bologna
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
1989
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
8
National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
On the medieval theory of signs / edited by Umberto Eco and Costantino Marmo.
p. cm. -- (Foundations of semiotics, ISSN 0168-2555; v. 21)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Semiotics -- History -- Congresses. 2. Philosophy, Medieval -- Congresses. I. Eco, Umberto. II. Marmo,
Costantino. III. Series.
P99.054 1989
001.51/0902--19 89000232
ISBN 978 90 272 3293 9 (hB: alk. paper)
© 1989 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means,
without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Company • P.O. Box 36224 • 1020 me Amsterdam • The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America • P.O. Box 27519 • Philadelphia, PA 19118-0519 • USA
Contents
Preface vii
Section I
On animal language in the medieval classification of signs 3
U. Eco, R. Lambertini, C. Marmo and A. Tabarroni
Denotation 43
Umberto Eco
Section II
Thomas Aquinas: Natural semiotics and the epistemological process 81
Roberto Pellerey
Sicut tabernarius vinum significat per circulum: Directions in
contemporary interpretations of the Modistae 107
Roberto Lambertini
Ontology and semantics in the logic of Duns Scotus 143
Costantino Marmo
Mental signs and the theory of representation in Ockham 195
Andrea Tabarroni

Preface
This volume offers the outcomes of a seminar on Medieval Semiotics
directed by Umberto Eco at the Istituto di Discipline della Comunicazione
(University of Bologna), during the Academic Year 1982-1983. It is, par­
tially, a translation of Semiotica Medievale, a cura di Umberto Eco, Milano,
Bompiani 1985 (= Versus. Quaderni di Studi Semiotici 38/39, 1984).
As it is apparent, this book does not pretend to give an exhaustive his­
tory of medieval semiotics (a task which is still far from being reached), but
intends to point at some of its general trends (classifications of signs, inten-
sional/extensional semantics, animal language) and to show the fruitfulness
of a semiotic approach to medieval philosophy.
It is, therefore, divided into two main sections (which correspond also
to two kinds of approaches to the history of semiotics): the first dealing with
peripheral and central topics of the medieval theories of signs and significa­
tion; the second taking as its object some features of the greatest scholars'
thought (Aquinas, Modists, Duns Scotus, and Ockham).
The first contribution (Eco et al., "On animal language in the medieval
classification of signs"; Versus, pp. 3-38) follows barking dogs, whinnying
horses, crowing cocks along the paths of logicians' and grammarians' dis­
cussions on signs and signification. The result of this hunting is that "follow­
ing the tracks of the dog... those classifications which seemed isomorphic
and comparable one to another were, in effect, not so at all, and that the
history of medieval classification of signs is less simple than it appears at
first sight".
The last paper of the first section (Eco, "Denotation": it did not
appear in Versus) is devoted to a wide inquiry on the concept of denotation.
It starts from the ascertainment of the actual ambiguousness of the verb "to
viii PREFACE
denote" in the modern philosophies of language (extensionally or inten-
sionally understood), and tries to explain it finding the roots of this seman­
tic Babel in the extensionalist turn made by Roger Bacon in the second half
of the thirteenth century and in a chain of real influences and probable mis­
understandings which links Ockham to J. Stuart Mill through Hobbes.
The second section is opened by a study of the natural semiotics which
is implicit in Aquinas' theory of knowledge (Pellerey, "Thomas Aquinas:
natural semiotics and the epistemological process"; Versus, pp. 39-61). It
describes in all its articulations the Thomistic gnosiological model (from
sensible apprehension to intellection) and translates it into semiotic terms.
The whole process of knowledge appears as an act of truth communication
from reality to mind through a sequence of intermediary passages of a
semiotic character.
The second contribution of this section deals with contemporary
interpretations of Modists' grammatical theories (Lambertini, "Sicut taber-
narius vinum significat per circulum"; Versus, pp. 91-113). It presents a
wide review and discussion of the main contemporary ways in which Mod-
ism has been interpreted: in many of them, the interpreter always risks
imposing contemporary models to an extraneous matter (medieval linguis­
tic thought), searching for (and finding) in medieval theories the same
theories which motivate his work (be they either Saarnio's Worttheorie, or
Chomsky's analysis of language, or Husserl's Bedeutungskategorien).
The third paper (Marmo, "Ontology and semantics in the logic of
Duns Scotus"; it did not appear in Versus) tries to show the deep connec­
tion between Scotus' ontological theory, which consists in an interpretation
of the Aristotelian categories and finds its pivotal concepts in "distinction"
and "identity", and his semantic conceptions, which are probably indebted
both to the Oxford and the Paris traditions of the supposition theory.
The last contribution deals with Ockham's theory of representation
(Tabarroni, "Mental signs and the theory of representation in Ockham";
Versus, pp. 63-90). After a careful analysis of Ockham's definition of sign
and of its working in his theory of mental language and of communication
between angels, it concludes attributing to Ockham a propositional (vs.
analogical) approach to representation, which can therefore be considered
a privileged way of access to Ockham's whole philosophy.
We wish to thank, first of all, Shona Kelly, who translated with care
and competence most of the papers here published (Lambertini, Marmo,
and Tabarroni) and revised the other texts which were already in English
PREFACE ix
(Eco et al., Eco, and Pellerey, translated in a first draft form by Fr. William
Virtue). Finally, we wish to thank the Publisher Bompiani who has
graciously given the permission of publishing the essays which previously
appeared in Versus.
U. Eco and C. Marmo