Semiotic of John Poinsot

Comment
The semiotic of John Poinsot: Yesterday and

tomorrow
JOHN DEELY
C'est dans la tradition de Peirce, Locke, et

Jean de Saint-Thomas que la logique peut
devenir une semiotique qui absorberait Fepis-
temologie et meme la philosophie de la nature
(It is in the tradition of Peirce, Locke, and
Poinsot that Logic becomes semiotic, able to
assimilate the whole of epistemology and nat-
ural philosophy as well). (Winance 1983: 515)
Nil est in intellectum nee in sensum quod non
prius habeatur in signum (There is nothing in
thought or in sensation which was not first in
a sign). (Semiotic maxim)
The issues
The being proper to signs, whereby the whole of experience and belief is
nurtured, has finally come to focal consideration in philosophy and
contemporary understanding generally. It is timely and fitting that the
work of John Poinsot, who first reduced this subject to a formal unity, is
also being addressed in contemporary semiotic discussion, both in relation
to the future of the enterprise today called 'semiotics', and in relation to his
predecessors in the Latin philosophical traditions of Renaissance times.
Three centuries of silence have until now shrouded Poinsot's work in
ignorance, save for the smallest of circles — mainly theological and
sectarian — dealing with texts and issues usually far removed from those
wherein Poinsot lays foundations for the doctrine of signs.1 Now Poinsot
appears at the center of intense discussion as an unexpected landmark
figure whose foundational work on the sign must be accounted for in its
own right when it comes to charting the unexplored reaches of newly
discovered semiotica.
That such a parvenu to mainstream considerations be resented by some
Semiotica 69-1/2 (1988), 31-127. 0037-1998/88/0069-0031 $2.00

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32 John Deely
blue-blooded scholars of traditional cultivation, particularly those of a

positivist bent, is natural. Yet once the issues constitutive of semiotic as
a philosophical problematic have coalesced in the common conscious-
ness of serious inquirers, those who have been accustomed to 'calling
the shots' when it comes to deciding what should be talked about and
whom should be listened to, unless they possess and appreciate the
medieval virtue of docilitas, enter the open terrain of semiotics at their
own risk.
The signs indicate that we are in the early stages of a broadening
discussion which promises to have the greatest general interest, inasmuch
as the issues central to semiotic development are truly foundational and
far-reaching. They go to the foundations of human knowledge and
concern the entire structure of belief and experience, from its origins in
sense to its highest intellectual achievements and deepest affective reson-
ances. The issues concern our interaction with one another and with other
beings, whatever their place in the scale of existence, and they define basic
concepts of interpretation such as our notions of Objectivity', 'reality',
'transmissibility of culture' (the dependence of present thought on past
and future generations), 'language' — generally, communication of all
kinds. Most importantly, the semiotic point of view originates from a
standpoint and establishes a perspective subtending and transcending the
familiar lines of interpretation and controversy established by classical
modern idealisms on the one hand, and counter-attempts (often but-
tressed by appeals to medieval texts and theories) to establish some form
of indisputable realism on the other.
Whereas it is the writings of the American philosopher C. S. Peirce
(who struggled with the requirements of transcending idealism and
realism from the first of his writings in which he takes a firm hold on the
doctrine of signs [1867]) that best illustrate the range and complexity in
detail of issues that need to be clarified in the perspective of semiotic, it
was the Tractatus de Signis (published in 1632) of the Latin-Iberian
philosopher John Poinsot that first expressed the fundamental character
of the issues and the ultimate simplicity of the standpoint determining
them.
Discussion of these issues seems eventually to require, as suggested in
many places (for example, Eco 1979; Deely 1986a), and as a by-product of
semiotic development, a complete reassessment of the history of philos-
ophy itself. Such a reassessment includes individual thinkers previously
established along traditional lines (such as Aquinas or Abelard in Eco
1986a and b; F. Bacon in Deely and Russell 1986; Locke in Deely 1987b;
Collingwood in Russell 1983, 1986; Dewey in Kruse 1985; Bühler in Innis
1982; Jakob von Uexküll in Sebeok 1979; etc.).

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Beyond the reassessment of individual thinkers, the historical reassess-

ment required by semiotic development encompasses in general the major
periods themselves. This is especially true in three particulars pertaining
to the mainstream of semiotic development in philosophy. First, there is
the reconstruction, within Greek thought, of the Stoic contribution (see
Eco 1984: 29-33, 214-215). Second, there is the transition from Greek to
Latin thought in what concerns the establishment of the sign as a genus
superordinate to symbol (especially linguistic symbols — see Eco
1984: 33ff.). And third, there is the contribution of Poinsot, who demon-
strates that the sign is equivalent, in all that concerns experience, with
being itself as anterior to any division of being into ens quod est extra and
ens quod est intra animam (that is, ens reale and ens rationis). This last
point in particular — a completely unexpected development from the
standpoint of the currently standardized outlines of the history of
philosophy (for instance, Matson 1987: 2532) — redefines the relation of
modern thought in its mainstream development to medieval and Renais-
sance Latin times.
The developing discussion
The foundational and seminal character of Poinsot's Tractatus de Signis is

just beginning to be recognized, and the issues that it brings into the
systematic focus of a unified doctrina signorum are being deliberated in
scholarly reviews (just published, in press, or in preparation for a range of
journals) by Bird, Fisch, FitzGerald, Baer, Wood, Wilhelmsen, Innis, and
Deledalle.
The review of the bilingual edition of Poinsot's Tractatus de Signis
(Deely 1985a) by Ashworth (this issue), in contrast, eschews discussion of
issues central to semiotic and challenges instead the claim to existence of
the semiotic of Poinsot. The review by Nuchelmans (1987), without going
as far as Ashworth in challenging the very existence of Poinsot's singular
doctrine, follows the similar line of emphasizing the antiquarian side of
the questions treated by Poinsot, and cites Ashworth (Nuchelmans
1987: 148) in justifying this preference. While Nuchelmans acknowledges
that Poinsot 'was no doubt a very capable philosopher and a gifted
teacher, fully deserving the close study that is greatly facilitated by this
splendid edition' (1987: 148-149), he rejects (1987: 149) any attempt to
make of Poinsot — or presumably anyone else from a period earlier than
our own — One of the early pioneers of semiotics in any modern sense'.
In so doing, he begs the question.
I will address the particular disputes in the developing discussion that

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34 John Deely
have arisen in reviews submitted for publication by Bird (1987), Fisch

(forthcoming), Ashworth (this issue), and FitzGerald (1987 and forth-
coming), copies of which the authors sent me, as well as in the review by
Nuchelmans (1987). As we are in the early stages of a promising
discussion, my purpose here is heuristic: I wish to bring the underlying
issues to the surface, to remove misunderstandings, and to dispel artful
illusions.
In so doing, I hope to bring the entire discussion to a new level of
clarity. We can advance considerably, both for the general reader and for
semioticians at large, the perception of the main issues in the historical
development of the doctrine of signs: issues which heretofore seemed
recondite can now appear rather as central to the perspective of semiotic;
and information previously considered arcane can now be made part of
the common stock of semiotic awareness. We can further find some
answers as to what lines of research, and reflections on what issues, are
best calculated to advance the development of a semiotic consciousness as
regards the relation of modern thought to Latin times.
Two of the reviews so far — opposite expressions of the reviewer's art
— call for being themselves reviewed. The first, that of Bird (1987), is a
commentary identifying precisely some key areas in Poinsot's semiotic
which need to be restated and further developed in the interests of clarity.
The second, by Ashworth, is a commentary which obscures the very idea
of a unified doctrinal perspective on signifying. By insisting on a purely
historical approach in the precise sense of an antiquarian classification of
sources, Ashworth strips the whole controversy over the development of
semiotic consciousness of precisely those features which have general and
philosophical interest. What remains are purely material questions of
texts and terminologies, such as are accessible only to highly trained
specialists; and these questions are treated independently of any question
of what semiotics is or what a unified doctrine of signs might be. Thus,
like Nuchelmans, Ashworth begs the question; but she does it on such a
grand scale and with such attention to convincing detail that the nature of
her attack on the very perspective which semiotic entails remains hidden
to the readers of her review unless they themselves happen already to be
intimately familiar with the requirements of Poinsot's doctrine. Since
familiarity of this sort can by no means be supposed at this stage of the
discussion, lest the discussion itself be derailed, it is necessary to look
carefully at what Ashworth's approach to reviewing Poinsot's work
conceals.
The need for such an in-depth look, indeed, is confirmed by Nuchel-
mans, inasmuch as he likewise thinks (1987: 148) that the determination
of whether Poinsot's 'contributions to the theory of signs' are revolution-

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ary or not can be made without having to engage in a deep study of

Poinsot's doctrinal account of the sign. Nuchelmans's grounds, like those
of Ashworth, are that the terminology of Poinsot's account is, materially
and superficially, the same as that found in other authors stretching behind
him at least as far as Pierre d'Ailly (c. 1372). Nuchelmans and Ashworth
both echo the basic lines of criticism earlier encountered in the compara-
tively private review stage of the manuscript for Poinsot's Treatise
undertaken by the University of California Press (see note 3 below).
Clearly, in dealing with Ashworth's detailed review, we are dealing with
something more than the views of a private individual — 'non est solius
privatae personae vindicatio\ to borrow a phrase. If we can show how the
whole approach embodied in this type of review is fundamentally
inadequate for dealing with the rise of semiotics historically considered,
we will thereby be revealing something yet more fundamental about the
presuppositions of the type and school of scholarship Ashworth so ably
represents: her mistakes, more than they are her own, are those of the
modern age in the face of the post-modern development of a doctrine of
signs — exactly as the Solesmes editors remarked of some characteristic
deficiencies in Poinsot's historical scholarship (1931: xxxii): 'Qui tarnen
errores istius saeculi sunt, non unius hominis* (They are the errors of a
period, not of an individual).
Bird's review is a quite different matter. His difficulties with the work of
Poinsot stem not from imposing on it an entirely external and reductionist
framework, but precisely from trying to meet Poinsot on Poinsot's own
ground, and at the level of the doctrine of signs. Consequently, criticism
of Bird's review facilitates at difficult points the gaining of a surer footing
in the semiotic point of view, as we will see on reaching the specific
doctrinal points over which Bird falters. Criticism of the Bird review is
most instructive philosophically and carries us deeply into the founda-
tional concerns of the semiotic enterprise, giving us, in Saussure's
expression (1906-1911: 33), a much clearer understanding of its 'right to
existence' and of 'what form it will take'.
Yet, for two reasons, criticism of the Ashworth review is more
instructive for the general reader: first, because this review gives a
sweeping sense of influences from Poinsot's past without entering, as does
Bird's review, into specific technical points of doctrinal difficulty at the
heart of the enterprise; and second, because responding fully to the
Ashworth review requires that we cover — with an eye to Poinsot's main
sources both as he himself identifies them and as they can be inferred from
his key passages — the entire historiographical ground of Ashworth's
contention that his work, like his terminology, is derivative.
Indeed, when moving on Ashworth's ground it is exceedingly difficult

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36 John Deely
to see that there is, after all, a properly doctrinal context, and not just a
retrospective historical one. To construe the pertinent texts of Latin
antiquity in such a way as to conceal the principal issues at play in
Poinsot's writing on the sign is an effect the creation of which requires
considerable skill and arcane knowledge. To dispel the effect by revealing
its means of concealment requires covering the entire terrain established
by Ashworth's review. The pertinent details to which Ashworth directs
her readers' attention must be shown in relation to still more pertinent
details from which she diverts attention. When this relation is shown, the
impression created by Ashworth's review becomes transparent as an
illusion.
In the course of this wide-ranging discussion of Ashworth's report of
detail, the philosophical points concerning central issues raised by other
reviewers — especially Bird — will be considered at the appropriate
junctures, as will the points supportive of Ashworth's line made by
Nuchelmans.
I have said that the Bird and Ashworth reviews are opposite expres-
sions of the reviewer's art, the former promoting inquiry and the latter
obscurantism. Actually, the opposition of the two goes further. The Bird
review illustrates the scholarship proper to the reviewer's art, but the
Ashworth review transforms the materials and tools of scholarship into
implements of the magician's art.
Through a deft combination of texts anticipatory of Poinsot's later
discussion, and of standpoints from which to reflect these texts, Ashworth
manages to create an illusion whereiji Poinsot's originality vanishes.
Vanished too are the principal sources upon which Poinsot drew for the
development of his doctrina signorum. In their place, Ashworth conjures
the figure of Dominic Soto, who was Poinsot's predecessor at the
University of Alcalä by about a hundred years (and who is the central
figure of Ashworth's offering [1986] for a Festschrift in honor of Jan
Pinborg — see note 3 below; compare also Woolf 1929: 35). In her review
of Poinsot, Ashworth presents Soto through a looking glass 'possessing
the magic arid delicious power of reflecting the figure' at twice its
historical size.
On the scholarly side, Ashworth's review strategy is perforce an oblique
one. She skillfully skirts any direct confrontation of the philosophical
issues central to semiotic, especially in Poinsot's own texts. Concentrating
instead on the common terminology of the scholastic age, she argues that
since Poinsot's terminology was not original, neither can his semiotic be
original.
This approach is supported in Nuchelmans's review. Alleging a ten-
dency in Deely 'to view John's contributions to the theory of signs as

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more revolutionary than they actually are', Nuchelmans takes as his

example (1987: 148) 'symptomatic of that attitude' the claim that Poin-
sot's handling of the distinction between formal and instrumental signs is
revolutionary. Like Ashworth, Nuchelmans sees no need to discuss this
particular distinction as Poinsot himself deploys it in the context of his
own doctrine of signs. In particular, neither reviewer thinks it incumbent
to discuss how either the various divisions of the sign (this one in
particular) or the understanding of the then-traditional formula for
defining the sign are affected by Poinsot's central doctrine of Iheformalis
ratio signi. Neither reviewer so much as mentions either this key point or
the discussion of it in the 'Editorial Afterword' accompanying the text
(Deely 1985a: 479-489). Brushing aside all questions internal to the
reading and interpretation of Poinsot's text, Nuchelmans objects on
wholly extrinsic grounds to 'John's standpoint in this matter' being
'hailed as new and revolutionary' (1987: 148):
In sober reality, this division, as well as the definition of a sign that goes with it, of
which Deely makes so much, are centuries older [a point which was never in
dispute]. In the first decades of the sixteenth century the distinction between
repraesentare formaliter and repraesentare instrumentaliter was amply discussed
by, for instance, Caspar Lax, in his Termini, and Johannes de Celaya, in his
Dialecticae introductiones (for the latter see E. J. Ashworth, Language and Logic in
the Post-Medieval Period [Dordrecht, 1974], p. 254). Couched in a slightly
different terminology, the same distinction is found in Peter of Ailly's Conceptus et
insolubilia, which, according to the best estimate, was written in 1372 (cf. Peter of
Ailly, Concepts and Insolubles, an annotated translation by Paul Vincent Spade
[Dordrecht, 1980], pp. 16-18, 71-73, 79, note 733 on p. 146). There is, moreover,
no reason to suppose that Peter was the first author to call attention to it.
Nuchelmans neglects to mention on these points that the books he cites

by Spade and Ashworth are also cited by Deely in his edition of Poinsot,
or that Deely expressly distinguishes between the appellation by earlier
authors and the thematization in Poinsot (Deely 1985a: 591, gloss on
1978a entry), or that Deely expressly draws d'Ailly into the discussion on
another point as well in the 'Editorial Afterword' (488-489). What
Poinsot has to say is not to be found where Nuchelmans would have us
search. It is as if a reviewer of Artistotle's Physics were to argue that, since
Aristotle makes central to his books the notion of ousia, any claims to
novelty in the work are greatly exaggerated and misrepresented as more
revolutionary than they actually are, because 'in sober reality, this term
ousia had already been in common use among Greek thinkers long before
Aristotle'.
Of course, a technician's approach to a terminological tradition is

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hopelessly inadequate as the principal reference point for determining

philosophical originality. Just as the theoretical context of Aristotle's
Physics established a fundamentally new content for the previously
existing Greek term ousia, or as in our own time the theoretical context
of Sein und Zeit established a fundamentally new content for the
previously existing German term Dasein, so the theoretical and doctrinal
context of Poinsot's Tractatus established a fundamentally new content
for the previously existing Latin term signum. But the context determi-
native for all such cases is internal to the determining work, not external
to it. And that is just where Nuchelmans and Ashworth show no
inclination to look.
No less futile, and of a piece with this external historicizing approach, is
Ashworth's claim that Poinsot was but a 'reflection' of his predecessor at
Alcalä, Dominic Soto. But the craft with which Ashworth selects her
terminological points in foregrounding the texts of Soto enables her to create
for the general reader the illusion of Soto's primacy, while she conceals
behind a scholarly facade a whole range of sources, issues, and developments
crucial to understanding Soto, Poinsot, and semiotic alike. The concealment
is so effective that, as I have said, it resembles a magician's feat whereby the
reviewer seeks to obliterate Poinsot's warranted place in contemporary
semiotics, and in the Latin traditions he culminates.
When work such as Poinsot's, which can stand on its own on the issues
that are central, is brought under review, any review that misdirects its
readers by a silent treatment which has the effect of dissembling the issues
needs to be unmasked. Then, in spite of itself, such a review may further the
process of arriving at what it tries to deny — namely, an appreciation of the
reviewed work's true contribution, in this case the seminal and prospective
contribution of the semiotic of Poinsot. For when a review calls attention to
itself in a scholarly discussion as obscurantist, it also calls attention to the
work it obscures as central.
An immediate result of our discussion, thus, will be to dispel Ashworth's
illusion by dismantling the facade of its credibility. We will demonstrate
that what Ashworth has presented as a web of skillful scholarship is, on
closer examination, the spinning of captious comments. But a more long-
range, and far more important, result will be a heightened level of
understanding in the readership at large of the issues central to semiotic and
to the new era of philosophical culture which it initiates.
The Ashworth review: Strategy, background, and imbalances
Part of the interest of the Ashworth review is that it provides vivid

illustrations of both a problem endemic to overspecialization in philos-

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Poinsot 's place 39
ophy and a strong current against which semiotics has had to make its
way in the modern academy. No doubt semiotics in particular, being
inherently transdisciplinary, will continue to fight against the current
created by specialists' territoriality for several years to come, until the new
mainstream for philosophy which semiotic augurs becomes established.
The two illustrations, however, are not unrelated; rather they are
aspects of a more general problem. That aspect which is endemic to
overspecialization will continue to plague us, on an ad hoc basis,
indefinitely (see note 3 below). A review like Ashworth's exemplifies the
all-too-common phenomenon of a reviewer treating as nonbeing an
approach taken in the book reviewed, simply because the approach is not
one the reviewer would have taken. This type of academic criticism
springs from the imposition of the reviewer's preconceptions and limita-
tions of interest upon another's work in the guise of an 'evaluation' of
something that properly belongs in another perspective and framework
entirely.
There is a strategy common to this type of 'review'. First the reviewer
issues a few statements of perfunctory praise, indicating that the project in
question has some merit, but that there are problems. Then the reviewer
attempts to establish a position of superiority by announcing a familiarity
with a range of materials claimed by the reviewer to be highly relevant, of
which the author or editor of the work under consideration is 'apparently
ignorant'. The next step is to show that the work, when seen from this
superior informational standpoint, appears as seriously, if not fatally,
flawed directly as a result of the ignorance of its author. The final step is
to propose a reworking of the project, along completely different lines and
perhaps even by someone else, so that what is 'salvageable' in the work
will not be ruined by the 'ignorance' of the original author.
Ashworth adds to this basic strategy the reductive maneuver of
suggesting that a better-informed project manager probably would not
have bothered with Poinsot in the first place, because it would take at
least a lifetime of investigation to sort out whatever in his writing is not
derivative. This added maneuver leaves unremedied the inappropriateness
and fundamental inadequacy of the strategic model for evaluating the
semiotic of John Poinsot. As the earlier attempt at its application
demonstrated during the editorial review process conducted by the
University of California Press, to make a purely historical approach
primary in the case of Poinsot's writing on the sign is tantamount to
claiming a knowledge of the precedent Latin literature superior to
Poinsot's own.3 Not surprisingly, therefore, the strategy in question is one
that leads its proponents to debacle when attacking the semiotic of John
Poinsot.

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Being familiar with Ash worth's work on the texts and figures of the late
Latin development of logic, it was I, little expecting her to resort to the
strategic model just described, who suggested that she be given the
opportunity to review for semioticians my California edition of John
Poinsot's Tractatus de Signis. I made this recommendation mindful of the
hypothesis that I had formulated in 1981 and sketched more fully the next
year (Deely 1982b: 47): The historical unit of focus for further research
into the original coalescence of a thematically semiotic consciousness, I
would suggest, should be the period between 1350 and 1650' — dates
chosen as representing, respectively, the death of the last (practically
speaking) seriously studied figure of mainstream Latin development
(Ockham) and the death of the reputed father of modern philosophy
(Descartes).
My one reservation in suggesting Ashworth was that all of her work
known to me tends to move at a purely technical and material level of
textual identifications, almost bibliographical even in its narrative phases,
whereas semiotics proper requires philosophical insight into fundamental
problems and foundational questions of epistemology in the broadest
sense. Without such philosophical insight, knowledge of the texts be-
comes merely the work of a curator in a museum — or a caretaker in a
cemetery. But Ashworth seemed a promising potential resource for help
in fleshing out my hypothesis toward the writing of an eventual history of
semiotic. I hoped as well that such complementarity would contribute to
her own work by bringing it into contact with the broader and deeper
perspective that semiotic brings to the questions of logical development
and doctrines.
I certainly did not expect to be confronted with a review demonstrably
based throughout, as I will show to be the case, on an incomplete and
biased reading of the text that bypassed altogether the nature of the
philosophical enterprise adumbrated in Poinsot's work. It is, after all, one
thing to be comfortable with that with which one has become most
familiar, and quite another matter to make that with which one has
become comfortable into the criterion for distorting or ignoring dicisigns
that require the breaking of new ground.4
Nor could I have anticipated the tendentious, self-serving, and for the
most part false accusations of ignorance that Ashworth lays down as
guidelines for her remarks. Aside from her central pretension that
Poinsot's treatment of the sign is but 'a seventeenth-century reflection of
Soto's achievements', which will be dealt with in the following pages, the
presumption of ignorance around which Ashworth builds her review is
basically threefold: (1) Of Poinsot's predecessors Deely has apparently
studied only Suarez'; (2) 'He does not even seem to have read the

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influential Coimbra commentary'; and (3) Ί shall show that there was a
tradition of placing the discussion of signs in a Perihermenias commen-
tary', as partial consequence of which we may hold that Poinsot's work
'was very largely derivative'.
The imbalance of these remarks must be offset by appropriate counter-
balancing observations. As my discussion will show, the counterbalancing
observations are for the most part ones that Ashworth herself could have
been expected to make, had she given the pertinent materials due weight
and consideration. By choosing instead to base her remarks on inappro-
priate and erroneous presumptions of ignorance, she opts for a competi-
tive over a collaborative strategy, which ironically leads her to ignore
implications in her own materials which show that she is barking up an
imaginary tree. In effect, she becomes so lost in private conjectures about
what could have been the case with Poinsot that (not only in her allusions
to Reiser and to Maritain, but also in her claims for Soto in relation to
Poinsot and to the sources common to both Soto and Poinsot) she loses
the trail of what actually was the case. In the end, encircled by these vain
conjectures, she gives voice to a 'strong suspicion' about the reason for
contemporary interest in Poinsot that she could easily have checked (and
found to be wrong, exactly as we will show here). As it is, since the
suspicion has been entered into the discussion, let it be duly discussed.
Such discussion may serve as preamble to an examination of the
situation of Poinsot among the Latins in the full detail of the issues raised
by the perspective of semiotic as Poinsot establishes it. This examination
will reveal, incidentally, the void in which Ashworth writes about Poinsot
and the matter of his relation to Latin predecessors.
In making her first allegation — that Deely appears to know only
Suarez among Poinsot's predecessors, since he mainly cites Suarez in his
editorial notes to Poinsot's text — Ashworth nowhere dicloses to her
readers that Suarez was the principal channel through which Latin
scholasticism influenced the shaping of classical modern philosophy
(Gilson 1952: 96-1205), or that it was, generally and especially, in
counterpoint to the writings of Suarez (whose primary and general
influence outside Iberia was then already apparent) that Poinsot himself
had mindfully written (Reiser 1930: xi, cited in Deely 1985a: 431, n. 41). It
follows that the editorial use of Suarez for purposes of presenting
Poinsot's Treatise was a matter not of ignorance but of philosophical
strategy, as the book under review said (Poinsot 1632b: 45, n. 2; see also
191, n. 35; Deely 1985a: 43(M31, 455, 486, 499, etc.):
The historical importance of Poinsot's and Suarez's opposition ... lies in the fact
that it was the teaching of Suarez in the Disputationes Metaphysicae that became

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42 John Deely
the philosophia recepta so far as Latin Aristotelianism was to be imbibed into the
newly forming national language traditions of modern philosophy, particularly in
France, the Netherlands, and Germany. Quite simply: a coherent doctrine of signs
is impossible along the theoretical lines laid down by Suarez and essentially
followed on the subject of relations ... by modern thought up to Hegel, who again
introduces an understanding of relation compatible with semiotics (and semiosis!).
Because of this striking fact, and the historical juxtaposition of Poinsot's and
Suarez's opposed accounts of relations in the milieu of the seventeenth century, I
will cite at strategic points throughout the Treatise the doctrinal conflict between
these two figures so far as concerns the foundations of semiotic in the relative, to
facilitate not only a grasp of the doctrine Poinsot adumbrates, but also, and
especially, future research into the early Latin roots of modern thought as the
reconstruction of philosophy along semiotic lines goes forward.
Ashworth might further have informed her readers that Franciscus

Suarez, Doctor Eximius, was at the time of Poinsot's undergraduate study
there the Professor Primarius at the very university whence the 'influential
Coimbra commentary' issued. This is important for her readers to know,
because the views on the sign presented by the Conimbricenses — that is,
in the Coimbra commentary — are views reflected in the texts of Suarez
that Poinsot attacks in order to establish his unified semiotic, and that
Deely cites in editorial notes on Poinsot's text.
Regarding her second allegation — that Deely appears ignorant of the
influential Coimbra commentary which appeared in 1606 and contained
discussions of signs — nowhere does Ashworth mention that knowledge
of the Coimbra commentary, far from invalidating the strategic use made
of Suarez by Deely in presenting Poinsot's semiotic, validates and
enriches the strategy. Ashworth leaves her readers with the impression
that, were they to have read the Coimbra commentary, they would form a
picture of Poinsot very different from the one Deely presents. Certainly
Ashworth's readers would never suspect that Deely, in presenting the
events of Poinsot's life, expressly recounts that Poinsot was a graduate of
Coimbra and probably (almost certainly) a student of some of the
professors who had a hand in authoring the 'influential commentary' in
question.
Just as Ashworth ignores the more general philosophical strategy
whereby the editorial materials of the Treatise on Signs foil Suarez,
instead of the part 'De Signis' of the Coimbra commentary on the
Perihermenias, so she also, in bringing up the Conimbricenses, skirts the
matter of Poinsot's originality. She does this by neglecting to note, and
perhaps even to notice, that Poinsot's doctrine of signs diverges sharply
from the positions of his Coimbra teachers (positions reflected in Suarez's
writings) in important ways, notably: the detail of its conclusions; its

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systematic unification of all types of signs under a single rationale; and its
presentation as a whole, virtually complete unto itself, ranging in its
treatment of signs from the lowest thresholds of sense to the highest
reaches of understanding, rather than as part of a larger commentary
focused principally (insofar as it followed the lead of Aristotle's Periher-
menias books) on linguistic signs.
Ashworth's third allegation — that before Poinsot there was an
established tradition of locating the discussion of signs in a commentary
on the Perihermenias books — is again a false charge of ignorance. As a
description of the historical situation in Poinsot's time, it is correct as far
as it goes; it does not, however, go far enough. Ashworth nowhere reveals
to her readers that Poinsot (unlike his Coimbra teachers, and unlike the
other authors Ashworth cites who treat of signs relative to the Periher-
menias books) sharply departs from the established tradition by doing
away completely with the traditional Perihermenias commentary. In its
place, he substitutes a unified tractatus de signis as a whole. Poinsot, in
short, does not present his work on the sign as prelude to or part of a
larger, traditional commentary, as had his teachers at Coimbra, and as
had each of the other authors cited by Ashworth. Instead, Poinsot
presents his Treatise on Signs as wholly supplanting the traditional
Commentary or introduction to a commentary.
Belying this novelty, Ashworth foists upon her readers the opinion that
Poinsot was doing nothing more than 'abiding by a fairly standard
practice with respect to the location of his discussion of signs'.
The imbalances just indicated are not peripheral to Ashworth's posi-
tion; they pertain to its substance. Righting the imbalances Ashworth
introduces prevents the discussion from capsizing just as it gets underway,
and facilitates a new level of clarity in the general understanding of the
issues.
The substance of Ashworth's position lies, specifically, in her attempt to
portray Poinsot as but a distant echo of Dominic So to in all that concerns
the heart of the doctrine of signs. This misguided attempt has a twofold
origin: failure to identify the sources of influence that preceded Soto —
and were more directly relevant than Soto — which Poinsot draws upon
for the points he makes central to his establishment of a unified subject
matter for semiotic; and a consequent failure to master the background to
Soto. This twofold failing in no way stops Ashworth from studding her
review with denials of Poinsot's unique contribution to semiotic, and with
assertions of Poinsot's dependence on Soto for his central notions.
Ashworth makes these assertions just as blithely on points concerning
which Poinsot himself — directly and expressly, in key passages of his
Treatise concerning what he takes to be central to semiotic — tells his

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44 John Deely
reader that he is drawing either from Cajetan, an earlier contemporary of

Soto whose seminal works were read by Soto, or from Aquinas. These not
infrequent direct statements on Poinsot's part in no way daunt Ash-
worth's effort to claim Poinsot as derivative of Soto. To attribute an
influence to one source when the author influenced expressly cites other
and earlier sources is a questionable exercise of historical scholarship.
For this reason, I find it (to borrow a phrase) 'somewhat worrying'
that, of Soto's predecessors, particularly on the subject of relative being,
Ashworth appears to have studied no one. Perhaps this is why my own
familiarity with Poinsot's general background is not apparent to her.
For the reader's convenience in following my removal of the serious
distortions that have been unnecessarily introduced into the current
discussion of Poinsot's place in the philosophical development of se-
miotic, I have adopted a framework paralleling that of Ashworth's review
article. Thus, aside from my three opening sections stating the question,
the main divisions of the present discussion of Poinsot's place among the
Latins correspond, with one exception, to the main divisions of Ash-
worth's review. The exception is that, for good reasons ("excepto quod
iustis de causis\ as our author might have put it, cf. Poinsot 1632b: 35), I
have placed the discussion of what Ashworth calls 'Some minor scholarly
points' prior to my conclusion.
The historical interpretation of Poinsot
Nuchelmans suggests (1987: 149) that 'it would be a pity' if a true estimate
of Poinsot's achievements 'were hindered by attempts at isolating him
from the powerful tradition to which he belonged and wholeheartedly
wanted to belong'. This is true, but the sense in which it is true is not the
sense in which Nuchelmans advances the proposition. Neither Nuchel-
mans nor Ashworth — and in this they represent an entire school of
workers — takes into account how a human being whose life and work is
in the past tense can yet be a vehicle of an intellectual florescence in the
present and future tense.
Thus, for Nuchelmans, categorically, to make of Poinsot a pioneer of
semiotics 'in any modern sense' is precisely 'to isolate him from the
tradition to which he belonged' — as if tradition can only belong to the
past. But the very life which makes a tradition retrospective makes it, at
the same time and with greater force, prospective. This prospective
dimension of even ancient works is the heart of the matter. It is as if we
must refrain from discussing the epistemological views of William of
Ockham, on the grounds that the term 'epistemology' was not at play in

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Poinsot 's place 45
Ockham's time and the problematic called 'epistemological' today was

not, as such, recognized and separately treated then. To study the ancient
authors in the light of, or in relation to, contemporary problems, in short,
is to expose ourselves to what Nuchelmans characterizes as 'some
dangers', inasmuch as it might make us liable, in general, to 'exaggerate
the potential attractiveness' of some earlier writer or, in the present case
particularly, 'the merits of semiotics, both in itself and as a tool for
shedding light on historical texts' (although Nuchelmans gives us no idea
of what these merits are in the present case).
Poinsot himself has come in for similar criticism, from Thomas Deman,
for example (1936:480), as well as from Gilson (see citations from
correspondence in Deely 1986d), also from the standpoint of historically-
minded scholarship blithely unaware of the reversibility of iconicity and
the inevitable spell of contemporary experience throughout the reversals.
More recently, from within the discipline of history itself, Williams has
pointed out in a series of remarks (1985a and b, 1987) the characteristic
recalcitrance of professional historians as a sociological population within
the academy to come to terms theoretically with the foundational
problems of historiography, a situation she thinks may find its remedy by
placing the classic controversies in an explicitly semiotic matrix. The
situation of historicist-minded philosophers is hardly better, but the need
for a growth of semiotic consciousness to ameliorate the situation is the
same in both cases.
Historiographical problems of the type discussed by Williams and
illustrated in Nuchelmans's remarks come to a veritable head in Ash-
worth's review. It is not clear how much of Poinsot Ashworth has read
from the point of view of the larger philosophical controversies and
doctrines at issue at once in his Tractatus de Signis and in contemporary
culture, as distinguished from the point of view of textual categorization
and classification of logical sources. Whether the answer be much or little,
what is striking is how widely her assessment of Poinsot differs (toto caelo
differt, it might be said) from the assessment of those who have made
detailed studies either of his thought within the school to which he
belongs, or of the school itself as a whole.
The information available to any thorough reader in the very book that
Ashworth undertook to review, combined with the ready availability of
other pertinent sources she herself mentions, makes even more striking
(and less excusable) her subjective portrayal of the line of Poinsot's
influence over the centuries since his death. Poinsot's preeminent place in
the estimation of some linguists and historians of philosophy today,
Ashworth tells us (on the basis, as she puts it, of her 'strong suspicion') is
'due quite simply to the historical accident whereby his Ars Logica was

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46 John Deely
edited in 1930' and 'thus caught the attention' of thinkers such as Jacques
Maritain.
Maritain had already spoken his piece on this matter, on more than one
occasion and in ways that go hard on Ashworth's 'strong suspicion'.
Whatever her own thesis held in advance of her reading Poinsot's
Tractatus de Signis for the purpose of a scholarly review (see for example
Ashworth 1974: xi), it is surprising that a scholar so meticulous would
voice a suspicion so strong, considering that the evidence proving her
suspicion false is both abundant and ready to hand for anyone seriously
looking into Poinsot today.
Writing in 1915 of his friendship with Father Dehau (a friendship
begun well after Maritain had made serious acquaintance with the work
of Poinsot — and well before, il va sans dire, the 'historical accident' of
Reiser's 1930 edition of Poinsot's text), Maritain tells his reader:
As for me, I passed hours — priceless hours — reading John [Poinsot] of St.
Thomas to Father Dehau, and listening to his commentaries. What keys he gave
me, what enlightenments I received from this brilliant intelligence! (1965: 79)
Of John of St. Thomas himself, our Poinsot, Maritain makes the

following remark concerning the Thomist Study Circles, international in
compass, which he directed in France over the two decades begun in 1919:
The other remark which I would like to make relates to the subjects treated and to
our manner of working. These subjects always concerned great philosophical or
theological problems, treated in all their technicality, with (at least during the first
ten or twelve years) readings of some texts of St. Thomas, and long passages
chosen from some disputatio of John of Saint Thomas — we considered this last of
the Great Commentators as a kind of magical mine which, if one took enough
trouble to hollow out corridors within it in order to extract the ore from the
gangue (that is to say, in particular, from the interminable controversies with the
classical adversaries of the Dominican school and with the lot of generally tedious
and dusty contemporaries of the author) would put us in possession of the
equipment most adapted to free the captive truths which we heard calling from
their prisons. The fundamental idea was to bring into play at one and the same
time, in the concrete problems and needs of our minds, things we knew to be
diverse in essence but which we wanted to unify within us ... [including] the great
rush of new knowledge and of new questions brought by modern culture.
(1965: 135)
And of course there is Maritain's famous question concerning Poinsot,

penned some vears prior to publication (for discussion, see Deely 1986d):

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Poinsot 's place 47
What would have happened in France and the world if the classical movement of
the 17th century had chosen for its master and guide in philosophy not the
obdurate and pride-filled head which rejected and destroyed the precious instru-
ments of wisdom prepared over the ages by the labor of men, but the vast and
powerful metaphysician who extended and commented with humility upon
Aristotle and Aquinas at the University of Alcala de Henares during the years
Descartes put together in Holland the elements of his philosophical revolution —
the profound doctor, John of Saint Thomas? (Maritain 1922: 124)
Aside from Maritain's own words, penned long before the 1930 Reiser
edition of Poinsot, had Ashworth simply consulted with greater care
Deely's edition of Poinsot's Treatise on Signs (77)5) for review (specifi-
cally the 'Editorial Afterword' [EA]: 447),6 she would have discovered the
groundlessness of her 'strong suspicion' that the preeminent place which
Poinsot held in Maritain's work and estimation depended on 'the
historical accident whereby Poinsot's Ars Logica was edited in 1930'. A
careful reader of the work under review finds (EA: 447) that even after the
appearance of Reiser's edition of Poinsot, Maritain — for his work on the
sign based on Poinsot — did not use the Reiser edition. The point is
expressly made that when, in 1935, Maritain took up the problem of the
sign, as being the most complex and of widest import for human culture,
he relied heavily on Poinsot — indeed, as he had always done in his
philosophy. But he did not rely solely on Poinsot's Cursus Philosophicus,
and he did not rely at all on Reiser's edition thereof (1930-1938). This
point is elucidated in a detailed preliminary textual comparison of
Maritain's Poinsot citations with Reiser's Poinsot edition (EA: 447,
n. 77).
Maritain of course well knew the predecessors to Poinsot (Maritain
read them, moreover, in view of a range of concerns much wider and
infinitely closer to semiotic than those of Ashworth). One of the few
contemporary philosophers who spent time with the authors of the
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Iberian schools, Maritain (1922: 142)
described their work as a place where 'the treasures of the highest
Metaphysics were able to be placed in reserve for a future time'.
Nor is it merely a question of two 'scholars' who differ in their
individual assessment of an individual thinker: Maritain, who assesses
Poinsot as the most creative of the students of Aquinas and his writings as
'a magical mine', against Ashworth, who assesses Poinsot as 'largely
derivative', his writings a 'verbosity'. There are well-established collective
assessments bearing on the comparative places of Soto and Poinsot
among the Latins, and any individual assessment which, while taking no
account of the assessments previously established by scholarly means,
contravenes them entirely, leaves itself suspect.

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48 John Deely
There was a Dominican School that developed over the later Latin
centuries, one of the three dominant currents of Renaissance scholasti-
cism. Of this school Dominic Soto was a member — well-respected,
thoroughly studied, but not, in the collective judgment that the centuries
have brought, on a level of eminence equal to all. Included in the long line
after St. Thomas that was begun by Capreolus (c. 1380-1444) were such
eminent names as Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1468-1534), Ferrariensis
(c. 1474-1528), Dominic Soto (1494-1560 — Ashworth's 'Domingo de
Soto' was baptized 'Francis' in 1495 and changed his name to 'Dominic'
in 1524 on entering the Dominican Order), Melchior Cano (1509-1560,
whom Soto succeeded in a Chair at Salamanca, and whose affairs
intertwined in other ways with Soto's), Domingo Banez (1528-1604, who
attended Soto's funeral), and John Poinsot (1589-1644).
Preeminence, however, has long been accorded to only three members of
this school. Through the range, depth, and distinct!veness of their work,
Cajetan (not mentioned by Ashworth,7 but a principal source of Poinsot's
semiotic through the doctrine of the univocity of objects in knowledge) and
Poinsot have earned this status; also, for depth and distinctiveness over a
narrower range, Banez (see for example TDS 187-190, n. 33).8
Krempel, whose study (1952) covers the major authors of the Latin
Thomistic school on the theme of relation from Aquinas to Poinsot,
mentions Soto only in passing in his 670 pages of analysis. Never within
the school to which Soto and Poinsot alike belonged has Poinsot
appeared as, or been taken to be, 'a seventeenth-century reflection of
Soto's achievements'.
There is a difference between scholarly conjecture and fantasy. Where
Ashworth 'conjectures' on grounds wrongly guessed about what would be
the case now had the 'historical accident' been that Soto instead of
Poinsot were 'edited in 1930', an historically founded line of conjecture
could be raised concerning the 'historical accident' whereby we find, at the
University of Cracow in 1679, that the main citation source for the
argument that all signs as signs have a single rationale was Poinsot. Might
that 'accident' be that the near contemporary who cited Poinsot (Makow-
ski 1679: 248) did so because it was commonly recognized that Poinsot's
Tractatus de Signis contained a resolution, not achieved elsewhere, of the
old debates against the unity of semiosis?
Many figures before Soto have been brought out from the shadows of
time past, or brought to an unprecedented level of eminence, as a result of
the rethinking of history attendant on the development of semiotic. That
Soto also contributed to the development of semiotic consciousness in
Iberia in the closing Latin centuries is not in doubt. That Poinsot was
familiar with Soto's work is likewise beyond doubt. That, furthermore, as

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Poinsot 's place 49
the Solesmes editors (1931:xxvi) mention, both Soto and Banez were
earlier exemplars of a literary style characteristic also of Poinsot's writing
(compare EA: 458, n. 92) is not in doubt.
What is in doubt is Ashworth's attempt to establish her singular
devaluation of Poinsot, heedless of the established evaluations. Ash-
worth's refusal to treat Poinsot as a thinker in his own right is the
outstanding feature of her review. Yet it is a philosophical treatment of
Poinsot in his own right that the Deely edition of Poinsot's Treatise on
Signs plainly requires above all of readers who would consider themselves
philosophers, as the historically culminating and retrospective aspect of
Poinsot's work (its 'historical origins', pace Ashworth) is secondary to the
prospective purpose of this publication as a foundation work in semiotic
in its own right:
Poinsot's doctrine of signs, no longer controlled, balanced, qualified, and

restricted by the total concerns of Latin tradition, but free now to exhibit its deep
tendency as a beginning in its own right and to enter history on its own terms, is
for the first time achieved with this edition. (EA: 424)
That it would require, as Ashworth points out, a lifetime of research 'to

complete the investigation of sixteenth-century developments' bearing on
the matter of Poinsot's novelty is beyond question. It is also beyond
question that in relation to St. Thomas, whose name Poinsot took for his
Latin writings, as we mentioned above ('Joannes a Sancto Thoma'; see
EA: 421^424, especially 423, n. 33), there are, in addition, a few more
centuries to be investigated. Ashworth's viewpoint on Deely's 'failure to
master the background to Poinsot' is thus historically myopic in that it
allows only the one lifetime required to master sixteenth-century develop-
ments, whereas it fails to consider at all the several additional lifetimes
required to master the developments of the several centuries that consti-
tute the pertinent background to Poinsot and Soto alike. This may
explain why Ashworth takes no account of assessments of Poinsot or Soto
which preceded to her own.
With only the one lifetime which she mentions, we must wonder how
Ashworth could possibly say, in opening her review, that Toinsot was an
interesting writer in his own right who frequently had original observa-
tions to make'; we must also wonder at her concluding remark that
'Poinsot's work in logic was very largely derivative'. The apparent
contradiction between the two remarks disappears if we assume that the
opening paragraph is ritualistic in precisely the sense familiar to anthro-
pology: like the handshake before the duel, or the man who comes to
praise Caesar and not to bury him.

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50 John Deely
There is the further problem of how any of us, having not yet lived the
required lifetime, dare say anything at all before the investigation is
completed.
Ashworth would seem to have put us on the horns of a dilemma, where
either side — Maritain's or Ashworth's, say, as regards Poinsot's status as
a thinker — might be held to with equal claim, awaiting completion of the
investigation some eons hence.9
This is not exactly the situation Peirce had in mind when he observed
(1868: CP 5.316) that 'the existence of thought now depends on what is to
be hereafter; so that it has only a potential existence, dependent on the
future thought of the community'.
Perhaps some way out of the dilemma might be found if we let pass the
lifetime of research required to complete the sixteenth-century develop-
ments, and also the further lifetimes needed to complete the investigation
of the other relevant centuries. As a debating move, we might transeat the
problem of complete and final evidence, in order to weigh the evidence as
it has become available thus far, thanks to the work of many besides
ourselves who have put us in a somewhat better position than isolated
individuals who must begin the inquiry ab όνο.
The problem, therefore, is not to weigh all the evidence that may
eventually come in, but only the evidence that has come in so far. This
procedure will get us over such paralysis and paradox. We will be able to
get on with the discussion without having to base our conclusions on
subjective conjectures — indeed, ruling such conjectures out by requiring
appeal to evidence. Using abduptions based on evidence, our thought may
often be necessarily conjectural, but it will be constrained objectively; it
will be what it is, even though its present value be Only by virtue of its
addressing a future thought which is in its value as thought identical with
it, though more developed', exactly as Peirce observed (1868: CP 5.316).
To make the difficulty even more manageable at this point, let us make
our focus sharper still. Let us proceed to examine directly the very points
which Ashworth concedes as those on which Deely, apparently owing to
ignorance of the precedessors, claims some originality for Poinsot in the
handling of signs.
The point challenged by Ashworth On which Deely places most
emphasis' concerns the relation of the discussion of signs to the Periher-
menias. Ashworth cites, disapprovingly, Deely's statement concerning
Poinsot's intent:
If the 'theory of interpretation' is to become transparent to itself and grounded in

principle, Poinsot is saying, it must extend itself to include a consideration of signs
taken in their entire amplitude. It is the recognition of this fact that leads Poinsot

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Poinsot 's place 51
to say that in setting his discussion of signs in relation to the Perihermenias books,
he has at the same time found the proper place for inserting a Treatise on Signs
into the philosophical tradition of the Latin West. (EA: 408)
To this, Ashworth counters with what she optimistically calls a

'conjecture'. 'Poinsot', she guesses, 'would not have gone beyond the
standard debate as to whether interpretatio meant an utterance or an
assertion (Coimbra 1607: II, cols. 2-3)'. What her conjecture leaves out is
the fact that Poinsot included, in his substitute for a Perihermenias
commentary, a thorough discussion of the use of signs among brute
animals and of the relations among sensory impressions as already sign
relations at the base of cognition common to all sensory forms regardless
of their ability to use logic, issue utterances, or make assertions. Ashworth
might cite the Conimbricenses, perhaps their reference to the case
(familiar to movie buffs) of the child raised by brute animals, as she tells
us, piqued, that this work of Coimbra 'is just as much a treatise on the
sign as is Poinsot's own'. But this is to miss the difference between a
treatment of signs made within and as part of the larger whole of a
traditional commentary, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a
treatment of signs made instead and in place of a traditional commentary.
It is also to miss the decisive point, well made by Max H. Fisch. Fisch is
intrigued by the fact that C. S. Peirce knew the work of the Conimbri-
censes on signs (as part of what Ashworth calls 'the influential Coimbra
commentary'), but seems not to have known at all of Poinsot's Treatise
(Fisch: forthcoming). Steeped in Peircean lore and background as perhaps
no other scholar, and writing from this rich and at once contemporary
and historical perspective, Fisch observes of Poinsot's Treatise on Signs
'that, within its limits, it is the most systematic treatise on signs that has
ever been written'.
Passing over the comparatively lower level of systematization (or of
objective unification, perhaps) achieved in the work of Poinsot's teachers
at Coimbra, noted by Fisch and elsewhere by Doyle, Ashworth further
passes over the statement for the year 1604 in the 'Chronology of Events'
(EA: 431): 'Around this time [1604], Poinsot is studying under professors
involved in the Conimbricenses group writing a treatise De Signo as the
first chapter of their commentary on Aristotle's Perihermenias' (compare
Doyle 1984a).
This statement, I should have thought, makes clear that 'extraordinary
originality' is not the issue. Moreover, I had already explained, along with
Reiser, the Solesmes editors, and many careful authors before me, that
Poinsot is as far removed as can be imagined from neoterism. It is not a
quest for novelty that animates his Treatise on Signs or the Deely edition;

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52 John Deely
rather, it is purely the quest for deepened and deepening insight in

recognizing the philosophical requirements of a thoroughgoing treatment
of the sign, and the desire to proceed accordingly, utilizing (in Poinsot's
case) as far as possible existing terminology to resolve the standing (and
long-standing) matters of controversy. Here the discussion of the nature
of progress in philosophy by the principal modern student of Poinsot,
Jacques Maritain, could have been useful to any reviewer seeking to come
to grips with the nature of Poinsot's philosophical contribution to the
establishment of a doctrine of signs.
Ashworth, in her review, comments at some length (and in paternalistic
fashion) on the reactions of the Latins to the translation of Perihermenias
16 a 3. She does this without mention of the fascinating semiotic permuta-
tions which accompanied the transition of this two-term phrase from
Greek into the single Latin term (Deely 1982b: 188, n. 16).
Not so understandable is Ashworth's silence on the interrelation
between Poinsot's original 'Word to the reader' (Lectori) of 1631 and his
subsequent 'Word to the reader' of 1640. This latter statement by Poinsot
makes a particular point of emphasizing the Treatise on Signs within the
Ars Logica. Yet Ashworth passes over this direct comment by Poinsot,
wherein he calls to his reader's special attention his accomplishment in
regard to semiotic, the very accomplishment embodied in the Deely
edition:
Our promise to resolve in the first part of Logic the several questions customarily
treated there has now been fulfilled, except that, for just reasons, we have decided
to publish separately the tractatus de signis, swarming with many and uncommon
difficulties And, for the more convenient use of the work, we have separated
the treatment of signs from the treatment of categories. (77)5: 34-35)
Ashworth also passes over the semiotic marker (TDS 36-37) which
follows this direct comment from Poinsot regarding his semiotic; she
passes over as well the further discussion of the passage (EA: 409-410).
She rests her case with a thin challenge to Deely's remarks (EA: 408)
concerning the text of the 1631 Lectori (TDS: 5-6). The challenge is thin
not only because it ignores the intertextuality and intersemioticity of the
two Lectori, but also because Ashworth does not account for the
semiotic marker (TDS: 7) which follows upon the one Lectori she does
discuss. (For that matter, she comments very little on the five other
semiotic markers which contextualize Poinsot's contribution in relation to
semiotic.10).
By treating the old Latin perihermenias discussion in isolation both from
the contemporary semiotic discussions and from the older Greek

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Poinsot's place 53
discussion as they bear, on the one hand, in counterpoint to the transition

under Augustine to a uniquely Latin idea of unifying semiosis in the notion
of signum, and, on the other hand, to the early Boethian shaping of the
Latin heritage as it relates to the Greek text of Aristotle (compare Eco et al.
1986), Ash worth rules out of the discussion some of the considerations
most crucial for contemporary semiotic in the reading of Poinsot: Qui
tarnen errores istius saeculi sunt, non unius hominis. One is tempted to
think we have before us an instance of the painfully characteristic
blindness that occurs when a traditional scholar, coming across semiotics
for the first time or without yet glimpsing the perspectives proper to it,
ignores the issues of semiotic import and takes main concern with the
vindication of more traditional points of view which fit with the established
boundaries of academic specialization (in particular their own; see
n. 4 below).
The absence from Ashworth's account of the extremely interesting case
of Comas del Brugar could be explained by applying her own abductive
hypothesis of 'apparent ignorance', but probably better by reason of his
being a successor to, rather than a predecessor of, Poinsot, and so outside
her purview. The logic book of Miguel Comas del Brugar (1661), also
known as Michael Comas (perhaps his father's name; compare Ashworth
on Delgado), provides a fascinating illustration (which I would have been
glad to know of earlier) of a theme developed in the 'Editorial Afterword':
His handling of the logical tradition ... is revolutionary in a positive way ... that
... while clearly envisioned to some extent by its author, was so skillfully balanced
and qualified by his artistic integration of it into the traditional treatment of logic
that its deep tendency escaped the notice of his contemporary readers ... as it was
destined to enter the history of these questions.... (EA: 404; see also 424)
The deep tendency mentioned here, buried all the deeper by subsequent
editors of the Cursus Philosophicus, as discussed in the 'Afterword',
surfaced earlier than I had realized. It comes to the fore in Comas's
surprisingly bold treatment of beginning logic. Poinsot himself recognized
clearly the semiotic foundations of logic in the traditional sense (as also —
pace Ashworth — of interpretation tout court), yet thought the matter too
difficult to bring to the attention of beginners in logic: 'Nee enim tironum
captui quaestiones istae de signis proportionatae sunf (TDS 38/21-22).
Comas del Brugar, expressly basing his treatment not on questions of
pedagogical preparedness but on the requirements proper to the order of
doctrine — and, expressis verbis, on Poinsot's work in this area —
provided a kind of anticipation of the Peircean project of deriving even
the traditional concerns of formal logic and syllogistic directly from the

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54 John Deely
prior consideration of the sign in its proper being (further specified as this
and that kind of sign — in the case of logic as then conceived, 'second
intentions'). In other words, Brugar uses Poinsot's arguments on the
nature of signs in relation to traditional logic to begin the treatment of
that very logic, especially for beginners, with the discussion of signs; and
Brugar does this in a way systematically derived from Poinsot. Brugar's
derived way offered an alternative both to the way that Poinsot had
chosen, following his teachers, and to the way that Poinsot had criticized,
chosen by Soto.
At the time he undertook to write his own Tractatus on the subject,
Poinsot expressly held the opinion that the treatment of signs in the
courses introductory to the philosophy curriculum (that is, the courses of
'minor', 'formal', or 'summulist' logic) was eclectic and confused, disrupt-
ing the order of traditional introduction without commensurate gain. The
problem, then, was to systematize the treatment of signs and to discover
the unity proper to the problematic providing the foundations for
interpretation in general, and logical interpretation in particular. As a
research matter, this is a subject for advanced study, not introductory
courses.
If this problematic could be systematized and the unity and treatment
proper to it assimilated, the problems constituting it could then be
presented clearly and in their proper relation to logical studies — and to
other studies insofar as they are 'sign-dependent'. At that point, it would
be possible to restore to the introduction a consideration of signs, without
creating confusion and resorting to eclecticism. This way of handling
signs would also require a change in the order of traditional introduction,
but now the change would be integrative rather than disruptive — it could
effect the commensurate gains that clarity and a higher order of synthesis
in the subject matter offer to beginning students.
The alternatives pursued by Poinsot and Brugar, in sum, repugned a
confused eclecticism. But, compared to one another, the opposition of
their ways is not repugnantial but sequential. What we have here is a detail
illustrative of the evolution of intellectual culture. Today's graduate
seminars have a way of shaping even the most traditional among
tomorrow's introductory textbooks for undergraduates.
There are probably other and better examples of this point among the
twilight Latin authors familiar with Poinsot. The first one that I have
chanced upon in my own researches is this one by Michael Comas, a
relatively minor author overall, of whose work I was actually (and not
simply 'apparently') ignorant at the time of bringing the Treatise to press.
But even if we look only to the right of 1550, so to speak — that is to
say, backwards in time from Poinsot — there are considerations worth

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mentioning., especially in the context of Ashworth's observation that in the

logical writings of the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries there were
two loci conveniently preadapted to accommodate speculations on the sign.
One was the second of the three parts of the standard introduction to the
Perihermenias books, the other was the opening chapters of the Summulae or
introductory logic texts. Ashworth identifies these two choices, but conceals
from her reader that Poinsot made neither one of them. Let us look at each of
the two traditionally defined possibilities in turn.
Soto was among the early and influential ones who chose to insert his
discussion of signs into the introductory summulae texts — a choice which
Poinsot makes the brunt of his criticism in locating the Treatise on Signs
elsewhere in the curriculum. One should be led to abduce that Poinsot has
Soto almost principally in sight here, not as source of inspiration but as
target of criticism, along with Thomas de Mercado, Veracruz, Villalpan-
deus, and other erudite men ... accustomed to treat in the beginning of the
Summulae" things concerning the sign (Mas 1621, as cited by Ashworth). The
reasons for suspicion to move in this direction are manifold: the emphasis on
tradition in that milieu; the fact that Soto's work on the summulae had
originally been presented and written at the very university where Poinsot
was teaching when his Tractatus de Signis first went to press; the fact that
Soto's interruptive way of treating the sign had met with such a degree of
success that Poinsot was constrained to retain from Soto's treatment (at least
in the form of a recondite list [TDS: 25/14-27/6]) the framework of
distinctions that Soto had caused, disruptively, to become common
introductory fare, even though Poinsot, for his part, considered this
framework as one yet to be systematized and reduced to proper unity. In this
regard, Soto would have appeared to Poinsot as having prematurely
introduced into the Iberian milieu nominalistic confusions imbibed from the
Paris teachers of Soto's youth.
Let us consider the second of the two places as traditionally defined for
general treatment of the sign. 'Nor is there anything said by Poinsot
which indicates to me', Ashworth tells us, 'that he was doing anything
more than abiding by a fairly standard practice with respect to the
location of his discussion of signs'. The reader needs to pay close attention
to the moves here.
The practice of making general remarks on the sign as part of a larger
introduction to traditional logical and linguistic considerations, as Ash-
worth points out, was standard; it was also the practice of the Conimbri-
censes, at whose academy Poinsot had studied.
If we compare Poinsot's move with the standard practice as Ashworth
herself describes it, we find that Poinsot's move was radical. He went well
beyond the traditional move of placing some general considerations on

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56 John Deely
the sign within one part of a standard introduction to, or commentary

upon, the Perihermenias books — and, although Ashworth does not say
so, Poinsot himself did say so.
In a line of text not mentioned by Ashworth, Poinsot says very clearly
that he is doing something 'more than abiding by a fairly standard
practice with respect to the location of his discussion of signs'. Of set
purpose, Poinsot says, he has 'decided to publish a tractatus de signis
separately in place of a commentary on the books On Interpretation'. This
direct statement by Poinsot, made in a line that Ashworth omits from her
commentary on the Lectori of 1631 (TDS: 34-35), directly contradicts
Ashworth's interpretive comments on the Lectori as a whole. It is plain
that to replace entirely the traditional commentary with a treatise on signs
is radically different from making the treatment of signs a part of a
traditional commentary or introduction to a traditional commentary
focused on logical interpretation.
It is not a question, therefore, of whether Poinsot would have gone beyond
'the standard debate as to whether interpretatio meant an utterance or an
assertion'. Nor is it a question even of a context wherein Ashworth is free to
'conjecture' in response 'that he would not have'. Since that standard debate
was part of the traditional treatment that Poinsot supplanted, the question to
which Ashworth posits a conjectural reply is moot and idle, not to say
nugatory. But Ashworth's busy conjectures about what Poinsot would or
would not have done 'as a seventeenth-century reflection of Soto's
achievements' conceal from her readers' notice what Poinsot actually did,
and this needs to be pointed out. It may be said that her review in this
regard illustrates the saying 'lost in conjecture'.
Poinsot's doctrine of the sign as a relative secundum esse11
The great achievement of Poinsot's Tractatus de Signis is the unification

of all signs under a single rationale, which establishes a common object
for semiotic analysis by identifying the Ariadne's Thread of semiosis
generally. His classification of signs, by contrast, is important only insofar
as it illustrates in detail how this single rationale is verified in instances of
signifying otherwise widely diverse.
Discussion o/TDS 86, n. 16
In her discussion of Poinsot's use of the theory of relation relative to

the sign Ashworth goes furthest awry. At this juncture Bird, too, goes

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astray, but in a direction rather more interesting than Ashworth's

retrogressive byway. Between them, nonetheless, the two reviews make it
plain that some further clarification is in order on the purpose of and
points made in note 16 to the Second Preamble of the Treatise.
Bird (1987: 107) does not see 'that the text of John of St. Thomas bears
such an interpretation, and, if it does, how it makes any sense'. The
reason for his perplexity here is that, to begin with, in thinking that the
note in question bears only on TDS (86/6-22), Bird is looking at too
limited a stretch of Poinsot's text. It is a fact, exactly as reported in TDS
(86, n. 16), that Poinsot subsumes under the notion of transcendental
relation substance and all the accidents of substance save only predica-
mental relations. It is a falsehood that 'Deely rests this claim on a short
passage [TDS: 86/6-22] in which Poinsot answered an objection to the
claim that there are mind-independent relations' (Ashworth, this
issue: 134).
The falsehood and the perplexity alike are predicated on a misconstrual
of the editorial footnote glossing TDS (86/6-22). The editorial footnote to
the 'short passage' in question is both important and, it now appears,
prone to misinterpretation. Let me show, therefore, how, when under-
stood correctly, note 16 makes sense.
The note in question is designed to serve a double purpose, which needs
to be stated more fully before I discuss the misreadings. First, it is
occasioned by the specific purpose of the passage, which is to call
attention to the fact that relations in the categorial sense (that is, relations
existing as part of the physical surroundings, and not as just comparative
glances made within cognition), are immediately given in experience
equally with the related things which directly impose impressions within
perception.
Second, in view of the passage, note 16 has the wider purpose of taking
this occasion to summarize and further explicate, with an eye to the
doctrine of signs to come, the doctrinal implications which carry over
from the main body of the preceding text, as context for the particular
point which the passage itself alone makes. To read the note, therefore, as
a bare explication, as such, of the specific passage glossed, is to miscon-
strue the design which the note serves.
The specific occasion for the passage noted is Poinsot's assertion, in
response to an objection to the contrary (TDS: 84/26-44), that mind-
independent (that is, predicamental, or, as I prefer in that context of
discussion — the Aristotelian categories — 'categorial') relations are on
the same experiential footing as are such accidents as quantities, qualities,
actions, passions, etc., and must therefore be admitted with equal right as
part of the natural world. What had in fact been already established (in

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the main presentation of Poinsot's argument [TDS: 80-83] before Poinsot

takes up his customary 'resolution of counter-arguments' [84/1] as
discussed in E A [417-420] was that all the other categories of accident,
besides the accident of relation, fall under the notion of transcendental
relation, along with substance itself, the primary mode of 'subjective' or
'absolute' being.
What is new (new, that is, to the argument of the text, not to the history
of such discussions) in Poinsot's passage, therefore, is, first of all, the
specific insistence that all the accidents (both those that fall into irreduci-
ble categories providing univocal predicates of absolute being as such,
that is, as subjective, and those that fall into an irreducible category
providing a univocal predicate of relative being as such, that is, as
intersubjective) are on an equal footing as far as their experiential
verifiability goes. Second, what is new in Poinsot's passage is the
advertence that it is only through a subsequent analysis of that direct
experience in its twofold aspect — as containing both subjective or
'absolute' and intersubjective or wholly and purely relative dimensions,
both within the objective order of the known physical surround — that we
arrive (intellectually, not experientially) at the notion of substance as an
absolute way of being distinct from all accidents, subjective and intersub-
jective alike. This new aspect is a bare advertence, since the point adverted
to was both a matter of common doctrine in the school (Powell [1983:
11-30] gathers together and comments on main texts from Aristotle,
Aquinas, Suarez, and Poinsot), and a matter treated ex professo by
Poinsot at a later point in his Cursus Philosophicus.12
The fact that all the other accidents, with the exception of relation in this
categorial sense, exhibit in experience the analogous unity (or the univocal
relativity) known as 'transcendental relation' is not referred to in the
particular text which the note glosses. But this fact has already been
established, as I have pointed out, in the main arguments preceding. Not at
all the point of the passage glossed, the transcendental aspect of relativity is
thus presupposed as already established, before the specific objection (TDS:
84/26-44, that a relation posits nothing more in the physical order beyond an
extrinsic denomination of coexisting subjects, and therefore reduces on the
side of mind-independent being to subjective aspects of those subjects) that
the text in question (TDS: 86/6-22) takes up for resolution.
Therefore we must address Bird's perplexity, and attempt to answer
directly his question: 'How does this make sense?' Referring to the passage at
TDS 86/6-22, and to note 16 thereon, Bird states his perplexity as follows:
We very well know what paternity is and that it is a real relation, but when we
meet an instance of it, the entities that are the terms of the relation are certainly

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absolute and not relative secundum did. The names 'father', 'son', or 'daughter'
may have that status, but the entities that they name are absolute as existing in
themselves and not as a product of the reason. (1987: 107)
In expressing himself thus, Bird has tangled three interpretive threads

in the reading of Poinsot's text. This tangle causes considerable confusion.
The first and most fundamental thread in the tangle runs through the
term 'did' in the expression 'relatio secundum did". Poinsot uses this
thread to tie mind to nature rather than nature to mind. Yet 'did'
inevitably connotes discourse, the work of the mind. Whence it is a short
but fatal associative step to aliquid rationis, a creation of thought in
contradistinction to what exists on the side of the physical environment
prejacent to the thought of an individual. When associatively carried this
far, however, as it is in Bird's text, this connotation misleads. The reader
of Poinsot's text needs to take particular care, in order to avoid Bird's
misstep, to control the free associations of the terms did and ratio. Bird
distinguishes between paternity and the one who is an offspring or a
parent, as between a relation and 'an instance of it' — that is, as between a
relation and 'the entities that are the terms of the relation'. These entities,
or 'instances' of paternity that we can 'meet', Bird says (1987: 107), 'are
absolute as existing in themselves and not as a product of the reason'. He
says this to reiterate and emphasize his claim that 'the terms of the
relations are certainly absolute and not relative secundum did\ although
— and here is the dead giveaway of the first thread in the interpretive
tangle Bird gets into in his reading of Poinsot — 'the names "father",
"son", or "daughter" may have that status'.
In the terms of Poinsot's text, Bird's confusion here of secundum did
with relatio rationis as a subdivision of ontological relation (the relatio
secundum esse in which all signs consist) is fundamental. Had Bird
mastered the detail of Poinsot's theory of the relative, he could not have
made the equation we have just seen him make.
To begin with, the names 'father', 'daughter', etcetera are linguistic
signs and, as such, never have in their proper being a status of relative
secundum did but always and only a status of relative secundum esse,
which is indifferent to the distinction between what is and what is not
named 'correctly' according the physical being. This is the central point of
Poinsot's doctrina signorum. Contrary to the texts and arguments of both
of Coimbra's stars — Suarez and the Conimbricenses' chapter De Signo
in their De Interpretatione commentary — the major thesis which Poinsot
establishes is that all signs without exception, stipulated and customary
no less than natural signs, have as their proper being and constitutive
rationale a relation in the ontological sense, a relation secundum esse.

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Accordingly, the always triadic sign relation may or may not be categorial
between sign and signified, depending on factors extrinsic to the formal
rationale constituting the sign as such:
In the case of stipulated signs no less than in the case of natural signs, the relation
to the signified provides the sign's rationale. Even though the relation in this case
is mind-dependent, yet the sign does not consist only in the extrinsic denomination
whereby it is rendered imposed or appointed for signifying by common usage, as
some more recent philosophers think, in view of the fact that, apart from the
relation constructed by the understanding, the sign is denominated such through
the imposition alone, though this imposition or stipulation is indeed required as
the fundament of the relation which is identical with the sign's rationale or proper
being, since it is owing to this stipulation that the given physical arrangement is
habilitated and appointed to be a conventional sign, just as it is owing to a given
natural sign's being proportioned and connected with a determinate significate
that there is founded a relation ofthat sign to that significate. (TDS: 141/12-27)
The text is a crucial one. To his credit, Bird has a knack for raising his
objections at exactly the points of maximum doctrinal difficulty. So,
before we resume our commentary on the contemporary discussion in
relation to Poinsot's text, the reader may be disposed to bear with
Poinsot's own clarification:
From that extrinsic denomination of stipulation and imposition, thus, a twofold

mind-dependent relation arises: The first is one common to every extrinsic
denomination, insofar as an extrinsic denomination is conceived by the understand-
ing on the pattern of a form and a denominating relation, as, for example, being seen
is conceived relative to the one seeing, being loved relative to the one loving. The other
is the particular relation by which one denomination is distinguished from another.
For there can be appointment and imposition by the community to various offices,
which are not distinguished otherwise than by a relation to those functions for the
exercise of which they are appointed, just as someone is appointed to be a judge, a
president, a teacher, and other things are instituted to be signs or insignia of these
offices, and similarly, linguistic expressions are appointed to serve human communi-
cation. These offices or functions arise from a distinction of the requirements of
public life, which is an extrinsic denomination. They are further distinguished because
a judge is ordered to judging a certain population, a president to governing, a teacher
to instructing, etc.: which distinctions are understood through an order to their
offices, or to the objects concerning which they are exercised, and they are not
explained in any other way than through relations; therefore they are distinguished by
the relations to their offices and objects. The same therefore must be said of stipulated
signs, even though they are founded by the extrinsic denomination of imposition.
And when the relation ceases, these signs are said to remain fundamentally, inasmuch
as that appointment of common usage is said to remain morally or virtually. (TDS:
141/28-142/13)

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How the conventional sign can remain a sign fundamentally when the
relation constituting its proper being is absent is parallel to the case of
how ashes can be a natural sign of a fire no longer burning, or of how a
bone can be a natural sign of a dinosaur no longer living. In the case of
the natural signifier, the representative element (the fundament) is in itself
only transcendentally relative (as bespeaking or calling for a cognitive act
to supply what physical conditions now preclude in the categorial order
— namely, an ontological relativity proportioned to and guided by the
subjective or 'absolute' being of the fundament). It is this element that
remains in existence when that to which it was formerly related categori-
ally ceases to be, and it remains precisely as a kind of template or channel
to guide and to govern the formation of an ontological relation, should
one happen to be formed respecting it fundamentally, whether through
change of physical circumstance or through the intervention of a cogni-
tion. Poinsot poses the general difficulty thus:
The main basis for the opinion opposing the doctrine of signs as consisting in an
ontological relation according to the being proper to them as signs is the case of a
sign formally signifying a non-existent object, such as the footprint of a dead
animal or the statue of a former emperor [or of a fictional hero]. ... In such cases
there is formally a sign ... and yet formally there is not a relation, because there
can be no categorial relation to a non-existing term. (TDS: 124/42-125/3)
Poinsot well understands that the difficulty here is one that must be dealt
with specifically by his own doctrine of the sign as providing, through a
rationale common to all signs, the ground in experience for the prior
possibility of truth as an occasional correspondence between thought and
being in their mutual contingencies (as well as under aspects of necessity
in both orders), and, consequently, providing as well the interface
whereby nature and culture compenetrate.
He prefaces his resolution of the difficulty by expressly pointing out
that an idealist semiotic would have no problem with the case of reference
to the nonexistent (TDS: 125/26-29): The first thing to be said by way of
responding to the difficulty is that it is without force in the thinking of
those who hold that the sign relation, even in the case of so-called natural
signs, is always mind-dependent'.
Nor is it a simple question of 'realism', of critically separating within
our knowledge objective elements that are also prejacent elements given
physically in the environment, as we experience it here and now. For
objects that are nonexistent in this sense (such cultural Objects' of public
experience as dead emperors, folk heroes, mythological beings, and
revolutionary ideals) are yet signified and, for all their unreality in the

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perspective of 'philosophical realism', play an objective role in the

shaping of culture and nature.
The problem is to account for the commercium between nature and
culture. It is this problem that semiotics must address in its foundations.
And this problem is not resolvable by a mere realism or idealism, because
the sign in its proper being functions to subtend the whole extent of the
commercium. So,
given that the relation of a natural sign to its significate is mind-independent [within
the process of semiosis], the resolution of the difficulty is that when an emperor dies
his statue does not remain a sign formally but virtually and fundamentally. Yet a
sign moves a cognitive power by reason of its fundament, not owing to a relation,
just as a father begets not by reason of a relation but by his generative organs, and
yet being a father consists formally in a relation.
And to the argument that whatever signifies actually is therefore a sign formally,
the consequence is flatly denied, because it suffices to be a sign virtually in
order to actually signify, as can be readily seen from an example: X actually causes
and produces an effect, therefore in actual fact it is a cause; yet when the cause in
question has ceased to exist, it nonetheless causes formally through the efficacy it
has left behind, because the effect continues as produced. Just so, when a sign
exists and by a virtual signification formally leads a cognitive organism to the
awareness of something [nonexistent but] signified, it is nevertheless not a sign
formally but virtually and fundamentally. For since the rationale of moving, i.e.,
stimulating, a cognitive organism remains and occurs through the sign insofar as
it is a something representative, even if the relation of substitution for the signified
does not exist categorially, the sign is yet able to exercise the functions of
something substituting in the absence of the relation, just as a servant or a
minister can perform the operations of his ministry even when the master to
whom he bespeaks a relation, and in which relation the rationale of servant and
minister formally consists, has died.
To the observations made in support of the difficulty, the answer is that in the
rationale of something which conveys or guides there are two elements to be
considered, namely, the capacity or rationale of exercising the very representation
of the thing to be conveyed, and the relation of subjection to or substitution for
that on behalf of which it exercises the representation, just as in the case of a ruler
both a power of governing or coercing subjects and a relation to them are at play,
and in the case of a servant, both an obligation of obeying and a relation of
subjection. As regards the capacity to guide or lead representatively, we grant that
it is not a relation in the ontological sense, that is, secundum esse, but the
fundament of such a relation [that is, a 'relative' secundum dici]; specifically, it is a
determinate proportion and connection with the thing signified. But as regards the
formality of the sign, which is not any proportion and representation, but one
subserving and substituted for what is signified, it consists formally in the relation
of a substituted representative, just as being a servant or a ruler are formally
relations, and yet the right of coercing or the obligation of obeying are not

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relations according to the way they have being [i.e., the right of coercing or the
obligation of obeying is relative secundum did, although being a servant or being a
ruler is relative secundum esse]. (TDS: 125/31-127/5)
Poinsot had already explained (in his writings on mind-dependent

being, included as the First of the two Preambles to the Treatise on Signs
proper) how this aspect of the doctrine of signs, which explains how a sign
remaining fundamentally can actually signify, applies to the specific case
of social signs, whether stipulated or customary (that is, signs which owe
even their fundamental being to a social rather than a physical construc-
tion and set of circumstances), in their difference from natural signs:
in the case of mind-dependent relations, there comes about a denomination even

before the relation itself is known in act through a comparison, owing solely to
this: that the fundament is posited. For example ... the letters in a closed book are
a sign, even if the relation of the sign, which is mind-dependent, is not actually
considered. ... In this mind-dependent relations differ from mind-independent
relations, because physical relations do not denominate unless they exist, as, for
example, someone is not said to be a father unless he actually has [in the
supposition of the one speaking] a relation to a son or daughter.... The reason for
this difference is that in the case of mind-dependent relations, their actual
existence consists in actually being cognized objectively, which is something that
does not take its origin from the fundament and the terminus, but from the
understanding. Whence many things could be said of a subject by reason of a
fundament without the resultance of a relation, because this does not follow upon
the fundament itself and the terminus, but upon the cognition [wherein the two
are compared as such]. But in the case of physical relations, since the relation
naturally results from the fundament and the terminus [independently of any
cognitive act wherein the two are compared], nothing belongs in an order to a
terminus by virtue of a fundament, except by the medium of a relation. We
understand, however, that this denomination arises from the proximate funda-
ment absolutely speaking, but not in every way, because not under that formality
by which it is denominated by the relation as known and existing. ... This is
something that does not occur in cases of physical relations, because when the
relations do not exist, their fundaments in no way denominate in an order to a
terminus. (TDS: 70/24^71/19)
Poinsot has now shown how in both cases — the case of the social and
of the natural signifier alike — it is the aspect of the fundament which
gives the sign efficacy, but it is the formal aspect of a pure relation which
constitutes the sign's proper being even when what is signified does not
'really' exist. Since this formal aspect consists in an ontological relation
indifferent as such (that is, secundum esse) to the being proper to the
fundament (be it secundum naturam and did or secundum rationem and

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64 John Deely
dicere), he has now also shown how the two orders of being — nature and
culture — penetrate one another through the sign to constitute the single
'reality' of objective experience; and why the interpenetration is possible
in the first place: because of the rationale common to all signs whereby
they consist in a type of relation (namely, the relation secundum esse)
which is indifferent to being realized, depending on circumstances exter-
nal to the rationale of the relation, by nature alone, by the mind alone, or
by both mind and nature simultaneously.
The second thread in Bird's tangle is equally fine (and crucial for
semiotic). The mere fact that a linguistic sign consists in a relatio rationis
— an intellectual construction, let us say (since we are talking of the
linguistic sign in its difference from pre- and post-linguistic signifiers
alike) — in no way requires that the signified too (even when it is a
cultural entity such as a judge, or a stepparent, rather than a natural
entity such as a biological parent) be a construct of the understanding, in
contrast to something given as such prejacently to the individual thinking
of it or recognizing it in immediate experience. Indeed, Poinsot shows us,
it is thus that strictly logical entities differ from cultural entities, which
extend the order of cognized creations into the order of physical existence
as constituting the Lebensweh in its difference from the purely perceptual
and social Umwelt of zoosemiosis as such:
Even though every mind-dependent relation results from cognition, yet not every
such relation denominates a thing only in the state of cognized being, which is a
second state, but some also do so in the state of an existence independent of
cognition, as, for example, the relations of creator and lord do not denominate
God known in himself, but God existing, and similarly the relations of being a
doctor, being a judge. For the existing man, not the man as cognized, is a doctor
or a judge, and so those mind-dependent relations [of doctor, judge, chairperson,
etc.] denominate a state of existence.
Here note this difference: even though cognition is the cause from which a mind-
dependent relation results (as it is the cause of all mind-dependent being), and thus, as
the mind-dependent relation belongs to and denominates some subject, it necessarily
requires cognition, yet the cognition does not always render the object itself apt and
congruous for the reception of such a denomination, so that the denomination
belongs to that object only in cognized being, for this happens only in second
intentions [i.e., the subject matter of logic as a science of thought]. And thus the
relations of creator and lord, judge and doctor, as they denominate a subject, require
cognition, which causes such relations, but it is not the cognition which renders the
subject capable in cognized or known being of receiving that denomination. But
indeed the being of a genus or species [i.e., of a purely logical object] not only supposes
cognition causing such relations, but also supposes a cognition which renders the
subject abstracted from individuals, and upon the thing so abstracted falls that
denomination [i.e., the denomination by a logical aspect]. (TDS: 60/15-44)

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Poinsot 's place 65
Finally, passing over the technical question of how the terminus of a

relation exists qua terminus (Poinsot 1632a: 2. p. q. 17, art. 5,
595b26~600b23, especially 596a46-bl5; see also Deely 1975: 287ff.), we
come to Bird's third misapprehension, the third thread in the tangle, the
point on which he would most insist as required by our coenoscopic
experiences, against which no text, however ideoscopic its pretensions,
can make any sense if it is truly in opposition. This is the point that, as
Bird puts it in the text cited in opening this discussion, 'the entities named
as "father", "son", or "daughter" are absolute as existing in themselves
and not as a product of the reason', that is to say, the entities in question
'are certainly absolute and not relative secundum did*.
We examined this very line above from the standpoint of the subtle
associative confusion it evinces between linguistic signs as items of
discourse and the 'die? in relatio secundum did as conveying a require-
ment — but not a creation — of discourse relative to subjective or
absolute being. Here we want to look again at the same text, but from the
point of view of a confusion that is less subtle than gross relative to
Poinsot's express statements on the matter.
From this point of view, it is difficult to see how Bird came to express
himself as he does, for to say 'absolute being' and to say 'a being relative
secundum did" is, in Poinsot's terms, redundant. Poinsot makes the
identification of absolute being with the relative secundum did quite
straightforwardly, and in more than one place. This identification has a
bearing on linguistic expressions considered from the standpoint not of
the being proper to them as signs (which is always, as we have seen,
relativity secundum esse and not secundum did) but from the standpoint
rather of what they signify — that is, not from the standpoint of the sign-
vehicle but from the standpoint of the sign-content conveyed by the
vehicle in its being as sign. Thus, the term 'paternity' as a conventional
sign both is, and conveys, a relation secundum esse (an Ontological'
relation, in the terms of our Treatise), while the term 'father' as a
conventional sign is a relation secundum esse but conveys something
absolute — that is, in Poinsot's terms, it conveys something which is
relative not secundum esse but only secundum did (a 'transcendental'
relation). In other words, to be relative secundum did and to be something
absolute (considered as founding or able to found a relation secundum
esse, indeed, but absolute nonetheless: a subject or a subjective modifica-
tion of being) is the same thing. This is the point Bird misses, but that
Poinsot expressly makes:
The establishing of this difference between the secundum esse and the secundum
did relative also establishes that an expression expressing a transcendental

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relation, which is nothing other than a relation secundum did, conveys from its
principal significate not relation but something absolute upon which some relation
follows or could follow. For if it does not convey an absolute it will not be
transcendental — that is, ranging through diverse categories — but will look to
one category only. Whence a transcendental relation is not a form adventitious to
a subject or absolute thing but one imbibed therewith, yet connoting something
extrinsic upon which the subject depends or with which it is engaged, as, for
example, matter relative to form, a head relative to that which has the head, a
creature relative to God.... (TDS: 90/15-28)
Or a father relative to a daughter or a son relative to a mother, etc.

Poinsot continues:
and so transcendental relation coincides with relation secundum did. ... a

transcendental relation is in the absolute entity itself and does not differ from its
subjective being, and so its whole being is not toward another, which is required
for a relation to be ontological, i.e., secundum esse.
But mind-independent and mind-dependent relations, which division is found
in relation only secundum esse, are seen to be different owing principally to the
absence of any of the conditions required for the relations to be mind-independent
[i.e., extrinsically to the rationale constituting them as pure relations]. (TDS:
90/28-91/3)
Thus (EA: 484) the same concept, which (as itself an ens reale and
quality inhering in a subject) both guides the apprehensive tendency of the
cognitive act and founds in its own right a relation in the order of mind-
independent being to its object as long as that object exists, continues to
guide the apprehensive tendency according to the same rationale, and in
exactly the same way (and so 'founds' a relation only in the order of mind-
dependent being), when that object no longer exists and so cannot
terminate a mind-independent relation.
The same applies when the sign in question is itself also an object (an
'instrumental' sign) existing independently of the cognition, instead of a
concept (a 'formal' sign, existing only within the cognition as its structure
but giving rise to an ontological relation). It suffices that a foundation be
given in that object (that it be the bone of a brontosaurus, say, or of an
australopithecine), whence would result under alternative physical condi-
tions (say, a time long past) a mind-independent relation, in order for that
object, if perceived in terms ofthat foundation (that is, as a transcenden-
tal relative — not itself a relation, but something bespeaking and
channeling the formation of a relation), to function as a natural (or, in the
case of linguistic elements and other material objects socialized through
customs, naturalized) sign even though what it signifies no longer exists or
never did exist as such in 'nature'. For the vitality of the mind can

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Poinsot 's place 67
compensate for the absence of the terminus, in respect to the physical

conditions required for categorial relation, by itself alone causing the
exercise of ontological relativity — that is, of relativity secundum esse —
conformed to the very rationale whence would result from the fundament
a mind-independent exercise of relativity, were the physical conditions
appropriately other than those prevailing here and now.
We see then that Bird has got himself in quite a tangle, confounding not
only the status of signs (relativity secundum esse) with the status of
absolute being in its dimension as intelligible (relativity secundum did),
but also, by further implication, the status of logical and cultural entities
as creations of human understanding, the latter of which can pass over
into physical existence and become naturalized within the physical
surroundings as documents, monuments, institutions, and customs of
various kinds (such as bowing toward Mecca among Moslems, commu-
nion services among Christians, genuflecting among Catholics, etc.), to
provide in turn interpretive clues (transcendental relations) for later
observers to build hypotheses from.
With a view to the doctrine of signs, the most important task facing the
reader of Poinsot's text is to understand the contrast between what is
relative secundum esse (which includes both physical relations and the
entire order of entia rationis, all cognitive constructions as such on their
objective side as models for social thought and action or for scientific
research and debate) and what is relative secundum did (which comprises
the entire order of subjective being as such, including the psychology and
affective resonances of individuals no less than the universe of stars and
atoms).
This general background point — that all being is relative, but that
relativity itself in being is twofold — is what is resumed and foregrounded
in TDS 86 note 16, but it is not presented as the sense of the passage
footnoted, as Ashworth and (to some extent) Bird are misled into
thinking.
The sense of the passage itself concerns directly only the experiential
claim Poinsot makes for the categorial reality of pure relations — that
they are given as such on the side of physical being in what the senses
present of the physical world, and are given equally with the absolute
forms directly experienced in sense perception prior to the subsequent
analysis whereby we derive from experience the understanding of sub-
stance as an absolute form, which Poinsot explains fully elsewhere
(1635:4. p. q. 4, art. 2, especially 115b7-116a22), is distinct from the
directly experienced absolute characteristics, as ground is from that which
it grounds. This is what the opening two sentences of TDS note 16 state,
as prelude to recalling the larger context out of which this point arises.

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68 John Deely
The resume aspect of the note, whereby it recalls the previously

established doctrine of the main section, is a point that will also be
reestablished, or further established, by Poinsot in passages to follow
(such as TDS: 89/2Iff.); and the resume is made specifically in view of,
and in anticipation of, the use that Poinsot will ultimately make of the
doctrine of relative being to provide the springboard to semiotic.
Having explained fully the structure of the note and having examined in
detail Bird's difficulties with it, let us now examine in more detail the
misreading of the same note 16 on Ashworth's part.
Ashworth's portrayal of 'Deely's reading of this passage' (TDS: 86/22)
as 'slipping a major philosophical thesis into the reply to an objection
about another point altogether' is, it should be clear by now, altogether
spurious.13 Note 16 (77X5:86) is not an explication, as such, of the
passage to which it is appended. Rather, in view of the particular point
being made in the passage (the experiential equality of being absolute and
relative in the strict categorial sense), the note takes the passage as an
occasion for summarizing the doctrinal implications anticipatory of
semiotic from the main body of text preceding the particular point.
Thus, in no way does the note point to the particular passage glossed as
establishing what Ashworth alleges that I regard it to establish, to wit: the
'major thesis ... that relation, rather than substance and accident, is to
serve as the basis for all ontological explanation' (this issue: 134). That
would be ridiculous. What Ashworth calls 'Deely's reading of this
passage' is in fact Ashworth's misreading of Deely.
The 'major philosophical thesis' in question is, moreover, misstated in
Ashworth's remarks, misattributed to Powell, and misunderstood insofar
as it relates to both note 16 and the noted reply to an objection. Small
wonder that Ashworth finds this version 'extremely implausible'. The
attributed reading, not my reading, is exactly that; it is, in the colloquial
saying, 'cut out of whole cloth' — what they call in philosophy 'a straw
man'.
I will discuss further the three dimensions of Ashworth's misrepresenta-
tion of the so-called major thesis in the subsections below. By way of
concluding here the discussion of note 16 itself, I must point out that I
sent Ashworth a copy of the Bird review manuscript well before her own
review was completed. This circumstance suggests as a probable guess
that Ashworth could have taken her misstep from Bird's manuscript and
followed through on his misconstrual, since Bird, in his review, was the
first to misconstrue the note 16 (as directly explicating the content of the
short passage in question, the reply at 86/6-25 to the objection at
84/26-44, and therefore as a 'far-fetched' interpretation of the passage) in
addition to misattributing the thesis it touches on to Powell (whose actual

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Poinsot 's place 69
role will be discussed below) — both of which mistakes Ashworth repeats.

What is certain is that, when we compare the two published reviews on
this point, we find that Ashworth, whether on her own or under the
influence of suggestion from Bird, has in effect reshaped and simplified the
complexity of Bird's original perplexity to suit her different purpose.
Whatever connection there may be between the misreadings by these
two reviewers, there is also a qualitative difference: whereas Ashworth, in
her misreading of the note, marginalizes both its text and its context, Bird,
though also misreading the note, perceives that it concerns something
central to semiotic and recognizes that there are uncertainties in his own
reading. Bird accepts the possibility of misreading, and uses it as a basis
for reflective discussion. Ashworth misreads confidently and misattributes
her misreading to me, as a basis for direct criticism. We join the discussion
here with Bird, who, as a philosopher, proceeds to address, beyond the
note, the principal point at issue overall.
Bird's discussion of the major thesis and its relation to first philosophy
Bird prefaces his philosophical remarks by first acknowledging a claim he

finds to be indisputable. In striking contrast to Ashworth's notice to her
reader (which we will examine further in our concluding sections) that
'readers of Deely's version of Poinsot's Treatise on Signs cannot regard it
as a work of historical scholarship, or as a work introducing us to the
historical John Poinsot' (this issue: 145), Bird tells his reader:
To sort out... several claims, it can be said at once that there can be no doubt of
the historical contribution of the book. It accomplishes this not only with regard
to the history of late Latin Aristotelianism as represented by John of St. Thomas
on the sign and the many indications in notes for further research, but also with
regard to the history of semiotic itself. (1987: 105)
This twofold historical contribution granted, Bird proceeds to the heart

of the matter: The final claim that the theory of relation underlying this
theory of signs provides a way of transcending both idealism and realism
is an entirely different matter' (1987: 105). Whereupon Bird, having
cautioned his readers that The analysis is technical, complex, and
difficult, in Deely's notes and explanation as well as in the text and
translation, and I am not sure that I understand it well', enters into
analysis of the thesis and its components, leading up to the discussion of
note 16, which we have just examined, and continuing the discussion
beyond it, which we will take up here.

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70 John Deely
Bird remains skeptical as to the possibility of vindicating the claim that

semiotics opens a new era in the history of philosophy, beyond modern
idealism and medieval realism alike.
In my understanding of it Deely's theory might be illustrated by expanding the

metaphor of conception. The concept, which is our means of knowing, is the result
of a conception, a begetting, something produced by and within the mind as it is
impregnated by the knowable thing. The concept as a fruit contains genes of both
parents, from the thing as a real relation, from the mind as a relation of reason. So
far, then, so good. The trouble begins when we come to the claim made for
relation in our experience and in our philosophy. For on it rests the claim for the
primacy of semiotic and the need for a semiotic revolution. (Bird 1987: 106)
Here Bird has certainly picked up on the metaphor that Poinsot makes
central to his analysis of the origin of formal signs (see especially
TDS: 170, n. 6), which are the strands of the web of experience in its
perceptual and conceptual dimensions. In so doing, he points us straight
to the notion of the Latin species, which in one of its manifestations (as
species expressa) is identical with the formal sign at the base of all
interpretive employment of sense impressions. Simon (1955:613, n. 4)
calls it One of the most embarrassing expressions of the scholastic
language' (see the preliminary discussion in Deely 1982b: 43-46). Mari-
tain observes (1959: 115) that 'the word "species" has no equivalent in our
modern languages', yet names 'as it were, the abutments upon which an
analysis of the given leans for support, the reality of which the mind, by
that very analysis, is compelled to recognize — with certainty, if the
analysis itself has proceeded correctly under the constant pressure of
intelligible necessities'.
The sexual metaphor of insemination, gestation, and finally conception or
the birth of some understanding (some interpretation, let us say, of what has
gestated through experience) is exactly the one Poinsot employs, and it was a
metaphor commonly used for the purpose at the time. Poinsot not only
considers the sexual metaphor the one most apt and best calculated to
convey the general outlines of cognitive semiosis; he is also especially careful
to point out exactly where the metaphor limps, as it were, and risks throwing
off the right understanding of the semiosis. Where the metaphor falters is
exactly in what concerns this difficult notion of the species, this lost notion of
cardinal importance for semiotic — an importance that becomes clear from
Poinsot's treatment of the formal sign, particularly the lengthy discussions of
objectivity in Book I, Question 4.
The common metaphor of semen differs from an impressed specifying form in

this, that whereas the male seed is a power of generating in physical being, such

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Poinsot's place 71
that the semen in nowise shares in the being of the individual generated, but is
only a power or energy toward that being; in contrast to this, the form of an
impressed specification is a power of the object for eliciting cognition and the
forming of a word such that it yet has within itself an intentional existence or
being wherein it coincides with the object representatively [that is to say, as
providing the pattern whence will be formed the subjective foundation for the
ontological relation — wherein the formal sign will consist — over and above the
subject to which will be thereby made present something signified and appre-
hended objectively, regardless of whether this objectivity be also an aspect of
another subject physically terminating the relation as well], but not entitatively.
And it coincides with the expressed specification [i.e., the formal sign fundamen-
tally considered] in this same intentional existence, even though it [the impressed
specification] is not as formed and expressed, as is the case with the word [the
conception or formal sign in its fundamental being] itself. (TDS: 171, n. 6)
We see, then, that in picking up on the metaphor of sexuality as

applicable to cognitive semiosis, Bird is on the right trail. Where he loses
the trail, it seems to me, is precisely at the fork where the doctrine of signs
branches off from the categorial perspective of traditional realism. He
asks:
How then does the semiotic revolution avoid the split between realism and
idealism? By reducing absolute entities to relationes secundum did, because the
names we use to talk about them are such? But such a move does not bridge the
split. It is but a symptom of the infection of idealism. (1987: 107)
Bird's review betrays here again his weak grasp of the import of the
expression 'secundum did' and his confusion of it with the being proper to
conventional signs (which is emphatically not secundum did, as we have
seen) that we have already discussed at length. It must be said again, as a
mitigating circumstance, that 'secundum did' is an expression almost
bound of itself to mislead the modern reader. In the traditional Latin
treatment of relation on which Poinsot draws, therefore, it is essential to
realize that the relation secundum did and the relatio praedicamentalis are
both, equally and fully, on the side of mind-independent being. Misled by
the active connotation of discourse in the term did (notwithstanding its
cryptic passive form here), Bird has not grasped that the did in this
difficult expression refers primarily to being in its mind-independent
character, in order to call attention to a requirement that being in this
sense — that is, precisely as mind-independent — imposes on the mind
when one begins to discourse about the realities of experience: the 'dicf of
the transcendental relation is the echo created by finite beings in their
secondness — heard within discourse, to be sure, but originating from the
things themselves. It is the verum in the medieval formula 'ens et verum

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72 John Deely
convertuntur\ Being, finite being, as intelligible, and in order to exist

actually, remains transcendentally relative even in its most substantial
subjectivity.
Bird has not seen the point of what Poinsot calls the 'formalis ratio
signf\ that is to say, he has not seen that the rationale of categorial
relation and the rationale of relation as formed by the mind is internally
undifferentiated, which is not the case for any of the 'absolute' forms of
categorial being (TDS: 93/17-96/36, especially 96/21-36; EA: 476). Bird
understands well the medieval notion of truth as a correspondence of
thought with thing, but needs to look more closely at the question of how
such a correspondence is possible in the first place, for it is the answer to
this question (Heidegger 1954) that semiotics provides. The sign, in short
(EA: 476), 'as the medium of communication, functions by distinguishing
connections within experience, and so it is not only presupposed to any
system of categories, but is also the instrument of their establishment'.
As I have noted elsewhere (1982b: 64-65; 1986b, d), this first 'true
anthropology' (Eco's expression) and integral philosophy of experience
carries with it a new definition of 'reality', quite different from that
conceived by the medievals and sought by the moderns — a prejacent
given in which the mind had no part and to which the observer hopefully
contributed nothing (compare also T. von Uexküll 1987; Williams 1985b,
1987). Nor is it a reality wholly reducible to the mind's own workings on
the basis of an irretrievably hidden outer realm and a retrievably hidden
inner mechanism of understanding, linked only by the phenomena
constituted by the mind itself, as Kant essayed in his culminating modern
synthesis. It is something much richer than either reduction, something
more collusive even than the rapport between fly trap and fly in the realm
of insects and flowers. It is, in a phrase, semiotic reality, the true reality of
human experience, wherein the line between what is dependent upon and
what is independent of interpretive activity can never be finally drawn,
because that very line itself shifts with each new achievement of under-
standing, whether 'speculative' or 'practical'.
Part of Bird's difficulty, therefore, would seem to be semantic or verbal.
semiotic revolution', he thinks (1987: 107), 'admits that the mind is
capable of knowing things other than its own constructions as such. Yet',
despite conceding (1987: 105) that 'in its theory of the concept as a formal
sign, or pure means, it provides a way of identifying and rectifying the
mistakes of idealistic philosophies', Bird worries that 'it still remains
poisoned by idealism in its claim that semiotic should be the first
philosophy'.
Now this is an interesting contention. Like all the realists of the
neoscholastic period, Bird seems to think that when St. Thomas says that

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Poinsot 's place 73
being is what is first in our experience (Primo in intellectu cadit ens'), the
being meant is ens reale. But then what is the ens which divides over the
course of our experience into what is on the one hand here and now
independent of my mind (ens reale), and on the other hand here and now
objectified along with that physically given lining of immediate experience
precisely as not independent of understanding (ens rationis)! Clearly,
'being' in this 'prederivative' sense — whatever it be — is prior to being in
either of the derived senses; and it is this prior being — the being proper to
experience — that semiotic takes as its province.
No matter how far we push the analysis, the primum cognitum, in
continuity with which all subsequent cognita emerge, exhibits a semiotic
character. The naturally determined relation of common to proper
sensibles at the origin of our knowledge in sense, as Poinsot establishes
(TDS: II, Question 6, and as may well have been established in the milieu
by others before him), is already a relation of sign to signified. There is, at
this rock-bottom level, the further point suggested by Aquinas
(1256-1259: q. 11, art. 1, reply to objection 11; see also TDS: 199/10-17)
that it is the sense impressions not of natural but of social and cultural
entities that predominate in the formative experience of individuals of our
species. The 'physical stimuli of sense' are in greater part shaped by and
transmissive of a social and cultural content (the noise of a city), often
specifically communicative (the sounds of the mother's voice, the arrange-
ment of a room), and only in small part natural in the sense of arriving
from objects in their pure physical dimension of brute secondness (as the
light from the stars). Analytically distinguished within perception, sensa-
tion thus appears as semiotic even at its most naturally determined core.
The proper sensibles — that is, the detectable range of physical stimuli for
a given exteroceptor of a given organism — in their relation to common
sensibles — that is, the aspects of the environment conveyed by more than
a single channel of exteroception — are already signs respecting those
common sensibles.
Perception itself, over and above the bare response to species impressae
constituting sensation, depending rather on species expressae (or 'formal
signs'), is eo ipso from the first moment already an interpretive structure;
that is, a web of sign relationships actively spun by the mind around, over,
and under the determined sign relationships of sensation (compare
TDS: II, Question 2, especially 247/22ff.).
Beyond perception, and no less the accomplishments of semiosis, are
the achievements of intellectual understanding itself, which — being again
grounded by species expressae and formed, moreover, in continuity with
the semioses of perception and sensation here and now — are formed
precisely as founding and formally consisting in sign relations.

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74 John Deely
Hence from its origins in sense to its highest reaches in intellect,

experience reveals itself, at every point, as a structure erected by semiosis.
This situation remains unaffected by the understanding's possible discov-
ery (in its difference from sense), within its own order of awareness, of the
contrast between being which does not and being which does in some way
depend upon our conception for its 'reality'. That is to say, the semiotic
nature of the being proper to knowledge and experience remains undimin-
ished when the mind recognizes that not all being reduces to our
experience of it. Within objectivity, there is a difference between specula-
tive and practical knowledge (and, as reaffirmed in Deely 1982b: II.3 and
Deely 1986b, against recent British anthropology, between social and
cultural phenomena); but what is proper to this difference is accessible
only to a linguistic animal (compare also Price 1962: 42-43; Deely
1971b: 80; Deely 1982b: 107-123). Semiosis in its anthroposemiotic
manifestation embraces the achievements ofphysica and practica alike so
far as they involve any understanding — that is to say, using Jakobson's
felicitous term (1979), any interpretive structure of renvoi (which is to say,
throughout).
From the point of view of experience and the origins of knowledge
within experience, as the maxim set out in our epigraph expresses, there
can be no question that semiotic is 'first philosophy'.
Yet this is not the only meaning of 'first' that can be paired with
philosophy. When Gilson insisted (1952: ix) that 'the principle of prin-
ciples is that a philosopher should always put first in his mind what is
actually first in reality', where 'reality' meant determinately mind-inde-
pendent reality, he had to admit that 'what is first in reality [that is,
'reality' thus determinately understood] need not be what is the most
easily accessible to human understanding'. I take him thereby to evince a
suspicion that the ens of ens primum cognitum may not be so easily
equatable with the ens of ens reale. Otherwise, why would he explain that
'it is that whose presence or absence entails the presence or absence of all
the rest in reality'?
Indeed, already a bit of equivocation is beginning to slip into this
notion of 'reality', for 'reality' as that which is determinately mind-
independent ("ens reale'), and 'reality' as that which is given in experience
and sustained by the web of signs (the semiotic web, in Sebeok's fine
expression from 1975), are surely far from coextensive. So there is place
for a second 'first philosophy' — the traditional one that Bird is
concerned to preserve. But how will it establish or maintain itself if not by
semiotic means, and so as a local achievement of a larger semiosis?
We have then two, not necessarily antithetical, types of 'first philos-
ophy': semiotics, which in its foundational inquiries tries to lay out the

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Poinsot 's place 75
being and structures proper to experience, and metaphysics, which in its

traditional inquiries tries to determine what it is, the presence or absence of
which entails the presence or absence of all the rest in reality. Bird
(1987: 107) attaches great weight to the terminological objections of Joseph
Owens (recorded in EA: 465, n. 106). This is a desperate gambit in a
worried search for 'a symptom of the infection of idealism' (confer Deely
1977c: 546, n. 3; Rasmussen 1980,1987; and especially Williams 1985a, b).
Semiotic provides an integral philosophy of experience, no less idealist
than it is realist, and no more restricted to ens rationis than to ens reale: it
is 'first philosophy' in that it is prior to any determinate position or
'school', as primitive as semiosis (anthroposemiosis) itself.
At the same time semiotic does not close the door to another
philosophical doctrine 'first' in Gilson's sense. Indeed, if there be such a
door, the only path to it is cobbled with signs, and the only way through it
is by using the right signs as the vehicle for determining (as Gilson put it)
'what is actually first'.
The reader can see, then, that with Bird's review — with his placing of
thoughtful objections to the construal of Poinsot's text as semiotic in the
foundational sense of establishing a unified formalis ratio signi linking the
semiosis of sense and intellect, humans and other animals, animals and the
whole of nature, animate and inanimate alike—the philosophical discussion
is really underway, and interest in the truth of the matter holds clear priority.
As an obiter dictum here, and because it comes up recurrently in the
reviews and discussions of the TDS, it is worth mentioning that Bird's
deliberation further leads him duly to weigh and consider the vexing matter
of Poinsot's name. Concerning the use of the surname 'Poinsot' in place of
the religious name Of St. Thomas', Bird (1987: 103) reports that 'At first, I
thought it an injustice, a lack of piety, to drop the name that the author
took in religion and substitute his original family name'. He later came to
consider that 'perhaps this is not too wrong'. Bird reached his conclusion,
independently, largely on the grounds I had pointed out to Jack Miles in his
capacity as Philosophy Editor for the University of California Press:
Since it has been brought up, and bears on a matter that is small in itself but
important for the semiotic context of the project, let me observe that our author's
Latin name, 'Joannes a Sancto Thoma', carries with it the entire context of a
religious tradition and very specific school of theological thought and commen-
tary that, while not entirely irrelevant, is entirely secondary to the purpose of this
publication as a foundation work in semiotic. Not only are all the connotations
associated with the author known as Joannes a Sancto Thoma secondary to the
project of this publication, but they are in addition positively misleading when it
comes to our author's theory of the sign — again as I have explained in published
articles. (Letter to Jack Miles, 27 January 1980)

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76 John Deely
As a second obiter dictum, I would point out that, whether we look to

the major theses or the minor points of Poinsot's Tractatus, there is no
hint of anything like Bird's deliberations in the review by Ashworth. The
contrast of the two treatments well illustrates how, in intellectual matters,
depending on how it is used, a given point of difficulty can be the occasion
for either advancing the discourse and deepening understanding all
around or diverting the discourse into a cul-de-sac. (Lesser examples of
such diversions occur throughout Ashworth's review. In general, she
seems less concerned with where a line of investigation might lead than
with whether it could imaginably lead to Soto. She correctly notes, for
example, that Soto too [before Poinsot] discussed whether substance, and
a fortiori the accidental 'absolutes', could be subsumed under relation
secundum did. The problem can be found in much earlier authors as well,
but Ashworth cuts off the historical roots of this question with Soto. She
investigates not at all its present interest and future prospect.)
Implications of Poinsot's major thesis
Exactly as I explained in my discussion of Aristotle's text (EA: 472ff.),

Soto makes the point that, if relation were defined secundum did, then, as
Ashworth puts it (missing the further subtlety that relation itself as the
only category would still have to be subdivided into the explanatorially
relative and the essentially relative), 'all the categories except relation
would have to be abandoned, for everything including substance can be
classified as relative secundum dicf (this issue: 136) — that is, according to
the requirements of expressing being in discourse. Soto concludes there-
fore only that 'relatives secundum did were not true relatives'. Ashworth
takes for her conclusion 'the corollary' that 'the ten categories remain as
basic for ontology'. We may assume, with good reason, that Ashworth's
corollary was also Soto's, as it had been Aristotle's before him.
Valid within its perspective, this corollary yet glosses over a crucial
point — one of theoretical potency for semiotic. The point to be taken
here, the corollary to be drawn, is neither Soto's nor Aristotle's (since
both are concerned in context with ens reale); it is the corollary applicable
to explaining the formal rationale of the sign and to developing therefrom
a thematic and systematic semiotic. The point is this: that since everything
but categorial relation (including substance) is only relative secundum did,
whereas categorial relation is fur ther relative secundum esse, the whole of
experienced reality is relative in one or the other of these two senses. The
two senses are, rightly considered, exhaustive and exclusive of being as it
falls within our direct experience. Insofar as the sign is a part of our

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Poinsot 's place 77
experience, therefore, the sign must be relative in one or both of these two
senses; and the determination of which or both is, in this context, not
simply a starting point, but the starting point for a doctrine of signs to
become aware of itself and transparent in its foundations.
This point eluded Ashworth, but it did not elude Poinsot. It was not a
question of invalidating the ten categories, which indeed were basic for
Ontology' in the Latin sense of philosophia naturalis. It was rather a
question of 'semiology' (Lanigan 1986: 215-216), and of finding the
standpoint proper to the development of a thoroughgoing doctrine of
signs. This doctrine cannot be treated in terms of an Ontology' in that
traditional sense — as Poinsot is at great pains to express in his opening
question on the sign. But we need to examine one more point before we
can appreciate why Poinsot resolves his semiotic proper as he does; for the
Conimbricenses too, as Poinsot well knew (TDS: 136/9-17), had seen the
possible starting point, but had failed to achieve in view of it the
systematic resolution of semiotic as a unified doctrine.
The full-scale introduction of the transcendental relation — as a
synonym for the much older relatio secundum did, but now seen as an
explanatory device for the treatment in particular, under substance with
its accidents, of the cognitive powers in relation to their proper objects —
seems to have been achieved mainly by Cajetan (confer Krempel
1952: 633ff.). Ferrariensis, who died thirty-two years before Soto, and
who — along with Cajetan and Aquinas — was read by Soto (as well as
by Poinsot), furthered the enterprise. Of this enterprise Ashworth has
nothing to say, although Poinsot makes it a central observation in his
discussions of the sign (for example, TDS: 166/1 Iff.).
In fact, it would be not too much to say that Poinsot's Originality' in
this area consisted in his having realized that the transcendental relation,
besides providing an explanatory device within the categorial perspective
of traditional realism in natural philosophy and theology,14 could also be
used otherwise, and with a more general potency, beyond the categorial
perspective, to contrast the whole order of substances and objects of
substantial interaction with the order of signs and what they signify. This
would give an authentic (if entirely unexpected) meaning to KrempeFs
assertion (1952:669) that Ία relation transcendentale trouve son vrai
theoricien dans Jean de saint Thomas'.
The semiotic revolution, once begun, is not about to stop with a
renewal and expansion of logic. Such a revolution will extend itself,
exactly as Maritain said, to our understanding of the whole of human
knowledge and moral life. But it will further come to include our
interaction with and interpretation of nature, as it belongs to the
unfolding of nature in its proper being through physical change and

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78 John Deely
motions regulated by the generations of thirdness wherein semiosis

already appears and plays its part (a regulative and direction-giving part,
moreover) in that nature, even before the advent of life and the
interpretations of consciousness at zoosemiotic and anthroposemiotic
levels.
Thus, in Deely, Williams, and Kruse (1986: viii-xv), I proposed the
maxim for semiotics which appears as an epigraph for this article. This
maxim is quite different in its implications from the maxim 'to the things
themselves' ('zu den Sachen selbst!'), which Heidegger took from Husserl
and proposed as the slogan for phenomenology (1927: 27, discussed in
Macquarrie and Robinson 1962: 50, n. l and in Deely 197la: 134-155),
and which is equally presemiotic in idealist or realist interpretations.
The maxim proposed for semiotics is the more encompassing one: Nil
est in intellectum nee in sensum quod non prius habeatur in signum, which
can be taken as regulative of the being proper to experience with all that
this implies also for the understanding of nature itself. Thus it will prove
that 'in the tradition of Peirce, Locke, and Poinsot', as Winance put it
(1983:515), logic becomes semiotic, able to assimilate the whole of
epistemology and natural philosophy as well', where 'natural philosophy',
moreover, is understood in the general sense described by Aquinas
(c.1266: Book I, lect. 1, n. 2): Ίία quod sub naturali philosophia compre-
hendamus et metaphysicanC.
Where Poinsot got the idea for his major thesis
Ashworth tries to project a very different picture of Poinsot's reliance on

tradition at this crucial juncture. 'So far as the third doctrine —', she tells
us, 'the division of ontological relation (that is, relation secundum esse)
into mind-dependent and mind^independent relation is concerned, I shall
again consider Domingo de Soto'. Granting Ashworth's showcasing of
Soto, this projection is still curious, considering that we are not dealing
with conjectural material here. The question is not one of some veiled
reference on Poinsot's part, perhaps to Soto. On the contrary, Poinsot's
reference is explicit, and it is to a source that antedates Soto. Poinsot
expressly tells us (TDS: 93/18) where he got his notion of relation
secundum esse as subsuming at once categorial (or 'predicamental' and
mind-independent) relations and mind-dependent relations — 'loco illo D.
Thomae satis notof sed difficili, l.p.q.28.art.r — not from Soto (a. 1560),
but from Aquinas (c.1266), that is, from the tract in the Summa
theologiae where St. Thomas undertakes to explain the communion of
persons interior to the divine life. The divine community of persons

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Poinsot 's place 79
consists in a communication. The genius of Poinsot was to see that the

same feature of being which makes that highest form of communication
accountable philosophically also makes communication among the lower
forms of life and existence possible, because it constitutes the being proper
to signs and the ground of semiosis. (It should be noted that, as regards
the 'background to Poinsot', one of the most fascinating points not
mentioned by Ashworth arises in just this regard.15)
To claim Soto as Poinsot's source here is thus fatuous. It is in this
regard rather Soto who needs to be seen through his predecessors, Cajetan
and Thomas Aquinas in particular.
Ashworth's discussion at this juncture goes off the rails completely.
'Deely's major thesis (which he adopts from Powell)', she tells her reader,
l
is that relation, rather than substance and accident, is to serve as the basis
for all ontological explanation'. This statement is wrong on both counts
of its assertion.
The role of Ralph A. Powell in the textual determination of Poinsot's

major thesis
The assertion that Deely's major thesis was adopted from Powell appears
first (as mentioned above) in Bird's review (1987: 106). For the record, the
assertion is wrong. Powell originally opposed the interpretation of
Poinsot's semiotic as advanced in TDS. Through long discussions based
on careful readings of the text, he came to recognize that the interpreta-
tion of ontological relation presented in our edition of Poinsot's Tractatus
de Signis vis-a-vis the transcendental relation is, fundamentally (see
Cahalan's remarks on another way of saying the same in EA: 464, n. 105),
required for systematic consistency in reading Poinsot's texts on the sign.
Powell's reversal here actually came about rather dramatically. We
were living in different cities at the time, and our discussions about the
reading of Poinsot's text were conducted by telephone over several
months. Finally, the differences became so sharp that he proposed a
meeting. We would meet at the Dominican house in River Forest, where
the philosophical library of the Aquinas Institute was then located, and
we would stay there until the interpretation of the text could be resolved.
We would perform a miniature version of what Gilson called (in a letter to
Mortimer Adler dated April 9th, 1952) 'a metaphysical experiment", which
'consists in observing, by means of dialectics, what happens in philosophy
on the hypothesis that a certain notion is understood in a certain way. A
series of experiments whose conclusions are converging, in philosophy,
make up a philosophical experience*.

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80 John Deely
We met for this purpose in a room off the library with a long table,
which gradually became covered with books consulted in the course of
days of arguing over Poinsot's text. At noon on the third day, Powell
announced that he agreed that the text required the interpretation I had
proposed. On this eventual agreement (which also led to the textual
selections of his 1983 monograph) was based our subsequent collabora-
tion in excavating the Treatise on Signs from its Latin context.
Thus, the thesis that Ashworth, following Bird, describes as 'adopted
from Powell' does not come from Powell. It is adopted from Poinsot, first
and last. The major thesis in question Deely took from the text of
Poinsot's Cursus Philosophicus, and that text eventually imposed its thesis
also on Powell's understanding.
Nor does the thesis directly concern ontological explanation in the
traditional categories of substance and accident, contrary to what Ash-
worth alleges — though it has consequences for that point of view,
especially as regards the defining and recognition of its limitations.
The thesis is that relation, rather than substance and accident, is to
serve as the basis for all semiotic explanation, and that ontological
explanation in the traditional categories of substance and accident, to
whatever extent it is valid, is subordinate to the standpoint of semiotic by
reason of being assimilable to (and subsequently analytically derivable
from) transcendental relation and ontological relation generally, through
the experience of physical being as relative analyzed in terms of what the
experienced relativity entails.
Consequences of Ashworth's misunderstanding
The misunderstanding revealed by Ashworth's misrepresentation of the

major thesis results in a twofold mishandling ofthat thesis in Ashworth's
consequent discussion. It is not too much to say that this discussion goes
right off the rails when she comes to think, erroneously, that she has
'largely removed ... the foundation for the claim that Poinsot's classifica-
tion of signs' is in any sense revolutionary, by asserting the belief that we
do not 'find in Poinsot a theory of relations which both represents a
revolutionary break with the past and points to a completely new
beginning for philosophy' (this issue: 139). Let me explain fully the
reasons for saying this, lest the assessment seem needlessly harsh.
The two sides of Ashworth's mishandling of Poinsot's central point of
departure for semiotic may be summarized as follows. First, as I have
pointed out in a number of contexts (EA: 416-417, 462, n. 103; Deely
1976: 171-173, 1977b: 54, 1978a: 3, 5ff., 1978b: 157, 177, n. 14, 1981,

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Poinsot 's place 81
1982a; etc.)., it is not correct to speak at this level of Toinsot's classification of

signs'. Second, the claim is not that Poinsot's organization of the tract on
relation is novel (hence to prove that the organization is not novel would be
to prove nothing about his doctrine of signs as such). In order to clarify both
these points here, let me take up the two sides of Ashworth's mishandling in
turn. (The reader should take note that our remarks here on the first of the
two sides of Ashworth's mishandling are preliminary, and mainly for the
sake of getting on to the second side, full discussion of which is needed before
our preliminary remarks on the first side can be brought to fruition.)
When we speak of the classification of signs as distinct from the being
proper to signs, what is revolutionary about Poinsot's semiotic — its
foundational thrust — far from being removed, has not yet even come into
view. As far as the terminology is concerned (and nowhere do the editorial
materials in the Deely edition of the Treatise claim otherwise), Poinsot's
classification is fully traditional: he divides signs into formal and instrumen-
tal (from the side of the triad relating sign to organism) and into natural,
stipulative, and customary (from the side of the triad relating sign to
signified).
The first of these two divisions Ashworth mentions only in passing. She
intimates that Poinsot took it from Soto, which, if true, only raises the
question of whence Soto took it (compare Nuchelmans's remarks
[1987: 148] cited earlier). However, the intimation and the question it
raises remain beside the point, since — characteristically — Ashworth
engages in no discussion at all of what Poinsot did with the distinction in
the doctrinal context of his own semiotic: yet this, after all, is the main
question, and the question mainly addressed by Deely in his editorial
materials. At no point do the editorial materials of the Deely edition take
as their purpose, or try to pretend that they succeed in, tracking down
retrospectively the traditional terminology that Poinsot takes over in his
Treatise and makes his own. The Deely edition sets for itself the task of
showing what Poinsot did with the traditional materials in his own right.
Ashworth sets for herself the task of showing that the materials in the
Treatise are traditional — which was never in doubt — while eschewing
completely any consideration of what Poinsot does with them.
The externality of Ashworth's approach to the Deely edition of the
work of Poinsot becomes most apparent, perhaps, in her discussion of the
second of the two then-traditional divisions of the sign, as we will later
see. She discusses this second division at some length, stating that it is the
division that Poinsot discusses in most detail. Following her order of
treatment, I will reserve discussion of this second division, and of her
stance concerning it, for the following section of this essay. In connection
with what Ashworth asserts concerning this second division, some

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82 John Deely
observations will be in order concerning the first division as well: I reserve

these observations, too, for the following section, insofar as they are
interconnected with Ashworth's discussion of the second division.
By way of further anticipating the later discussion of sign classifications, I
will say here that in Poinsot, as in other authors of the period, the basis of the
division into formal and instrumental signs seems at first glance quite
straightforward (the division is into signs which are — logically, not
temporally, speaking — first of all the foundation or basis upon which we
have an awareness of objects in perception, and signs which are first of all
themselves objects perceived). On closer inspection, the basis of the division
turns out to contain some surprises. Some of the most difficult passages in
Poinsot's Tractatus de Signis turn on his account of in what exactly this
division consists. Naturally, as always in philosophy, but especially in a
period such as the scholastic one where respect for tradition imposes on the
most diverse authors an outwardly common terminology, it is in the
handling of the details of difficulties that the true nature of a theory comes to
light — not, as Ashworth would have it, in the bare introduction of the
terminology which seems at first blush straightforward. Where Poinsot first
introduces the first of the two traditional divisions (TDS: 27/8-9), I
appended a note (n. 13) cross-referencing passages where the complexities
become apparent and detailed difficulties are resolved from Poinsot's point
of view. The passages noted are, in other words, where his semiotic comes
into play as regards the fundamental interpretation of the sense and validity
of the classificatory distinction taken over terminologically from tradition.
If Ashworth has examined the texts cross-referenced at TDS: 27/9, n. 13,
there is no hint of it in her discussion. It would be extremely interesting to
know how much of this detail is handled in comparable or divergent ways
in Poinsot's contemporaries and predecessors, including Soto. Discussion
of these matters in detail would be immeasurably more illuminating for a
doctrine of signs than the surface identification of terminology materially
shared, which alone Ashworth provides us in her review. Such discussions
will, we may hope, eventually take place, and they should prove most
fruitful to the development of semiotic.
For now I must turn to the other side of Ashworth's mishandling: her
claim that, if Poinsot's discussion of relation is not novel, neither can his
semiotic be original. Ashworth has misconstrued the creative linkage
between the two treatments.
Poinsot's creative leap: From a theory of relations to a doctrine of signs
Poinsot widens the scope of explanatory possibility of the established

theory of relation to derive a new standpoint as the point of departure for

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Poinsot 's place 83
a systematically unified (and as such novel) doctrine of signs.

Poinsot established this doctrine of signs at a level superordinate to the
division of being into ens reale and ens rationis. Such a level is requisite for
semiotic, as has been said, and to such a level the categorial standpoint is,
by definition and by the nature of the case, strictly subordinate. There-
fore, as remarked in note 11 of this article, the claim is not that what is
novel is Poinsot's organization of the tract on relation, considered as a
category of traditional logica materialis and philosophia naturalis. Poinsot
goes to great lengths to show his readers that his interpretation of what
will prove to be the semiotically key text of Aquinas (c.1266:1.28.1) is the
very interpretation (critically paraphrased at TDS: 93/41-50) that Cajetan
had in mind before him (and also before Soto, whom Poinsot knew but
does not mention on the point) as regards the singular feature that
relations possess as a mode of reality (TDS: 93/17-96/36, especially
95/36-42 and n. 18). Regardless of whether Poinsot's construal of the
contrast between secundum esse and secundum did brings the matter to a
higher degree of clarity than Krempel (1952) was able to discern among
the Latins,16 or than Ashworth is able to show in Soto, Poinsot
nonetheless presented it as the central tradition of an existing school, the
school with which Soto, too, had identified himself.
The fact that Poinsot goes to such lengths to establish the traditional
credentials of the interpretation of relation that he will subsequently
employ as springboard for establishing his doctrine of signs renders all the
more striking the originality of his achievement in the doctrine of signs
proper.
It is further curious in this regard that Ashworth makes no mention of
the fact — made abundantly clear in EA, as well as in Krempel (1952) and
in many other places — that the terminology distinguishing relation
secundum did from secundum esse is an extraordinarily tangled one, and
much older than either Soto or Aquinas. For Ashworth, it is enough to
find the terms in Soto. That Soto in particular, along with others earlier
(notably Cajetan 1507) and later (such as Gredt 1961), understood the
relation secundum esse in the context and perspective of traditional
philosophia naturalis, logica, or sacra doctrina (theology) — as did
Aquinas, Cajetan, and Poinsot — is useful to know, but it remains beside
the point of where Poinsot went from there in the context of sign analysis.
How the standpoint of semiotic transcends realism
Certainly others before Poinsot realized that, since the sign is something
relative, and since there are ultimately two senses of relativity which

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84 John Deely
subsume the whole of being, the key question to be answered and

systematically demonstrated in detail is (TDSl: Question 1, 117/18-23;
EA: 462, n. 103): whether a sign as such is relative in one of the two
ultimate senses of relativity only, or sometimes in one sense and some-
times in the other. The question is important, because it decides whether
or not there is a unified object for semiotic inquiry.
Suppose that many besides Poinsot expressly realized that a doctrine of
signs, unlike theories of natural philosophy, cannot proceed in terms of a
categorial analysis, because many of the objects we experience as signify-
ing do not as such have a natural being.
It remains that to isolate exactly the standpoint superior to the division
of ens reale, with its ten (or so) categories, and ens raiionis; to make of this
standpoint the point of departure for a completely systematic formulation
of the being proper to signs; and to reassess in terms of this standpoint the
then current traditional classifications of signs with all their attendant
controversies — both before and since Soto, and including expressly
(TDS: 136/9-17) the 'De Signis' of Coimbra: this threefold achievement
belongs preeminently to Poinsot.
Nothing that Ashworth has said warrants her 'present belief that in
fact Poinsot's work 'was very largely' only 'a seventeenth-century reflec-
tion of Soto's achievements'. It is not Poinsot's theory of relation, as such,
that is unique; rather, it is the use he makes of it to establish another
doctrine altogether, the doctrine of signs, and to do so in a systematically
unified fashion. This doctrine, newly unified and systematically estab-
lished by Poinsot, is semiological rather than ontological, and is, conse-
quently, not reducible to the perspectives required by the then traditional
treatment of categories. Such treatment begins after and develops subordi-
nate to division of being into what is independent of our mind's
consideration (ens reale) and what is dependent precisely upon the
consideration of our mind (ens rationis).
What struck Poinsot as novel — and as demanding, for this very
reason, particular care and thoroughness of attention in order to justify
and balance its application — was the scope of the possibility that the
established theory of relative being harbored to explain the until then
unexplained phenomenon of the unity of sign workings, or what we
would now call semiosis. But to seize upon the possibility and to make it
thematic requires an abandonment of the exclusively categorial stand-
point of traditional philosophia naturalis. Adherence to this standpoint —
and, I may add, anticipation of it in the preparation of logical doctrine —
had in fact been the main factor obscuring the realization of the
explanatory possibility in question. Being divides in experience between
the mind-dependent and the mind-independent, to be sure, but the two

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Poinsot 's place 85
come together in the sign: thus the understanding of the sign requires a
standpoint which is not restricted to one side of the division preclusively;
the categorial standpoint is —emphatically — so restricted.
Preoccupation with the categorial standpoint, dominant throughout
the Latin tradition of Aristotelian commentary from the early Middle
Ages to the dawn of modern times, screens out of consideration what
Poinsot, with his semiotic, brings to the fore. The traditional analysis
of relative being, pursued since ancient times for categorial purposes,
stumbled, as early as Aristotle, upon what seemed like no more than an
anomaly and an obstacle to be gotten aside, but which was in fact a
key to both the validation and the transcendence of the categorial
point of view.
Like the farmer whose plow strikes a buried ancient artifact which the
farmer casts to the side as an obstruction — but which carried within itself
the tale of another world, did the farmer but know how to look at it in
another light — so Aristotle, and with him the whole line of his Latin
commentators up to Poinsot, intent on preparing the field of the
categories for use in OntologicaF analysis, saw in the transcendental
relation but an obstruction to be gotten off to the side of the furrow for
relatio praedicamentalis et realis. To see in this obstruction something
more than a bother, to see it as alive with possibilities and pregnant with
the wholly new development of a unified doctrina signorum — that is, to
see the full extent of the explanatory possibilities latent within the
anomaly, as a kind of key in its own right — it was necessary to view the
contrast between the transcendentally relative and the 'merely' ontologi-
cally relative ("ens minimum, scilicet relatio", as Aquinas put it17) in the
light of quite another problem than that of substance and accident. The
contrast between the transcendentally and the ontologically relative
appears in its fullest perspective and light when seen in terms of the
problem of accounting for the communication as such of substances, if
you like, once that communication is seen to involve more than can be
categorially subsumed (confer TDS: 385, n. 27).
And it is not from Soto's doctrine that Poinsot gains his main insight
into what is required theoretically for such explanation. It is from
Aquinas's doctrine of the secundum esse relative, seen now with an eye to
Cajetan's observations concerning the differences between divisions of
being in the order of physical existence (which can be explained by
transcendental and categorial relation) and in the order of objective
existence (which requires ontological relation for its explanation through-
out). It is in light of these observations that Poinsot sees ahead of him the
possibility of a doctrine of signs unified in a single formal respect
regarding all the diversities of sign activities and their influences.

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The doctrine of objective being as a part of semiotic
The term Objective' could use some clarification here, inasmuch as the
properly semiotic notion of objectivity, which results from the redefinition
of the notion of'real' that semiotic imposes, is still sufficiently unfamiliar
and counter to common usage in current traditions of the national
languages (English included) as to require a warning to the reader against
misunderstanding (see also Ransdell 1979, 1982):
'reality', so far as experience is concerned, is not first of all something given

prejacently to human understanding. On the contrary, reality, as experienced,
consists precisely in an admixture of objective elements and factors, some of
which come from the physical environment in its proper being ... and others of
which come from the beliefs and customs of the community assimilated
through the normal processes of socialization.... (Deely 1986b: 269)
Objective' in this sense of semiotically objective thus designates anything

existing precisely as, insofar as, and only insofar as, it is known, regardless
of whether that objective being also exists physically (as the sun, say), or
only as known (as phlogiston, or the planet Vulcan inferior to Mercury's
orbit, which was once mistakenly thought to exist physically but was
discovered not to so exist after all).
The principal sources for Poinsot's doctrine of signs
Poinsot's forward look toward semiotic is based on the new standpoint he

derives, as we have seen, not from Soto but from Aquinas and Cajetan:
from Cajetan's doctrine of the objective univocity of being and nonbeing,
as grounded by Aquinas's doctrine of relation as indifferent in its proper
being to the subjective source and ground of the relation. This standpoint,
moreover, is invoked repeatedly throughout Poinsot's Treatise. But its
significance did not register on Ashworth's backward-looking eye: consult
the TDS beginning from the Cajetan entry in the 'Index Personarum'
(TDS: 522-523), the second through twelfth of the thirteen propositional
subentries for this entry; and confer also EA: 413, where the point is
made, parenthetically in passing, that it is precisely from outside the then
logical tradition as such (as determinately restricted to ens rationis as then
philosophical and nascent-'scientific' tradition was to ens reale) that
Poinsot takes the roots of his semiotic. And he draws especially from the
insight from which Thomas Aquinas eventually develops his observations
about how relations can subsist interior to the Godhead. Poinsot makes

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Poinsot 's place 87
this insight the foundation of his doctrine of signs, thereby again expressly
bypassing Soto, saying (TDS: 188/7): 'Et ideo praedicamentale ens esse
non potest nee relatio praedicamentalis, licet possit esse relatio secundum
esse iuxta doctrinam D. Thomae 1.p.q.28.art.7.'
Signs and their classifications
The Deely edition of Poinsot's Treatise on Signs was published in 1985. In

the course of preparing it, I learned much of the neglected history of late
Latin scholasticism and took some satisfaction in the thought that my
edition of Poinsot would be an occasion for learning more, through the
yet broader discussion it would occasion. In particular, on this matter of
the classification of signs, I had learned, through the work of Romeo
(1979), Herculano de Carvalho (1967 and 1970), Ashworth (1974),
Kaczmarek (1980), and Spade (1980) — roughly in that order — that the
distinction between so-called 'formal' and 'instrumental' signs in particu-
lar (which certain contemporary realists — notably Maritain, Adler,
Simon, Veatch, Oesterle, and Wild — had taken from Poinsot and made a
cornerstone of their arguments in epistemology) had much deeper roots,
extending backwards from Poinsot at least as far as Pierre d'Ailly
(c. 1372). Of greater theoretical importance was what I learned directly
from the study of Poinsot himself, namely, that the contemporary use
made of the notion of'formal sign* by these authors was on the order of
an ad hoc hypothesis, as Ransdell put it (1966: 143), whereas in Poinsot's
own text the notion is strictly subordinated as a systematic element to his
central doctrine of the formalis ratio signi. This subordination and the
central doctrine governing it, I found, played no part in the contemporary
discussion. In a word, I found that the contemporary vogue of the notion
of signum formale in circles of realist philosophy was a thoroughly
deracinated notion, historically and theoretically.
Similarly, I found in Poinsot another notion of sign, that of the signum
ex consuetudine, which (excepting Oesterle 1944) played no role to speak
of in contemporary discussions, but which seemed to have some very
interesting possibilities for interpreting contemporary work in the so-
called 'ape language experiments'. Again, this notion appears in Poinsot's
text strictly subordinated as a systematic element to his central doctrine of
the formalis ratio signi, which, as I have mentioned, continued to elude
those who so far had studied the text of Poinsot.
No matter where I looked in the discussions of the sign antecedent to
Poinsot (the texts of Fonseca 1546 and d'Ailly c.1372 in particular), I
found nothing to compare with the doctrinal assimilation of the divisions

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88 John Deely
of signs to iheformalis ratio signi in Poinsot. If such assimilation is there

in the earlier texts, it has yet to be brought to light. Given the difficulty of
the matter and its prospective import, it seemed unlikely that anything
short of a complete, separate edition of Poinsot's semiotic would be likely
to change the situation, by moving the contemporary discussion in the
direction of reflection on the proper foundations and consequent radical
scope of the doctrine of signs. That achieved, the retrospective dimension
would take care of itself, according to the saying of Aristotle (Ethics
1098a20-25) that time is a good partner in the work of advancing the
articulation of what has once been well outlined, but in the absence of
such an outline, progress in the arts and sciences tends toward a standstill.
The unique doctrinal assimilation in question whereby Poinsot iden-
tified the proper standpoint of semiotic as superior to the divisions of
nature and culture, and into which he assimilated the earliest beginnings
and final results of the traditional course of philosophy as then taught in
the faculty of arts, was explained carefully at its proper level in the
'Doctrinal Resume' of EA (471-489) and in a number of discussions
elsewhere in the editorial materials of TDS.
Nuchelmans (1987:148), who reviews the TDS without a mention of its
central doctrine, finds it paradoxical that On p. 30 of the present volume
[77)5] John [Poinsotj's standpoint in this matter is still hailed as new and
revolutionary' by Deely, even though Deely himself'had to admit'18 that
'the explicit division of signs into formal and instrumental ones ... had
already been drawn and explained by Petrus Fonsecus in 1564'. The
paradox results from missing the point. The developed application of the
distinction in Fonseca, as I had pointed out in some detail (Deely 1982b:
52-64), is radically at variance with the application of the (terminologi-
cally) same distinction in Poinsot. What is revolutionary about Poinsot's
Tractatus in this regard is not the use of a terminology outwardly similar
to that of earlier authors, but his assimilation of that terminology to his
formalis ratio signi, of which Nuchelmans takes no notice. When this
doctrine is brought into the picture, Nuchelmans's paradox disappears.
Deely's assessment of Poinsot's contribution to the doctrine of signs,
which Nuchelmans (1987: 148) contrasts with 'sober reality', is something
quite different, therefore, from the implied drunken stupor; nor is it a
mark of great sobriety on a reviewer's part to ignore the theoretical
structure internal to a text (in this case, Poinsot's), while concentrating on
the external appearance of shared terminology without regard to
important differences in the developed content conveyed by the terms
nominally shared.
Ashworth's discussion of 'Signs and their classification' is far more
detailed than Nuchelmans's general remarks. And, though it follows the

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Poinsot 's place 89
same general lines of Nuchelmans's criticism, Ashworth's discussion

carries the criticism much further — indeed, to its dialectical extreme.
Whereas Nuchelmans is prepared to concede (without saying what they
might be) that Poinsot made 'contributions to the theory of signs', and
criticizes my position only for exaggerating these contributions 'as more
revolutionary than they actually are', Ashworth is prepared to concede
nothing. Her argument is that it is in all likelihood Deely's ignorance of
the predecessors that leads him to think there is anything original in
Poinsot, and she goes into considerable learned detail to demonstrate that
this is the case, both in general and in particular, regarding Dominic Soto.
The common denominator in the Nuchelmans and Ashworth reviews,
thus, is the absence of careful examination of the actual internal unity in
the structure and details of Poinsot's 'theory'. Both rely, as we have seen,
on the quite external standard of a material and traditional terminology
found in texts earlier than Poinsot. The reliance in Nuchelmans's case
makes it impossible to say what the contributions supposedly exaggerated
actually are; in Ashworth's case, the denial of originality on Poinsot's part
rests entirely on the superficiality and externality of the textual compari-
sons made. But since it is Ashworth who pushes the line of objection to
the radical extreme and buttresses it with a wealth of scholarly detail,
reply to her review needs to take account of this detail over and above the
general deficiency of external approach she shares with Nuchelmans.
The external approach of terminological comparisons materially made,
if pursued exclusively, has the inevitable result«— as we have seen — of
hiding from the readers' attention the semiotically dominant themes in
Poinsot's Treatise. This problem is compounded in the case of Ashworth's
review by her repeated suggestions that the Deely edition claims as
original with Poinsot this or that when in fact no such claim is made. As
with Nuchelmans, so with Ashworth: my position as editor of the TDS is
criticized for peripheral claims which it does not make, while the central
claim it does make receives no comment at all.
Perhaps by this point in the discussion it has become sufficiently clear
what the claim for Poinsot's originality actually is: the doctrine of the
formalis ratio signi as consisting in an ontolbgical relation, irreducibly
triadic (TDS 1.2) and permeable to natural and cultural influences
indifferently, 19 and the assimilation thereto of the prejacent conceptual
and terminological elements of Latin tradition. To set the record straight
before the misrepresentations get out of hand, let me add to this positive
point — the actual claim which Ashworth and Nuchelmans leave without
comment — a basic list of what is not claimed respecting Poinsot's
Treatise.
At no point do I claim that Poinsot was the first to criticize the

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90 John Deely
Augustinian definition of the sign for essentially involving a sense-

perceptible element, or to invent the distinction between formal and
instrumental signs as the vehicle of the criticism. (Indeed, as Ashworth
concedes, while commenting on little else, 4the parallels between Poinsot's
definitions [in his Summulae] and those formulated by his predecessors
need hardly be commented upon'. On what most needs remarking
Ashworth maintains a conspicuous silence — namely, the crucial matter
of what Poinsot himself does with the traditional definitions and distinc-
tions when he assimilates them systematically into his own doctrine of the
formalis ratio signi. This is what the editorial materials provided in the
Deely edition of Poinsot's Treatise are mainly about.)
At no point in the TDS was it my purpose to resolve the question of the
original source of either the criticism of Augustine's definition, or the
distinction between formal and instrumental signs as a vehicle for that
criticism. I said simply that Poinsot makes the criticism his own; that it
goes against a strong Latin tradition, in theology especially (TDS:
116/7-9, a point Ashworth appears to miss in her exclusive concentration
on logical tradition), reaching back to Augustine; and what some of the
main philosophical reasons and implications of the criticism are from the
pont of view of semiotic.
To the extent that Ashworth's or Nuchelmans's or any other review
gives readers an impression that the definition of signs that Poinsot takes
over from tradition, as well as his criticism of the Augustinian definition
as inapplicable to formal signs, are presented in the TDS as invented by
Poinsot, the representation flies in the face of public record in Deely
(1982b). Ashworth adds to the list of authors beyond those mentioned
there, but only to bandy about further the points which show exactly
what I myself had already shown — to wit (in Ashworth's words): 'that
neither the acceptance of concepts as signs nor its corollary, a rejection
of the Augustinian definition, were new' (this issue: 138).
On the other hand, it remains the case, as undiscussed by Ashworth as
by Nuchelmans (or by Schmitt, for that matter), that the classical
summulae definition of the sign and the criticism of the Augustinian
definition are newly conceptualized and refined under Poinsot's notion of
the formalis ratio signi, which is the heart of his Treatise (non nova, sed
noviier, in Nogar's formula [1963: 283-284], and as the remarks above
concerning Poinsot's handling of the formal/instrumental sign distinction
indicate). My editorial discussion of The subordinate status of the
Formale-Instrumentale couplet under the Secundum Esse-Secundum Did
contrast' (EA: 479-481) goes to the philosophical heart of this matter,
concerning which Ashworth, in her review, as Nuchelmans in his, says
nothing.

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Poinsot 's place 91
Ashworth challenges my remark that 'apparently for the first time,

Poinsot establishes a systematic distinction between signification and
representation' and claims that this distinction originated with Soto. Her
claim here may be correct; yet it is impossible to adjudicate on the basis of her
own remarks, because they do not indicate whether the systematic sense of
the distinction as Poinsot employs it in the doctrinal context of his larger
work is indeed the same sense as found in the earlier work of Soto. Basing her
remarks on the bare terminological introduction of the distinctions (77)5:
25-27), Ashworth claims this Summulae terminology for Soto. The main
discussions of Poinsot's understanding of the points, however, do not occur
in the Summulae texts, but elsewhere (notably at TDS: 116/14-117/17 and
122/17-123/25, and 217/28ff., and more subtly in the Questions of Book II).
These decisive discussions Ashworth leaves unremarked. (Perhaps we can
look forward to an edition of Soto's semiotic at Ashworth's hands — which
would be a welcome development.)
Were Poinsot's systematic application of the signification/representa-
tion distinction the same as in the earlier work of Soto, that would be very
well. I am always happy to learn more of the details in this fascinating and
important history. The confusion of representation with signification and
the overlapping discussion of the two is so pervasive in the writings on
signs that what is needed in each case is a close look at the texts
themselves. This is not what Ashworth provides. Her account normally
leaves out of discussion altogether texts pivotal to Poinsot's semiotic, and
presents the texts she does bring into discussion with a spirit alien to the
requirements of their literary form.
Ashworth, in her review, leaves out of the discussion contemporary
literature in the field of semiotics and in the discipline of philosophy in
relation to semiotics, and directs her readers only to her own bibliography
(Ashworth 1978). Yet, when we look at this bibliography, we find a prime
example of the intrinsically semiotic phenomenon whereby a new perspec-
tive (in this case semiotic itself) is rendered invisible by being treated as a
nondatum in the heretofore prevailing perspective. In this case Ashworth
would impose a presemiotic consciousness, at the primary level of sources
relevant for semiotic inquiry, on the developing field of semiotics. She
would do so with no adaptation to the requirements of this field which
determine the relevance of a given work and make it become visible, so to
speak, within the perspective of semiotic itself. Consequently, her bibli-
ography is focused in such a manner as to exclude much that is of
importance for semiotics.20
On the one hand, Ashworth refers dismissively to the TDS bibli-
ography as 'short' (comprising only some three hundred items). She does
not say that this bibliography has as its purpose the inclusion of all and

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92 John Deely
only those authors and works expressly cited in the edition. On the other
hand, Ashworth directs her readers instead to the 'long' bibliographical
lists of herself, Munoz Delgado, and Schmitt. The difficulties we have
mentioned concerning her own list beset also the additional lengthy lists
she would have us turn to. Over and above this, Ashworth neglects to
mention that these lists do not include all the works included in the TDS
bibliography as useful to understanding the semiotic of Poinsot. She
discounts by her silence here the well known fact that a bibliography
whose relevance is determinate at every point serves a purpose quite
different from that of a bibliography whose relevance at every point is left
vague and undetermined, and that this difference is a qualitative, not a
quantitative,, one.21
Ashworth's dissociation from a view of semiotics in general and
Poinsot's semiotic in particular from within, as it were, comes a cropper in
her treatment of the distinction between the sign ad placitum and ex
consuetudine as Poinsot discusses these terms. Even by the most tradi-
tional standards of scholarly specialization, there are a number of
curosities about Ashworth's remarks on this distinction. Noting Poinsot's
initial introduction of the then-traditional twofold division of the sign
(first into formal and instrumental, then into natural, stipulative, and
customary), Ashworth states that 'In the Treatise on Signs proper, he took
up the second division in more detail' (this issue: 140).
This remark is cryptic, as coverage of the first division in the Tractatus
de Signis indicates the opposite. The first four Questions of Book II are
devoted to the theoretical clarification of the foundation and elements of
the first division, especially the formal sign. The discussion is, moreover,
exceedingly subtle and complex. For example, Maritain, who knew
Poinsot immeasurably better than does Ashworth, grasped the point of
the contrast between species impressa and species expressa — as it bears
on the formal sign (see TDS: II, Questions 2 and 3) — only after first
having missed it (Maritain 1924; see Maritain 1959: 120, n. 3). This
discussion is directly complemented by the whole of Question 4 in Book I
of the Treatise on Signs, one of the longest questions — twenty-six pages
(TDS: 166-192) — in the entire work. Book II, Questions 1-4, occupy
about forty-five pages (TDS: 223-268), bringing the coverage to seventy-
one pages. There is also the point (TDS: 39, n. 6) that Reiser suggested
(1930: xvii) — a point which follows from Poinsot's own remarks
(TDS: 286) — that the whole of Book III of Poinsot's Treatise 'should be
regarded ... as an extended treatment of the working of the formal sign
defined and defended in the opening Questions of Book IF. This treat-
ment, which adds another fifty-three pages, brings the total coverage of
the first division of the sign to one hundred twenty-four pages.

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Poinsot's place 93
By contrast, the second division occupies Questions 5 and 6 of Book II

(77)5: 193-215) — a total coverage of only twenty-two pages. Perhaps
Ashworth could explain how exactly she finds that Poinsot treated the
second of the two divisions 'in more detail'. I found the opposite, and the
lopsided page count of the two treatments strongly suggests that other
readers might find as I did. Should Ashworth have a special notion of
what constitutes 'detail' in this case, she gives no hint of what it might be.
At this point in her review, Ashworth takes great pains to show that the
language of the adplacitumjex consuetudine distinction antecedes Poinsot,
though the point was never in question. As if for interlude, in pursuance
of this point, she supplements her introduction and accolades concerning
Soto by introducing Celaya (c.1516; see Ashworth 1985).
Her conclusion is twofold (and, as it were, doubly predictable), that
'Poinsot's discussion is in some respects slightly more complex than
Soto's, but I do not see any essential difference between them', and that 'if
anyone is to be praised for first recognizing the role played by custom in
the use of signs, and for analyzing the interplay between nature, custom,
and stipulation, it is Domingo de Soto, not John Poinsot' (this issue: 143).
Well, the philosophically-minded reader might ask, why Soto? Why not
Celaya? And why are the differences between Celaya and Soto 'interest-
ing', while those between Soto and Poinsot are without consequence? For
that matter, what are the differences between Soto and Poinsot? Just how
is Poinsot's discussion 'slightly more complex'? In what does the 'slight-
ness' consist? It is just these kinds of issues — the central philosophical
ones — that Ashworth consistently skirts.
The major survey of such related questions conducted in recent years at
the University of Coimbra, by the linguist Herculano de Carvalho (1967),
attaches considerable importance to the contributions of Poinsot; nor is
Carvalho's assessment due to a 'failure to master the background to
Poinsot'. What does Ashworth make of this work? Or is this one of the
linguists whom Ashworth would take to be, as she did Maritain, bowled
over by the editorial work of Reiser in the 1930s?
Ashworth likewise ignores John Oesterle's Poinsot-based study
(1944), which made some interesting attempts to divine the significance
of Poinsot's distinction between the sign ad placitum and ex consuetu-
dine.22 Nor does Ashworth evidence any awareness of the philosophical
consequences following from the various ways of interpreting the
distinction, either in the old texts she cites, or in the more recent ones
(which she does not cite) that turn on the same distinction. Deely
(1978a), for example, is entirely devoted to exploring the theoretical
structure of this distinction, as it functions in the perspective of
Poinsot's doctrine of signs, and as it illuminates certain contemporary

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94 John Deely
questions about language. In addition I pointed out (TDS: 269, n. 1) the

anomaly introduced into Poinsot's organization of the text by his
struggle to integrate the requirements and complexities of the division
under the rubric of his general semiotic. Of these relevant texts,
Ashworth shows no command.
For Ashworth it suffices to find that the words Poinsot used were
also used elsewhere (which is not hard to do with scholastic authors).
This purpose accomplished, further questions as to the content and
detailed implications of the materially same expressions become otiose
or, as Ashworth puts it, complexities without essential differences. It is
small wonder that, in her review, Ashworth at no point takes up a
philosophical issue in a fashion other than verbal.
As enrichments and supplements to our knowledge of the history of
semiotic development in the Latin age, many of Ashworth's observa-
tions (about Celaya in particular) are appropriate. But as Luddite
vehicles for a determined effort to reduce semiotic to the perspective of
an established scholarly specialty, they are misplaced. 'It would take a
lifetime of research', Ashworth asseverates, 'to show how far Poinsot
had anything novel to say' (this issue: 143). Actually, a philosophical
sensitivity to the principal issues involved combined with a minimally
respectful reliance on Poinsot's own knowledge of his predecessors
would have provided her with basis enough for coordinating scholarly,
historical research into and reconstruction of the predecessors. Without
accepting Poinsot's account on its own level (which is doctrinal from
first to last), however, there remains nothing of interest that is not
antiquarian.
What is missing in her approach is the self-conscious recognition that
the identification of terminology in a text is a minimal interpretive act,
providing but a starting point for the further interpretations of conse-
quence which constitute the philosophical treatment proper ofthat text.
The marks on the page are a terminus a quo, or what Poinsot called, in
the language of his day (see TDS III, Question 4), a conceptus non
ultimatus; such marks are not the terminus ad quern and conceptus
ultimatus. The interesting questions and the philosophical issues of
interpretation lie precisely in the direction of the conceptus ultimatus,
and develop along the passage thereto, beginning from the bare termino-
logy recognized as such. Eco puts it this way:
A sign is not only something which stands for something else; it is also
something that can and must be interpreted. The criterion of interpretability
allows us to start from a given sign to cover, step by step, the whole universe of
semiosis. (Eco et al 1984: 46)

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Poinsot 's place 95
Regarding Ashworth's 'minor scholarly points9
The concluding section to Ashworth's review is perhaps the one most

revealing of the reviewer. This is most transparently so in the allegation
that the editorial materials in Deely's Poinsot edition have a 'main defect'
of 'failure to go beyond Reiser in actual historical scholarship'. The
demonstration thus far that Ashworth has consistently skirted the major
points, and has overlooked significant details in the text, notes, and
'Afterword' of the work she reviews has to some extent prepared the
reader for what examination of this particular allegation will reveal.
The 'apparently unknown to Deely' remarks serve Ashworth's basic
strategy of disparagement equally whether or not they are accurate. The
standard stock-in-trade of competitive scholarship that phrase represents
becomes in Ashworth's hands a veritable shibboleth. This is too bad,
especially since the 'apparently unknown to Ashworth' category com-
prises many if not most of the sources that I, and the handful of other
readers of Poinsot over these last three and a half centuries, found to be
essential to an understanding of his work.
The translation and its terminology
Nuchelmans (1987: 147) advises the reader 'that when something really
hinges on a certain passage, it will be wise to keep one eye on the Latin
text'. This counsel underlay my own insistence, at the contractual stage,
on a bilingual edition.
It is instructive to consider in this light that Ashworth, throughout her
review (when she does not use untranslated Latin expressions), couches
her own discussion of the key terms, even when discussing authors other
than Poinsot, with the translation that I settled on for the English
columns of TDS. In a way her unquestioning use of my translations of
these terms is gratifying to me, for, as any reader of the 'Principles and
terminology' section (EA: 457-471) discovers, the versions were hard
come by, philosophically, requiring several complete translations of the
entire text, and much consultation among scholars at large.
Yet Ashworth takes in stride, in particular (as bearing no comment),
difficulties in arriving at decisions such as the translation of adplacitum as
'stipulated' and ex consuetudine as 'customary', or the translation of ens
reale as 'mind-independent' and ens rationis as 'mind-dependent'. Her
silence is most conspicuous on the philosophic problem of rendering
secundum did and secundum esse according to the requirements of
Poinsot's foundational systematization for semiotics.

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This last difficulty of trying to figure out why Poinsot began his
treatment of the sign with the contrast between the relative secundum did
and the relative secundum esse was second in difficulty only to the problem
of figuring out how to render this contrast properly in English. A decisive
point in the process of settling on a rendering was a letter from Robert
J. La Plante (January 18, 1972) written in response to the manuscript of
Deely (1972) (then in press). The letter contained a detailed discussion of
main Latin texts, especially from Aquinas and Cajetan, pertinent to the
understanding of secundum esse and secundum did, which demonstrated
that the tentative terminology of the article in question was insufficient.
La Plante's letter in effect showed that the terminological trial balloon
would not fly the required distance. I cited but a tiny and tangential part
of this letter (EA: 463, n. 104), and hope someday to find the circumstance
to publish the whole of it. Suffice it here to acknowledge La Plante's
contribution to the gestation of the Treatise, and to express the hope that
one day soon he will write on it himself.
Here I can give only the short version of the story, as told in the
'Colophon' to the TDS:
This book began in 1969 as an idea for a simple translation of a Latin text. The
one principle operative at that stage was that this book be a translation, as distinct
from a transliteration of any sort. When, however, it took three years to reach an
intelligible rendering of the key terms of the Treatise ('secundum essej secundum
did'), and seeing that this rendering took seventeen English words (two terms of
seven and ten words, respectively) to convey the point of the bare four Latin
words, it also became clear that the translation should not be presented apart
from the original text. (TDS: 606)
Bird remarks in his review (1987: 104) on the 'notoriously crabbed and
difficult' Latin of the late Aristotelians, 'a difficulty that results ... mainly
perhaps, because it assumes knowledge of the centuries-old' commentary
tradition; and he concludes that my translation, in general, 'taken in
conjunction with the many notes, makes this late scholastic understand-
able, although still far from easy'. FitzGerald too, addressing in his review
(1987) the philosophically difficult problem of translation of terms, found
it necessary to discuss at some length 'the justification and explanation of
the translating decisions Deely was forced to make in rendering the tight
scholastic Latin of Poinsot into contemporary English', since 'some of
these decisions may be considered controversial'. Nuchelmans (1987: 147)
finds my translations 'serviceable' but not 'impeccable', and cites a short
series of arguable anomalies that, as he puts it, 'do not seriously affect the
flow of the philosophical arguments'23 which, as we have mentioned, he
never discusses. Certainly philosophically minded readers of the text have

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Poinsot 's place 97
had many questions about these terms, as is documented in the extended

correspondence already reported (EA: 457-471).
Thus, while it is gratifying that Ashworth found my terminology
satisfactory as a transparent vehicle for discussing texts of the Latin
authors besides Poinsot, it is at the same time troubling that a reviewer
should treat as nothing so many difficulties, subtleties, and nuances as the
choices of terms across languages — even when not separated by centuries
of developments — convey.
Particularly surprising is the fact that on the fundamental architecture
of the Treatise on Signs, which is conceptually quintessential for Poinsot,
as well as for the edition of his semiotic, neither Ashworth nor Nuchel-
mans makes any comment.
Indeed, Ashworth's specific comments on the translation and its
terminology — aside from those that echo the comments of others
(notably Bird 1987) — are disappointingly trivial, hasty, and eccentric on
conceptual details. A conspicuous example is her criticism of sometimes
translating realis as 'physical', on the grounds that 'there are places in
which the type of real being picked out may well include spiritual beings'.
She is evidently unaware that, within what Maritain calls 'the Dominican
school', the term 'physical' extends equally to material and spiritual
substances, and applies even to the discussion of the esse divinum, as does
the term realis. That this is generally unknown is suggested also by
remarks in other reviewers: it needs to be noted therefore that, within
Poinsot's tradition, beginning with Aquinas himself, 'physica' is ex-
tended to spiritual being also insofar as it is cognition independent.
Another example is Ashworth's hasty criticism that Deely was 'sparing'
with the use of square brackets to indicate 'straightforward additions' to
the text. As her only reference to a putative 'addition' she cites the very
translation that we have just examined: the translation of realis sometimes
as 'physical'. A more critical course would have been to find and defend
some significant instances of the alleged 'straightforward additions'. Then
I could specifically defend my claim that all, or virtually all, such
additions are already bracketed in the English. The same can be said for
Nuchelmans's characterization (1987: 147) of the translations as 'gener-
ally rather loose and free': the problem is one of expressing in English the
philosophical arguments of the Treatise on Signs. These arguments are the
sole standard by which the doctrinal accuracy of the translation, and its
strictness or looseness, can be judged — and these are discussed by
neither Ashworth nor Nuchelmans.
The problem itself of alleged 'additions' or of 'loose and free' transla-
tions, moreover, is a radically semiotic one, of a dimension quite different
from the mathematically rooted notion that 'additions' convey (as if there

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98 John Deely
were perfect synonyms needing only a search within or across languages to

be found and set into one-to-one correspondence, all else being 'additions').
In fact, the problem is rooted in the differences between divisions of being in
physical existence and divisions of being in objective existence, to borrow a
distinction from Poinsot's Treatise (and from Cajetan). I have commented
on this problem elsewhere (Deely 1986c; see also TDS 240-242, n. 1-4,
discussing 'phantasia', 'phantasma', 'phantasiari', and 'idolum'):
The more I involved myself with this work and terminology, the more I found that
what has long commonly been held with regard to Greek philosophy also holds
for Renaissance Latin philosophy, and especially for the semiotic nascent within
it, namely, that there is no way to directly map the notions at play into our English
language. (1986c: 31-32)
Ashworth cites as 'a fair assessment' my own editorial caution to the
reader (couched in the context of discussing the bilingual page design of the
TDS [EA: 451], and adopted from correspondence with Jack Miles), that
what is presented in the TDS 'is the kind of translation in which each line is a
commentary and not really usable except as a commentary'. She does not
seem to have grasped the far-reaching implication of this editorial statement:
that in reality there is no other kind of translation, since what is said of this
translation is less obviously true, but true nonetheless, of all translations, and
the moreso the farther removed in time or language the source is. Hence
Ashworth misses the irony of this particular editorial statement — which
applies to the nature and case of any translation whatsoever — made as an
'assessment' of the particular translation under her review.
The bilingual text

Whereas Ashworth deems the 'provision of text and translation in parallel
columns on the same page' to be 'a minor scholarly point', I deem such a
provision to be the heart of the matter, a major scholarly point most
difficult even for scholars (let alone publishers) to accept, especially in the
English-speaking world. Yet this point was made perfectly plain by
Augustine, and we may hope that his maxim, after so many centuries, will
someday achieve its rightful status as a truth self-evident to all: 'We do
not clearly see what the actual thought is which the several translators
endeavor to express, each according to his or her own ability and
judgment, unless we examine it in the language which they translate'.24
For the Deely edition of Poinsot's Treatise, the page layout designed to
facilitate just such access to the original text in relation to the translated
text proved to be the greatest single obstacle to the work when it came to
negotiating with publishers. Two major publishers backed out at the

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Poinsot's place 99
production stage, despite the contracts that had been signed, and two
other major university presses declined to issue contracts, despite favor-
able reader's reports on the manuscript, in view precisely of the produc-
tion requirements (see EA: 445-457). These requirements are elucidated in
the following observation by Williams:
This tome is a consummate issue of the bookmaker's art. It is built on a plan

similar to the celebrated 1578 Stephanus edition of Plato. The difference is that in
taking advantage of the most advanced techniques of the printer's art, the Deely
edition of Poinsot achieves what Stephanus could only approximate — columns
of bilingual text perfectly matched in length on every page. In this respect the
edition of Poinsot appears to be an artifact unique in the history of publishing, a
first since Gutenberg. (Personal communication to T. A. Sebeok, January 1986)
Grycz, in an unusually long 'Colophon' concluding the TDS (EA:

606-607), describes the edition as 'perhaps the most exact bilingual
presentation in the history of right-justified printing, with line numbers
between the columns to key the indices'. (The indices are fivefold, and
occupy some seventy double-columned pages, providing an access for
virtually any interest to the content of the book.) In truth, the book was
lucky to find in Mr. Grycz a production and design manager with the
willingness to take on the project and with the sensitivities needed to fulfill
its requirements in beautiful detail (see Grycz 1985).
The utility of the work for historical scholarship and its relation to Reiser
Finally, Ashworth's 'final concluding word' asserts that readers of this

philosophical work 'cannot regard it as a work of historical scholarship,
or as a work introducing us to the historical John Poinsot'. I have already
discussed the statements in Bird's review that diametrically oppose such
an assertion. Other reviewers contradict Ashworth's assertion no less
flatly. Let me now comment directly on this figment of Ashworth's pen.
Readers who examine firsthand the notes, indices, diagrams, and
discussions of this edition of the Treatise on Signs would be hard pressed
to corroborate any tale that it is underdeveloped on the historical side, or
that the accuracy of its references is insufficient to provide future
researchers all they need to check the sources for themselves in every case,
as well as to correct and enrich them as resources provide (see n. 27
below). In fact, the work was especially designed, as the 'Editorial
Afterword' makes evident (EA: 448-450, 454ff.), to provide a permanent
base for just such ongoing research and collaborative scholarship,
historical as well as philosophical. If, furthermore, we compare first-hand

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the contents of the Deely edition to what Ashworth alleges in saying

'there is a lengthy editorial afterword, whose contents have in effect
already been discussed', we must again wonder about the idiosyncratic
content that she puts into her words, this time into the phrase 'in effect'.
The use of language here takes us again through a looking glass; in
Wonderland, words can mean just what we want them to, no more and no
less.
There is a more general point to be made about any detractor's attempt
to dissuade potential readers from seriously taking on a seminal work in
philosophy on the grounds that the historical picture conveyed in the
work is not quite 'up to date'. In resorting to this ploy, Ashworth is keen
to point out that in his edition of Poinsot's Treatise on Signs, Deely 'does
not cite' Schmitt (although she cites no philosophical point on which this
makes a difference). Such a remark reveals how far removed Ashworth's
review is from the spirit and purpose of the book in her hand. Ά
philosophical work', Maritain once observed (1959: xviii), 'must stand the
changing scene which develops around it, and does not need to be recast
every season'.
Let me focus on her allegation that the editorial material of Deely's
edition of Poinsot is vitiated by a 'main defect'; namely, a 'failure to go
beyond Reiser in actual historical-scholarship' (this issue: 144).
What Ashworth effectively conceals from her reader is the nature of the
relationship between Reiser's Marietti edition of Poinsot's Cursus Philo-
sophicus and my Berkeley edition of Poinsot's Treatise on Signs: first, in
regard to what the Deely edition of the Treatise on Signs achieves in
relation to Reiser, and second, in regard to what the Treatise achieves in
its own right.
The Deely edition of Poinsot is designed to be an English doorway with
panes of glass, the whole custom-designed to fit into the typographical
architecture of Reiser's Latin edition of Poinsot's complete Cursus
Philosophicus. When so fitted, the doorway affords a view of the interior
of that work, and of the philosophical landscape in which it is set. It can
also be used as an entranceway for beginning a tour of that landscape,
vast in space and time, rich in history and intellectual fauna of the most
refined subtlety. It is part and parcel of the bilingual page design that the
TDS is able to function in this way, if a reader desires to use it so.
The Deely edition is, therefore, not only a work from which, thanks to
its parallel columns of English and Latin, it would be possible for the
serious student to learn the philosophical language of early modern times.
The edition is further designed to function as if it were (per impossibile) a
piece fallen out of Reiser's complete edition, but perfectly formed and
integral unto itself — accompanied, moreover, by a translation and

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Poinsot 's place 101
annotated and internally articulated with commentary, so as to be a

complete work unto itself; and yet, at the same time, as a fragment, the
detached piece would be able to be perfectly reinserted by its finder into
the larger Latin whole from which it had fallen.25
All of this, and more, is explained in the TDS (EA: 445^457, 489); and
the research value of such a correlated design would seem abundant and
obvious. Yet Ashworth, never mentioning the integral correlation, speaks
to her readers only of a 'defect' of the editorial apparatus, whereby,
through a perverse synecdoche, the points of equality in historical
scholarship between the two editions are portrayed as a wholesale 'failure
to go beyond Reiser'.
To speak simplistically of'failure to go beyond Reiser' here, were it true
(and it is not), would still mislead the reader in the absence of a balancing
suggestion of how elevated a standard Reiser established for the treat-
ment of Poinsot's philosophical texts. Because of this standard of
excellence, it is incumbent that no subsequent edition of any one of those
texts fall below Reiser's standard. Failure, therefore, to measure up to
Reiser would be failure indeed. The obligatum is thus: never to drop
below Reiser, and wherever possible to go beyond Reiser. At no point
does the Deely edition fall below Reiser. At least equal to the matching
parts of the Reiser edition at all points, and at least somewhat improved
at most points, the Deely edition within its compass is superior to the
Reiser edition at most points. What Ashworth does is this: select and
concentrate solely on one point of close equality between the Reiser and
Deely editions (the point discussed in n. 27 below); compare the two
editions as a whole in relation to that one selected point; and conclude by
generalizing this limit to her readers as a 'defect' and a 'failure'.
Ashworth's point of concentration (see n. 26 below) is that 'the brief
listing of Soto's works (524)', taken from Reiser, 'is quite inadequate'. Of
course, the same could be said of the listing of the works of Albertus
Magnus (522), Cajetan (523), Scotus (524), Soncinas (524), and every
other author listed in Reiser's own Index Personarum. Such assertion is
misleading when it is not put in context. The reader has either to be
aware, or to be made aware, that, first of all, Reiser's edition, however
splendid, is not quite a full critical edition of Poinsot's work in philos-
ophy. Reiser has not compared every line οι every available edition of the
Cursus Philosophicus. He has relied on the last editions published within
Poinsot's lifetime and corrected by Poinsot's own hand, and has com-
pared these with, and noted their variations from, none of the earlier
editions and only some of the subsequent editions, especially the 1663
Lyons edition (Reiser 1930: xvi), although also the 1638 Cologne edition
(Simonin 1930: 147; see EA: 446-447 and n. 73-78). In regard to this task,

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102 John Deely
notably as concerns the Cologne text, the Deely edition advances

somewhat beyond Reiser. Second, the reader must understand that, as a
further contribution to the history of philosophy (Reiser 1930: xvi, cited
in EA: 445, n. 72), the Reiser edition does not provide, in its Index
Personarum, a culling of Poinsot's elliptical style for its frequent 'veiled'
(that is, inexplicit) references to other authors (EA: 451-454). This
problem of veiled references is in itself an intricate problem of vast
proportion, as it is predicated on an ethos that is well-exemplified in
Poinsot's 'Word to the reader' of 1631 (TDS: 6/6-12):
In referring to the positions of various authors, whether to impugn or to follow

them, it will be our policy generally to abstain from lengthy citations and lists of
names. For we publish our position without yielding to contention or jealous
rivalry, but giving ourselves to the pursuit of truth, which concerns doctrine and
not persons. (EA: 453)
Reiser keys his index personarum to the explicit references only.

In regard to this problem of veiled references, too (as explained in n. 27
below), the Deely edition advances a little beyond Reiser (EA: 452). To
this task, in particular, of identifying the veiled references, can be adapted
(by simply changing the tense of the verb from past to future) Reiser's
own observation (1930: xvii) concerning the task of verifying the explicit
references: 'Specialis labor isque summe spinosus erif. As I cautioned:
The reader should be aware ... with respect to this Index Personarum, that its
value for determining the range of Poinsot's awareness of contemporary develop-
ments, as, for example, the fashions in the empirical and mathematical sciences of
the extra-Iberian Europe of his day [or the sources of the positions he criticizes in
establishing semiotic on a foundation systematically unified by his notion of the
formalis ratio signi as grounding Cajetan's doctrine of the univocity of objects in
knowledge through demonstrating a perspective transcending the division of
being into realis and rationis], is sharply limited, owing to the extreme discipline
with which Poinsot chooses to execute his expositions according to a style which
eschews without remorse all the trappings of learned or scholarly display.
(EA: 453)
The references in Poinsot's text that I was able to identify as Suarez, for
example, were almost all veiled (that is, not explicit in Poinsot), and had
to be hunted down through abduction. Poinsot's treatment of other
authors as well, Soto included, is likewise frequently veiled (as discussed
in the EA, sections I.D. III.B.3. and III.C.l). Thus Simonin, in his review
of Reiser's work (1930: 147), describes it as 'the classic edition' of
Poinsot's Cursus, because with it 'nous savons exactement, dans tout le

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cours de edition, quelest le texte exact [that is, of the many editions of the
Cursus, as explained above] qu'il nous offerf.
From an exacting reading of the Deely edition, Ashworth would have
known that the inadequacy of any reference list of Soto's works (and the
works of others that are based on the Reiser edition) had already been
signaled to the reader. I expressly referred (EA: 455, n. 90 and 406, n. 13)
to Simonin (1930: 148), a text I will quote directly here: "le merite de Dom
R. ne se limite pas a choix judicieux du texte; U a pris soin de controler
toutes les citations' that Poinsot makes, first of Aristotle and Aquinas,
then also of other authors. Simonin continues:
Enfin une derniere remarque concerne plus specialement la Logique; il ne semble

pas que Dom R. ait verifie les nombreux renvois aux commentaires logiques de D.
Soto et a la logique de Banez. De meme Fediteur ne parait pas connaitre le texte
qui sert de base ä la partie de la Logique intitulee: 'Summulae', alors qu'il s'agit
d'une interpretation, assez libre d'ailleurs, des 'Summulae logicales* de Petrus
Hispanus. II y avait la toute une serie de citations plus ou moins explicites a
identifer.26 (1930: 148)
Ashworth makes focal to her criticism the assertion that 'Deely has made
little or no attempt to go beyond Reiser, the editor of the 1930 edition, in
identifying Poinsot's sources'. Put thus categorically, the assertion is false.
Had Ashworth qualified her assertion by saying that 'Deely has made no
attempt to go beyond Reiser in identifying some of Poinsot's sources', the
assertion would have been true.27
When I said (EA: 398, n. 4) that the standards and principles of
Solesmes for a critical edition were applied to the establishment of the
TDS 'within the limits afforded by the Reiser text', any reviewer who had
read the whole carefully would have well understood by that point the
sense of the qualification. Without creating an edition that at any point
dipped below the level of Reiser's work, I had enhanced and supple-
mented Reiser's work in all that concerns the life, works, and in particular
the semiotic of John Poinsot.
The standards and principles stated by the Solesmes editors as applying
to their edition of the Cursus Theologicus (1931: xxx) — within the limits
of Reiser's text — apply also to the establishment of the text of TDS:
If therefore by a critical edition one understands an original text established by a

careful investigation of the literary remains in the light of the evidence gathered
from wherever possible and considered attentively, a text religiously adhered to
save where it has been unmistakably corrupted, with no changes made from
private judgment, but with annotation of all variant readings whence some profit
might be hoped for: a text where whenever a conjectural correction needs to be

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introduced, the old readings are never concealed: it is to this sort of a critical
edition that we have committed ourselves.28 (Solesmes 1931: xxx)
Lavaud's description (1928: 443) of the relation of the work of John

Poinsot to the work of Thomas Aquinas is the relation I myself had in
mind in creating on the base of Reiser the independent edition of the
Treatise on Signs: 'Ses additions ne sont pas des corruptions. II n'a pas
change ni dissipe le depot. II Γα garde en I'accroissanf.
It was a question of maintaining all that Reiser had gained so that,
wherever it was possible to go beyond him, as was often the case in the
overall compass of the Treatise, the gain would be pure gain, unalloyed by
loss. Suffice it to provide here a partial enumeration of such pure gains
beyond Reiser:
1. A complete account is rendered of the publication history of all
Poinsot's works, including evaluation of the alternative editions (those of
Quebec as well).
2. All the editions, complete or partial, in all languages, of Poinsot's two
Courses are set out in notes to the discussion of Poinsot's life and work, as
well as gathered into a table showing the years and cities of publication
(EA: 396-397).
3. Photographs of actual title pages of old editions of Poinsot's work are
placed through the volume, including one (EA: 392) of an exemplar of the
1637 Cologne Cursus, known to neither Reiser nor Solesmes, whence too
is taken a semiotically key passage from Poinsot's pen (TDS: 222)
unknown to Reiser and omitted from his edition (see EA: 446-448,
especially 447, n. 76-77).
4. There is a lengthy discussion of Poinsot's style and of the require-
ments of rendering his thought outside the Latin (EA: 458-459, and
n. 92-96).
5. There are attempts to relate Poinsot to the mainstream of earlier
philosophical development (EA: 399-404); to situate his life, by the use of
parallel columns, within a framework of historically familiar events (EA:
424 444); and in particular to situate both semiotic in general and
Poinsot's semiotic in particular within the contemporary development of
philosophy (EA: 490-514).
6. There is a highly developed system of internal cross-references, both
within the questions of the Treatise proper (thereby enabling the reader to
follow more easily the intricacies of Poinsot's resolution of arguments
counter to his own positions), and to other parts of the Cursus Philosophi-
cus incorporated in bilingual footnotes to the text.
7. There is the uncovering of many of Poinsot's veiled, but semiotically
central, references to Suarez throughout the Treatise, together with the

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incorporation through bilingual notes of semiotically seminal texts that

Poinsot repeatedly cites from the works of Cajetan.
8. There is a synoptic table which provides for the first time a compre-
hensive outline of Poinsot's philosophical Cursus. This foldout chart (EA:
371-375) not only incorporates Reiser's several partial outlines into a
larger whole, but also adds the outlines of parts that Reiser never outlined
at all.
9. There is a discussion of the significance, for our understanding of the
basic concepts of Aristotelian philosophia naturalis (EA: 400-404), of the
suppression of the traditional tract on astronomy; and also a discussion of
the literary forms of Poinsot's text (EA: 417ff.).
10. The main sources for historical scholarship on Poinsot (namely, the
Prefaces and Appendices in the Solesmes edition of Poinsot's Cursus
Theologicus, together with the extensive French scholarship that swirled
around Maritain's early years) are meticulously culled and incorporated
into the many-dimensioned discussion of the 'Editorial Afterword'.
This enumeration could be further broken down, and it could be
expanded to many more points. But these ten gains of the Deely edition of
Poinsot's text are already sufficiently specific and substantial to demon-
strate that the accounts of Poinsot's life and writings and of the secondary
literature about him, as well as the presentation of the relevant Latin text
itself, go beyond Reiser. In fact, the Treatise is a scholar's key to the
fullest range of historical materials pertinent to Poinsot's life or work that
is to be found today in any single locus.
'Final concluding word9
We see that the semiotic of John Poinsot confronts us as a difficult but

foundational work in the history of philosophy, one that owes much to its
predecessors, but cannot be reduced to them, as Poinsot himself gave
notice. It can be viewed as culminating in many respects the Latin
traditions in logic and philosophy, but it culminates them as a watershed
and a turning point, 'a pivot as well as a divide', as Sebeok put it (1982: x),
by identifying a standpoint and a starting point which, if taken up and
developed, inaugurates a perspective as different from modern idealisms
as idealism is from classical realisms. Those who read this work of Poinsot
only with an eye to the past are bound to miss the work's central message,
which concerns possibilities for the future and a renewal of philosophy in
its very foundations, particularly as regards experience and knowledge.
The deep tendency of this work, as I pointed out (EA: 404), largely
escaped the notice of Poinsot's contemporaries, but becomes more

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unmistakable when taken up in our own day in the context of what has
come to be known as semiotics. This context, like its subject matter, is
inherently transdisciplinary in respect to the lines of academic specializa-
tion that have become established in modern times; as a result, the
semiotic point of view is not easily adopted or readily appreciated when
first seen through the optic of a traditional line of specialization.
At this early stage in the developing discussion, the work of Poinsot
provokes evidence of the recalcitrance of traditional points of view to the
requirements of semiotics. This is evident not only in the remarks of
Nuchelmans (1987) and of Bird (1987), but especially in the wholesale
attempt at dismissal, and reduction to traditional textual categories, by
Ashworth. Nonetheless, the materials for a more careful reading are
finally there, and they are not going to be conjured away.
In general, it has become quite clear, as a result of the Nuchelmans and
especially Ashworth reviews, that an approach to the background to
Poinsot in the restricted material sense of reduction to antecedent textual
examples cannot get very far in understanding his semiotic, or his
relevance to the doctrine of signs today. Like other forms of positivism,
such an approach depends for its value on the recognition of its limits.
Indeed, I had anticipated in my edition of Poinsot's Treatise what is
valuable in this general type of approach:
There can be no question of the value of a work approaching Poinsot's work

historically (cf. Romeo 1979; Herculano de Carvalho 1970), tracing precisely in
his forebears (such as the Conimbricenses, Complutenses, and other more
individualized thinkers) views and controversies on the subject of signs which, as
Poinsot mentions in the course of his Treatise (Book I, Question 5, 194/39-40),
had by his time become matters of'almost daily dispute' in the schools. (EA: 413)
What traditional scholarly specialization in the vein of Nuchelmans

and Ashworth refuses in actu exercito to acknowledge and respect is the
quite different philosophical approach embodied in the TDS9 and expres-
sly stated thus:
What is central to the present presentation of the work, however, is rather

Poinsot's own understanding of the relation of his treatment of signs to the
Summulae Logicales tradition of medieval origin, of which Poinsot's Anis Logicae
Prima Pars was consciously a continuation. Few thinkers of any age have been
more conscious or respectful of tradition than was John Poinsot CNovarum
rerum et singularium opinionum aeque inimicus' says Reiser 1930: viii). This gives
all the more weight to his explicit identification, on more than one occasion, of his
systematic treatment of signs precisely as novel and without formal precedent [not
without material precedent in the terminology and controversies, obviously] in the

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work of forebears. In this regard, Poinsot's doctrina signorum precisely fits the
definition of the prospective 'science' of semiotic limned by Locke, knowing
nothing of Poinsot, as in 1690 something to be accomplished... exactly as Poinsot
saw his own work in formal terms. This was precisely the understanding of
semiotic taken up by Peirce in our own time and made the rallying point of the
international movement that has taken shape particularly since the end of the last
war. Hence, it is in relation to this idea and movement that the first edition of
Poinsot's Treatise is conceived. ... Its retrospective significance as a glimpse into
the past — indeed, as a new point of entry into the lost centuries of renaissance
Latin Aristotelianism and natural philosophy — is there to be developed; but the
dominant interest of the work remains the prospective significance of semiotic as a
wave of the future. Poinsot's is primarily a seminal treatment. ... It illuminates
prospectively the possibilities for a future age. ... It harbingers a revolution....
(EA: 413-414)
This being said, some final observations are called for concerning
Ashworth's review in particular. Despite its author's claim to be One of
the few philosophers who has actually read some of the sixteenth-century
authors to whom Poinsot was indebted', and despite Poinsot's consider-
ably greater command of his own background, the deficiency of the
Ashworth review on the philosophical side might be attributable in part
to something besides the general type of the approach. As far as the
approach goes, as we have seen, it is not enough, where doctrinal issues
are concerned, to treat texts as an individual scholar specialized in a
narrow band of the Latin tradition, for 'the background to Poinsot', as
well as to Soto, includes an almost infinitely wider band than such an
approach to philosophical issues takes into account; and it develops
beyond the level of nominal definitions — that is to say, on the level of the
objective application of terms in contrast to the level of the correlating
linguistic codes whereby the terms are nominally established in the first
place as a basis and starting point for the developed applications (so-called
'real' as opposed to 'nominal' definitions, to use a somewhat misleading
older characterization: confer Deely 1988 and 1986e). In this regard,
Ashworth's treatment of Poinsot is comparable to a treatment of the later
Heidegger by a Greek philologist: whatever good results is per accidens.
Although her remarks on Celaya and Soto contribute some new pieces to
our history of semiotics in the making, to our understanding of the
doctrine of signs itself her remarks contribute nothing. The poverty of the
approach ('quae istius saeculi est, non unius hominis\ as we have said) is
itself an indexical sign of the narrowness often insisted upon in depart-
ments of philosophy, under the mask of'being specialized', whereby those
professing philosophy become in fact its domestic adversaries within the
academy.

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108 John Deely
But there may be a further element at work here. Ashworth's reduction-

ist perspective regarding Poinsot's achievement in semiotic may also be
owing in part to the thesis she posited some years ago. Ashworth
(1974: xi) claimed that, as far as the Latin writings go, 'generally
speaking, nothing of interest to the logician was said after 1550 at the very
latest'. This might help explain why she goes so much farther than
Nuchelmans down their common line: the Treatise on Signs presents a
direct challenge to her thesis. Ashworth, in response, appears unduly
determined so far to make the thesis stick. She seems dedicated to the
proposition that there is nothing new under the sun after 1550.29
Regarded in this light, Ashworth's review of Poinsot functions as what
Maritain called a 'reverse sign' — a sign that here reveals more about the
reviewer than about the work reviewed.
Apart from the deficiency on the philosophical side and the thesis held
in advance, the Ashworth review provides some enrichment to our
understanding of the development of Latin times toward a semiotic
consciousness. This is particularly so in Ashworth's discussion of Celaya,
who needs to be looked into as more than a mere counterpoint to Soto.
He provides an important glimpse into the still earlier period of develop-
ment in Paris, where the young Soto studied, and where Petrus d'Ailly too
became part of the early semiotic development that occurred as a reaction
to the definition of the sign laid down by Augustine. Investigation here
will be fruitful.
When I said (EA: 414) that 'Poinsot's is primarily a seminal treatment,
not a culminating one respecting former ages', I inadvertently risked a
misunderstanding. My point of emphasis was the 'primarily', to which the
'not' was in subordinate, not displacive, qualification. I should rather
have said, 'primarily a seminal treatment, as well as being (secondarily) a
culminating one'. That would have been more just, both to the situation
and to my intent, and I hope to correct it in an emended second
impression. My intention was to preclude precisely the kind of misunder-
standing the Ashworth review singularly cultivates. I hoped to bring to
the fore the primacy of the seminal, prospective aspect, the promise for
tomorrow, in Poinsot's treatment of signs, so that it would not get lost in
the eyes of those predisposed to see only the culminating aspect of
yesterday, as had been the case heretofore among those reading Poinsot
with tradition foremost in mind (the case of Gredt, discussed in E A [461,
n. 97], provides a sympathetic illustration).
Poinsot, long neglected in the history of philosophy and treated, if at
all, only in the subsidiary role of a commentator on Thomas Aquinas, will
henceforth have to be reckoned with as a thinker in his own right, and, in
relation to semiotics, as belonging to the mainstream of semiotic develop-

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ment. Far from being 'largely derivative' of Dominic Soto, as Ashworth

tries to portray, Poinsot's stature among the Latins, even without his
semiotic, quite surpasses Soto's. And when it comes to semiotic, Poinsot
is in fact preeminent among the Latins. More than any single author, as
embodied in the Deely edition of his Treatise on Signs, Poinsot provides
exactly what Sebeok described, on the basis of his familiarity with the
materials leading up to the work's publication, namely:
the 'missing link' between the ancients and the moderns in the history of semiotic^
a pivot as well as a divide between two huge intellective landscapes the ecology of
neither of which could be fully appreciated prior to this major publishing event.
(1982: x)
Whether Poinsot will eventually be seen, along the lines of Ashworth's

suspicion, Only as a seventeenth-century reflection of Soto's achieve-
ments', or whether (pace Nuchelmans), as Walker Percy recently sug-
gested in a letter to me, Poinsot 'will be recognized as one of the major
founders, if not the founder, of modern semiotic', need not be settled once
and for all this early in the discussion. Which of these contrary suspicions
be the better founded is for the accidents of history — and the
development of semiotic in its history and doctrine — to decide.
Notes
A fairly complete picture of this situation can be gathered from the references listed in
Deely 1985a: 423, n. 33.
Attractively titled A New History of Philosophy, this just-published work of W. I.
Matson (1987) is in fact basically a repeat in its main outlines of the histories which
have become 'standard' on the basis of the high-water historical scholarship of the late
1900s. Inasmuch as this 'new history* takes no account of semiotic developments, or of
the intricate relationships of early modern thought to the development of semiotic
consciousness in Iberia particularly, it is in effect, so far as concerns semiotics, a clone
of the many standard works of the last eighty years. Thus Matson (vol. II, p. 253)
opens his 'new' treatment of the Renaissance with the following stale assessment:
'William of Ockham was the last great creative Scholastic. The three centuries
following his death are a philosophical desert'. FitzGerald rightly notes (1987:430)
that 'this is an absurd comment', adding that 'there is now even less excuse for it' in
view of the developments that semiotic researchers have brought to light in recent
years.
Of the several 'reader's reports' solicited by the University of California Press on the
Poinsot manuscript, there was a particular report by a scholar of Pinborg's circle, to
which I was asked to respond and which proceeded exactly according to Ashworth's
strategy. It opened with the charge of Deely's alleged ignorance of contemporary
scholarship about scholasticism, and concluded with the recommendation that a
purely historical approach to Poinsot would be the only proper one. My answer

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110 John Deely
(June 16th, 1979), which proved effective in the case, applies in large measure —
mutatis mutandis — to Ashworth's review as well. The basic lines of the answer were as
follows. The main brunt of his criticism of the scholarship of the materials provided
him is carried in his remark that Deely "fails to study Poinsot's theory by comparison
with his immediate predecessors, such as the famous Conimbricenses ..." (my emphasis)
as though a purely historical approach to Poinsot's work were the only possible one
worthy of publication.
'Here he seems to have in mind as model the work of Pinborg (1967) Pinborg, it will
be remembered, took as his research focus certain pregnant texts of Johannes
Aurifaber, a 14th-century author (in whose work, by the way, there is no record of
Poinsot's having taken any interest). Pinborg chose Aurifaber because he saw in
Aurifaber's writings a paradigm treatment of certain semantic and linguistic problems
which thread through the earlier Middle Ages, and therefore saw an opportunity to
achieve through study of Aurifaber also an "overview" of these problems in their
earlier discussion and development. In other words, his interest in Aurifaber was as a
culminating treatment illuminating retrospectively the whole of a former age. Thus,
Pinborg begins his study with a survey of "The Development of Medieval Linguistics
before Johannes Aurifaber", followed by a discussion of "the modes of signifying in
the 14th century" (ch. 2) and "the modes of signifying according to Aurifaber". Only
then does Pinborg present his texts, followed by indices.'
This is exactly the manner of treatment the reader would seek to impose on any
presentation of Poinsot's treatment of signs. Yet it is exactly an opposite of such a
treatment that would be best suited to Poinsot', the interest of whose Treatise as a
seminal treatment overrides its supplemetary interest as a culminating one. Both
interests are there; the question is which should receive priority in the projected first
edition.
Once it is understood that an answer to this question presupposes an understanding
of what Poinsot's text says, it should also be understood that the first edition must be
one that achieves first of all an understanding of the intrinsic structure of Poinsot's
doctrine of signs taken in itself and as an account of the phenomenon of signifying as it
forms a part of the common experience of mankind. The means for doing this must be
first of all a reading of the text itself and then only afterward a comparison of the
content of the text (not its material content of scholastic terminology so much as its
doctrinal content for which the terminology is made sign-vessel) with the assertions of
historical predecessors and a commentary on the historical materials. This is why the
'Editorial Afterword' is placed as it is, following the text of Poinsot rather than as an
introduction thereto. Tor, unlike Pinborg's estimate of the paradigmatic character of
Aurifaber's work respecting the preceding centuries, Poinsot explicitly, and on more
than one occasion ... presented his systematic treatment of signs precisely as novel and
without formal precedent in the work of forebears'.
Poinsot was not given to making such claims: he seems to have claimed novelty for
no other part of his traditional Cursus Philosophicus. And there is no doubt that
Poinsot knew the scholastic literature of the centuries preceding his own with a
thoroughness far surpassing the knowledge available today in the best of our scholarly
reconstructions of the bygone Latin age. To dismiss his claim without first thoroughly
understanding its proper content, therefore, would be folly.
In Poinsot's case, the proper content of what he is claiming — that is to say, the sole
basis on which his claim can be evaluated as it pertains to the study of texts of his
predecessors — is the sure grasp of what his own text says' by way of establishing a
doctrina signorum. The purpose of the Deely edition of Poinsot's Tractatus de Signis is

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Poinsot's place 111
somethimg therefore that is presupposed to, that must be realized before, any purely
historical inquiry can bear fruit. To approach Poinsot's doctrine of signs first
historically, rather than doctrinally, is thus to put the cart before the horse.
That such a treatment as your reader proposes would be possible', I wrote, Ms not in
question. That it would be the most fruitful approach to this particular part of
Poinsot's work, however (let alone the only possible one), is a claim that would be
likely to be advanced only by one thoroughly unfamiliar with Poinsot's own
understanding of the relation of his treatment of signs to the Summulae Logicales
tradition of which the Artis Logicae Prima Pars was consciously a continuation....'
To make the historical approach primary in the case of this text is tantamount to
claiming a knowledge of the antecedent Latin literature superior to that of Poinsot, and
to increase the risk of playing Kluge Hans with Poinsot's text, as we see in Ashworth.
As a secondary and ancillary approach, on the other hand, the historical approach
to Poinsot's doctrine of signs is invaluable, as I pointed out in my answer to the
reader's report: There is no question of the value of a work approaching Poinsot's
work historically, tracing precisely in his forebears (such as the Conimbricenses, or
Complutenses, etc.) views and controversies on the subject of signs which, as Poinsot
mentions in the course of his Treatise, had by his time become matters of "almost daily
dispute" in the schools. But the purpose of my edition of the Treatise is to achieve
something ... presupposed for the genuine fruitfulness of any such purely historical
inquiry'.
Perfectly legitimate on its own terms, a predominantly historical approach is
nonetheless secondary to the thrust of the Poinsot edition as a primary source in
semiotic, as defined by Locke and after him by Peirce, principal father (along with
Saussure) of the contemporary movement. The retrospective history of Poinsot's work
on the sign is there to be developed once the work has been understood on its own
terms, but not before.
4. In semiotic terms (see Sebeok 1979, 1986a; Deely 1982b: 98-106, 1986b: 267-270),
derived from von Uexküll (1920, 1940), this phenomenon is explained by the constant
tendency of our biological heritage to assert itself in the cathectic categories of -I-, — ,
and 0 (positive and negative affect, rounded out by indifference) to such a degree that
the Lebenswelt itself acquires at its own level a rigidity which reduces it to the practical
equivalent of a biologically determined prehuman Umwelt. This Umwelt provides a
comfortable home for a subspecies which has built its cultural niche and now wants to
settle therein as into a place given by nature and thus threatened by changes from
outside that penetrate the contours laid down by nature itself (which is custom, of
course, in the Lebenswelt, but custom under the guise of nature and so transparent,
invisible, as it were, and presupposed, to the occupants of the niche).
5. For an appreciation of the importance of Suarez vis-a-vis, on the one side, the modern
development of philosophy, and, on the other side, the demise of Latin scholasticism,
Gilson (1952) should be read through, without reliance on the Index entry (p. 235) for
'Suarez, Francis', as this entry is very incomplete in its listing. Let me provide here at
least a glimpse of the importance of Suarez to the strategy of presenting Poinsot missed
by Ashworth in her review of my presentation of Poinsot's semiotic. Gilson holds that
it is impossible to overestimate the role and importance of Suarez in shaping the
transition from Latin philosophy to the philosophical traditions of the national
languages. In reading Gilson (1952), cognizant of Reiser (1930: xi) ("Joannes a Sancto
Thoma doctrinam Angelici Doctoris evolvit disputans contra ... praesertim Suarez\ in
Deely 1985a:43l, n. 41), I found striking support for my editorial strategy of
presenting Poinsot's semiotic first of all in counterpoint to the writings (especially, but

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112 John Deely
not exclusively, the Disputationes Metaphysicae) of this Doctor Eximius of the moderns
(whom Wolff called 'the Metaphysician', as the medievals had called Aristotle 'the
Philosopher' or Averroes 'the Commentator'), who had been Professor Primarius for
the University of Poinsot's undergraduate formation.
There was something queer' about the death of Latin scholasticism, Gilson writes
(1952: 108). 'Insofar as metaphysics is concerned, the dividing line between medieval
and modern philosophy does not run through the works of Francis Bacon or of
Descartes; I am not even sure that it runs through the Ethics of Spinoza, but it is
beyond doubt that, by the time of Hume, readers of philosophy had entered a new
philosophical world'.
There is a common thread, Gilson considers, that runs through all the modern
masters, tying them to Suarez at one end and to Wolff at the other — who begot Kant
(see Gilson 1952: 109-112, 120-132, and especially 120: 'Wolff has been to Kant what
Suarez had been to Wolff himself). The thread, moreover, is a semiotic one: 'Suarez
begot Wolff', Gilson notes, 'But his birth had been announced by signs'. Writing of a
passage in Wolff (1729) that 'No commentary could exhaust its contents', Gilson
observes (1952: 118) that 'the genuine Thomistic notion of being is, around 1729,
completely and absolutely forgotten. According to Wolff, Thomas Aquinas and Suarez
are of one mind concerning the nature of being, and it is not Suarez who agrees with
Thomas Aquinas, but Thomas Aquinas who agrees with Suarez. In short, Suarezian-
ism has consumed Thomism'. Brehier (1938: 1-2), describing the 'General character-
istics of the seventeenth century', put it thus: Thomism as formulated by the Jesuit
Suarez was universally taught and finally supplanted the doctrine of Melanchthon,
even in the universities of Protestant countries'.
Mr. John Russiano ('Jack') Miles, then Philosophy Editor for the University of
California Press, currently Book Review Editor for The Los Angeles Times, easily
perceived (at a stage of manuscript preparation much more primitive than the
published materials that Ashworth had at her disposal) the strategic character of my
use of Suarez. Writing to a scholar for the purpose of obtaining a 'Reader's report' on
my Poinsot project, Miles framed his request as follows (from an enclosure with a
letter to me dated June 21st 1979): Ί should like to ask whether you would consider
evaluating a very challenging, potentially very important ms. that I have received from
John Deely. ... The work is a translation into English with commentary and several
indices of the Tractatus de Signis from the Ars Logica of Joannes a Sancto Thoma,
John Poinsot.
Ί understand from some recent reading that Maritain, for one, regarded Poinsot as
the very crown of the medieval tradition. Deely paints a different picture. There were
two great summations of that tradition: Poinsot's and Suarez's. It was Suarez's, as we
know, that via Leibniz and Wolff reached Kant and determined the entire later course
of Western philosophy. What is novel — at least what I think is novel — about Deely's
view is that he claims that Hegel's response to the difficulties he perceived in Kant has
crucial points in common with the alternative tradition, Poinsot's [and, through
Poinsot, Aquinas's], that had been lost by his day. Further address to these same
difficulties is coming in our own day from students of semiotics, and so these students
will welcome the separate publication of Poinsot's Tractatus, which is indeed
independent, a study [the Treatise on Signs] within a study [the complete Cursus
Philosophicus], as Poinsot wrote it'.
6. For the reader's convenience, I will refer in a twofold way to the Deely edition of
Poinsot's Tractatus de Signis. TDS followed by page number(s), slash, and line
number(s) will refer to the bilingual texts comprising the selections from Poinsot

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1632b; E A followed by page numbers will refer to the 'Editorial Afterword' (Deely
1985a), which follows the bilingual texts as a separate monograph with its own table of
contents (p. 393).
7. Shall we deem her 'apparently ignorant' (even if only as it pertains to her specialty in
post-medieval Latin authors of logic) of Cajetan's work, despite his preeminence,
recorded in the Leonine edition of Aquinas's works, among the many of the school
who sought to complete Aquinas's Commentary on the Posterior Analytics! See Deely
1982b: 188-193, especially 192; also Jean Oesterle 1962.
8. Typical of the informed judgments reached by those who have studied this school of
Latin scholasticism in its integrity are the statements of Copleston and Ramirez,
respectively: 'Capreolus was the first of the line of distinguished Dominican Thomists
and Commentators on St. Thomas, which included at a later period men like Cajetan
(d. 1534) and John of St. Thomas (d. 1644)' (Copleston 1953: 162); 'Jean de Saint-
Thomas est regarde a juste t it re comme l'un des plus grands theologiens thomistes. Ses
contemporains, d'une voix unanime, I'appelerent un second Thomas, brillante etoile en
face du Soleil (saint Thomas d'Aquin); et toujours, on le ρΐαςα en compagnie de Cajetan
et de Banez, aux cotes de l'Ange de l'Ecole" (Ramirez 1924: 806).
9. Ashworth would have made a reality of the cartoon drawn by Umberto Eco midway
through the 1983 International Summer Institute for Semiotic and Structural Studies
held at Indiana University in Bloomington, which was used to announce the
publication of the TDS:
ru Tue ?t>&u<a*™ OA ) OP rwc

p£ ^/r\^-~7/ ^" t
10. In the final text of her review Ashworth speaks of 'selected passages from Poinsot's Ars
Logica which are joined by "semantic [sic] markers'" (this issue: 143). Perhaps this was
a Korzybskian slip on Ashworth's part, but presumably she meant 'semiotic markers'.
11. This division corresponds to Ashworth's section on 'Poinsot's theory of relations'. For
this theory, of course, Poinsot claimed nothing novel. What he saw as novel — enough
so to call distinct and even uncharacteristic (EA: 413) attention to in several different
ways — was not his doctrine of relations, but his doctrine of signs, and his application
to the sign of the doctrine of relations. While he understood the doctrine of relations as
fundamentally established in its own right prior to, and independently of, his own
writing, he also understood it as being at the same time a doctrine which in fact had not
previously been seen fully in light of the possibility it provided for establishing a
unified doctrine of signs. I have changed Ashworth's section title to reflect what is

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114 John Deely
properly the central consideration at this juncture: not the theory of relations, but the
employment of such theory to resolve the controversies outstanding on the problem of
the sign — beginning with the establishment of the unity of its subject matter.
12. See Poinsot 1633a, 'Quaestio Prima. De Scientia Philosophiae et Ordine Cognoscendi'
(6b21-33b38), 'Articulus III. Utrum Magis Universale, atque adeo Ipsum Ens ut Sic
Sit Primo Cognitum Intellect« Nostro' (20a2-33b38), and Poinsot (1635), 'Quaestio
IV. De Anima Sensitiva, et Potentiis Eius in Communi' (101b3-132b26), 'Articulus II.
Utrum Sensibile Recte Dividatur in Commune, Proprium, et Per Accidens'
(11 Ib8-120b39, especially 114b44^116a21).
13. As her own gloss on the text at issue, Ashworth tells us that she believes Poinsot 'was
suggesting not that we learn about absolutes only by reasoning relationally from their
effects, but that we are acquainted with absolutes only by virtue of their effect upon us'
(this issue: 135) — which is to say relationally, since their 'effect upon us' as such is
precisely relational.
14. Subsequent refinements of the transcendental relation, as an explanatory device within
the perspective of realist philosophy of substance with its accidents, I have already noted
(EA: 463, n. 104). Here I should like to add the reference to Poinsot 1643b: In 1. qq.
44-49, disp. 38. art. 2., pp. 396-411, as a gloss on Poinsot's text in the TDS (90/37-40):
'An vero transcendentalis relatio imperfectionem aliquam et dependentiam importet
ideoque a Deo releganda sit, admetaphysicos et theologos special'. In particular, the 'dico
tertio* (1643b: 405) nicely vindicates the interpretation of the basic contrast between
secundum esse and secundum did which Poinsot presupposes for the launching of
semiotic as superordinate, rather than subordinate, to the division between ens reale and
ens fatlonis within our conceptions of human experience. On the text in question
(TDS: 90/40), there are, no doubt, some very specific references waiting to be identified
within Poinsot's rich Cursus Theologicus, especially from Volume IV of the Solesmes
edition, to which I can here give no more than some preliminary indications (for
example, in 1. q. 28, disp. 33., inter alia art. 2. n. 39, p. 153, art. 3. par. I4ff. p. 160
^ resolutio^ especially par. 25, p. 163, where he comments expressly on the point of TDS
\ 18/8-14, and should be cross-referenced in TDS n. 12 thereto).
These indications, considered along with the specifically semiotic distinctions that
Maritain (1938, 1943, 1957) includes in his Latin notes from Poinsot (a.!644e), and
considered along with Doyle's closing paragraph (n. 29 below), are enough to give
considerable resonance to Ra'issa Maritain's report (1906-1960: 252) for October
28-30, 1935, of a 'very moving conversation', between the two Maritains and Sachsl
and Wind of the Warburg Institute, 'which made us see that there are deep and
essentially religious aims in these erudite researches concerning signs and symbols'.
15. Poinsot (1637): In 1. q. 14, disp. 16. art. 2, 'Utrum actualis intellectio sit formale
constitutivum naturae divinae\
Ramirez (1924: 807-808) gives his summary on this point as follows: 'Comme
particularite de la doctrine de Jean de Saint-Thomas, U faut noter encore qu'ilplace le
constitutifformel de la deite dans I 'intellection actuelle de Dieupar lui-meme, In I, q. xiv,
1.1, disp. XVI, a. 2; mais cette opinion est communement rejetee par les thomistes\ To
which the Solesmes editors reply with a note to the text (1934: 336, n. 1), referring
readers to their earlier observation (which also refers readers to Lavaud 1928: 443) in
this regard:
'Diligens animadvertat lector Joannem nostrum nullo pacto hie statuere quodnam sit
essentiae divinae formale constitutivum, sed quid naturam Dei sub conceptu naturae
constituat, id est, ut radix et principium est operationis. Idquodsaepe ab ipso iteratur,
turn hie, turn supra, p. 151, col. b et infra, p. 154, col. a, turn praesertim in I P. q. 14,

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Poinsot's place 115
disp. $6, art. 2: quilocuspropriusesthujusreipertractandae. Itaenim (locoproximecit.,

n. 2) diserte ait: "... non es t quaestio in praesenti per quid constituatur nostro modo
intelligendi divina essentia et substantia ut entitas increata est ut sic, et a creaturis
distincta ... sed quid sit formale constitutivum illius specialis conceptus, in quo natura
divina, ut natura, secernitur a conceptu attributorum et Personanan, et sumitur ut ab illis
condistincta nostro modo intelligendi. Quae dislinctio maxime prae oculis est ha-
benda " Huic distinctioni for lasse non satis attenderunt modernorum nonnulli qui
auctoris nostri opinionem quasi singularem et a Thomistis communiter rejectam nota-
runt' (Solesmes 1931: 153, n. 1).
16. Krempel, on scholarly grounds, disputes Poinsot's claim that the interpretation
Poinsot advances is the central tradition of the school in question. But Krempel, much
like Ashworth, raises his dispute on historical and textual grounds, without seeing the
main issue doctrinally regulative of the texts themselves as artifacts of cultural semiosis
— see EA: 477-478, n. 119. See also Montagnes (1954).
17. Thomas Aquinas (c.1252-1256: I Sent. d. 26 q. 2 a. 2 ad 2).
18. This is how Nuchelmans interprets the gloss (in TDS: 591, on the bibliographical entry
for 1978a). This gloss recounts that in the American context of semiotic discussion,
Romeo (1979), working from Herculano de Carvalho (1967, q.v.), showed that, since
the distinction between formal and instrumental signs was already in use with Pedro da
Fonseca (1564, a work with which Poinsot was thoroughly familiar), whatever was
original in Poinsot's thematization (1632a: H.q.2) of the contrast between formal and
instrumental signs was certainly not the appellation of this contrast, as I had ventured
in a conjecture (1978: 7) that was needless, groundless, and erroneous. (See Romeo
1979: 194-195, for a translation of Fonseca's summary remarks 'about formal and
instrumental signs'.) Ashworth and others have found the terminology in question in
use in Iberia even well before Fonseca, at least as early as Soto (1529); and Spade
(1980) and Kaczmarek (1980), had they been party to the earlier discussion of
American semioticians, could have pointed out from the first that a main source of the
terminology in question was the Parisian context out of which came d'Ailly's
Conceptus et Insolubilia (c. 1372). Indeed, traces of the distinction appear quite early
among the medievals — for example, Albertus Magnus (c. 1250-1252: 4.3.2.), later
Scotus, and Giles of Rome. But it would be interesting to know which spider in the
complex Latin web of semiotic development spun the first actual strand of the exact
appellation of signs as instrumentalia on the one hand and formalia on the other!
19. A sign, in the context of cognitive life, is strictly defined as anything that makes present
in cognition something besides itself, or something which it itself is not (TDS:
25/11-13, repeating the common formulation of the Latins: Signum est 'id, quod
potentiae cognoscitivae aliquid aliud a se repraesentaC). Through an extended analysis,
Poinsot (1632b: 1.1-3) demonstrated that this definition contains three essential points.
First, the sign as such — every sign — consists in a relationship. Second, accordingly
(that is, by virtue of consisting in a relationship ontologically, or According to its
proper being'), the sign exists as a kind of membrane or interface equally permeable to
the influence of nature or culture, of cognitive life and physical being. Third, this
relationship constitutive of the sign is an irreducibly triadic one (in contrast to bare
relationships of physical interaction as brute force).
But the reformulation of traditional formulations in ways likely to preclude
misunderstanding of the points, ways making the points explicit and unmistakable,
was the result mainly of the working out by Peirce of a general categorial scheme
(1867) designed to embody from the first the role of the sign across the whole extent of
nature, with the subsequent restatement in the light ofthat scheme of'what a sign is'.

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116 John Deely
In Peircean terms, a sign is anything which stands in a relation to a second thing, called
its object, in such a way as to determine a third thing, called its interpretant, to stand
itself in that same relation to the object. This last point, that the interpretant of a sign
must itself stand in the same relation to the object as the sign determining it as an
interpretant, means that the interpretant is in every case itself a sign, whether that
interpretant be an idea or not.
That ideas (or 'concepts') as the interpretants of other signs, whether linguistic or
otherwise, and whether cultural or natural, are themselves signs is an extremely
important point, embodied in the pre-Peircean development of semiotic consciousness
in the seldom understood late Iberian maturation of the doctrine of formal signs'.
Equally important, and equally rarely understood at this juncture, is the further point
that ideas are only one species or type of interpretant, that 'interpretant' names a
broader notion than does the notion of the 'concept' (or 'formal sign') produced in and
by cognitive activity. The incompleteness of the Latin doctrine of the formal sign, even
in its most mature formulations, is an extremely important point, tied up with the
triadicity proper to the sign relation.
20. Ashworth (1978) turns out to be 'long' indeed, but bare, without evaluative comments
of any kind on the works cited. By way of an example from the present context,
Ashworth (1978: 84) lists Simon (1955) without giving any indication of its reliability
as a translation. Nor, in her review of the Deely edition of the Poinsot Treatise, does
she recur to the discussion (TDS: 117, n. 6) of this translation as it bears upon the
crucial semiotic text (TDS: 117/22). Nor again does Ashworth make any mention of
the extended discussions, centered on Simon's efforts, which occur elsewhere through-
out the Deely edition (notably in EA: Section III.C), discussing "The translation.
Conceptual aspects: Principles and terminology'. Ashworth's bibliography, moreover,
is focused in such a manner as to exclude much that is of central importance to
semiotics (which is not surprising, given her editorial screening out of the perspectives
that semiotic opens): she sees her interests (1978: vii) 'as including such topics as
consequences, syllogistic, supposition theory, and speculative grammar, but as exclud-
ing such topics as the categories, the struggle between nominalism and realism, and
pure grammar'. Of course, Ashworth's bibliography, like any scholarly list of sources,
provides a useful tool, circumscribed by her particular interests.
21. Nor does Ashworth suggest where we should look, in the quantitatively larger
bibliographies of Ashworth (1978), Munoz Delgado (1982), or Schmitt (1981, 1983,
1984, and forthcoming), for enlightenment in understanding the semiotic of John
Poinsot. Surely not everywhere? Yet, beyond global citations, Ashworth's bibliogra-
phical directions contain not a hint of selectivity.
22. Oesterle (1944) was a sequel to an earlier study (1943) which consisted in an extended
survey of the then-current (sociologically speaking) philosophical approaches to the
analysis of 'meaning'. The sequel, as its title indicates, proposed, based on Poinsot's
classification of signs, a radical alternative to the then-dominant approaches to
'meaning'. Oesterle provides a valuable analysis of Poinsot's treatment of the varieties
of signs (his 'semiotics'), but without penetrating in the analysis to the unificative level
of Poinsot's semiotic proper (the formalis ratio signi) where the several distinctions
made in order to classify signs are rooted in the indifference of the constitutive sign
relation to its subjective ground. How this affects the discussion of the signwn ex
consuetudine in particular is fascinating to observe, and deserving of a full discussion in
its own right (I am waiting for the student bright enough to take this as a thesis topic,
indeed). In concluding his study, Oesterle draws up a useful icon (a diagram) making a
point-by-point comparison in the terms of the main distinctions as he has discussed

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them between Poinsot's semiotics and the version of the semiotic triangle essayed by
Ogden and Richards (1923).
23. The unarguable howler of an error at 219/2-3 where Ovum' was misread as Ov/s' and
erroneously translated accordingly as 'sheep' rather than "egg* is a detail which may
not interfere with the argument, doubtless, but which surely plays havoc with the
intersemioticity of Poinsot's text with the earlier discussions in Augustine
(i.389-396: 86) and Aquinas (c.1266: 1.1) of images as a representation which, in
Poinsot's terms, even when fundamental to a given signifying, is never formal thereto
and constitutive of it in its proper being.
24. Augustine (c.397—426: 2.13): '... quoniam et quae sit ipsa sententia, quam plures
interpretes pro sua quisque facultate atque judicio conantur eloqui, non apparet, nisi in ea
lingua inspiciatur quam interpretantur\
25. In the monolingual page design of the Reiser edition, the Latin text is presented in two
columns, a and b, with intercolumnar numbers at every fifth line, with indices keyed
accordingly. 'Poinsot 1632a: 646b37', based on Reiser, tells the reader that on page
646, in the right-hand column, at line 37, will be found Poinsot's citation of the text
from Aquinas that gave Poinsot the key to his doctrine of the formalis ratio signi.
The TDS is also presented in two columns (English on the left and Latin on the
right), with numbers between the columns at every fifth line. As the text is bilingual,
the keying of the indices is slightly variant from the monolingual Latin of the Reiser
text. Whereas the Reiser numbers are keyed to both columns equally, the Deely
numbers are keyed primarily to the left-hand (or English) column only, and the
column designation found in Reiser's indices, which separates page from line numbers,
is replaced with a slash (/) in Deely's indices. For example, 118/10 tells the reader
where the key Aquinas text is cited by Poinsot in the Deely edition — page 118 at line
10 of the English column.
Because the bilingual columns are exactly the same length and begin and end within
the same line of text on every page, the exact keying of the indices to the English text is
at the same time a highly accurate keying also to the parallel Latin column of text —
for instance, in our example, the citation of Aquinas by Poinsot in the Latin column
begins in line 10 but carries into line 11; and the match for any similar reference is,
perforce and by design, always within a very few lines up or down.
The match of the Deely numbers with the Reiser numbers is also designed to be an
easy correlation to make. In the four Deely indices to the bilingual parts of the Treatise
drawn from Reiser, the Reiser numbers equivalent to the Deely numbers provided in
the indices are included within parentheses for every indexical entry. To use the same
example again, under the indexical entries for the Summa theologiae of Aquinas in the
second of the five Treatise indices (the 'Index of passages from Aquinas'), on p. 520,
the entry for q. 28. art. 1. is given thus: 118/10 ( = 646b37). In addition, in the running
heads for each page of the Treatise, after the page number, the equivalent Reiser page,
column, and line numbers for the Latin (and the English) text are provided, set off in
square brackets. For example: Ί18 [646b26-647al6]' at the top of page 118 tells the
reader of the Treatise on Signs that the exact Latin text on the page will also be found
in Reiser between the 26th line of column b on page 646 and the 16th line of column a
on page 647. The correlation of Deely and Reiser numbers runs throughout the whole
of the Treatise, including the bilingual footnotes which import from elsewhere in the
Cursus Philosophicus passages that are pertinent to the doctrine of signs.
By these devices the part-whole relation of the two works is preserved intact at every
point. Their use makes of the two separate Deely and Reiser editions a single
integrated tool for serious study and research. So used, the Deely edition of Poinsot's

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118 John Deely
Treatise on Signs becomes a veritable entranceway, framed in English, into an old

Latin mansion of many rooms and wide vistas, a doorway and window of contempo-
rary design opening onto the philosophical landscape of a world long past.
26. These remarks by Simonin, of course, point directly to the area of Ashworth's
specialty, but in a way that shows that the case which Ashworth makes for Soto is but
an aspect of a larger problem involving also Banez and Petrus Hispanus in particular.
It is not helpful for Ashworth to treat in isolated, partisan, and oversimplified form
this aspect of the larger problem. In bringing up the problem, she would have been
expected either to mention Simonin's observation, or to comment directly on the larger
problem, or both.
Those who have already reckoned with Poinsot know well that there is valuable
work of a very high order of scholarship still to be done, and that those with the
training and motivation to do it are a valuable resource. Speaking on behalf of all
those who have edited Poinsot's texts according to the highest standards offered by
their circumstances, I can say that Ashworth's contribution in this regard, were she to
make it, would be welcomed, even if it be limited to the particular of Soto. If she were
to undertake to make explicit, for example, Poinsot's veiled references to Soto, as I was
able to do with many such references to Suarez, or if she were able to make up what is
wanting in Reiser's Index Personarum as regards the full bibliographical detail of
Soto's work in particular, among the editors and students of Poinsot she will find no
lack of appreciation.
27. To go beyond Reiser in identifying Poinsot's sources, even as a secondary aim of the
TDS, turned out to be easier to conceive than to achieve. In the end, I had to settle in
this regard for ad hoc improvements instead of improvement across the board.
In my initial plan for an edition of Poinsot's work on the sign, I envisioned, within
this limited parameter of text from the Cursus Philosophic™, an updating and complete
verification of the sources used by Reiser in checking Poinsot's citations. I would do
yet more thoroughly with all the authors what I did for Suarez. I saw such
improvement (along with the several other improvements on Reiser that I planned and
subsequently executed, as partially listed in the text of this article) as a secondary
enhancement of the projected edition of Poinsot's Treatise on Signs. I considered this a
secondary enhancement because, exactly as Simonin said (1930: 148), 'Evidemmeni ce
travail depassait tin pen celui d'une simple edition, mais etant donne le legitime souci
manifeste par Dom R. d'apporter une contribution precise a Vhistoire de la Philosophie
(cf. p. XVI, C), il pouvait paraltre s'imposed.
My effort to check, update, and supplement Reiser's text across the board in the
Treatise text (to which end I compiled a number of files with photocopies of citations
from the ancient authors) came a cropper over my finding texts which I could not
usually relate to the editions to which Reiser, in the infinitely richer context of the
European libraries, had been able to gain access in preparing his edition of and Index
Personarum for Poinsot's Cursus Philosophicus. I discovered ruefully, as Simonin put it
(1930: 148), that 'ce sont la, evidemment, que des desiderata en vue d'un mieux toujours
plus aise a concevoir qua realised. I found, to borrow the colorful description of the
Belgian Benedictine scholar who has also worked with Poinsot's text in the American
context (Winance 1985: 243):'// est evident qu'il serait eclairant en soi d'aller consulter
les Conimbricenses, Complutenses, et Salmanticenses, Soto, Martinez, Fonseca, Cabero
et Suarez. Toutefois, comme ces pages sont ecrites au desert de Mohave en Californie
[and the situation, in this regard, is not much different throughout the US] il est plus
facile d'aller d'ici a la lune que de trouver ces venerables auteurs'. The two facsimile
editions of Soto's work that Ashworth mentions as having become available in recent

Authenticated
years — the most relevant one only in 1980 — improve this situation only at the
margin.
As far as concerned my own preparation of Poinsot's Treatise, practically speaking,
the choice came down to either forestalling the primary purpose of the edition,
subjecting its publication to an indefinite delay pending unforeseeable months or years
spent touring the libraries and monasteries of Spain, Portugal, France, Italy,
Germany, and perhaps elsewhere; or, on the other hand, adopting the high standards
of Reiser's work to be maintained throughout as a minimum, enhanced in particular
places, and improved upon in its references in a way systematic but partial, rather than
across the board. Faced with the prospect of compromising completion of the primary
purpose of the work — the establishment and presentation of Poinsot's semiotic,
beginning from the Reiser text — for the sake of but one among several secondary
enhancements, the obvious choice was to go forward according to the primary
purpose. This is the very purpose that Ashworth's review ignores. She writes her
review focused in such a way as to make it appear, so far as possible, as if no other task
had been worth undertaking unless one were to fulfill the one secondary objective of
improving Reiser's Index Personarum (as regards Soto in particular). To such an
attitude would well apply Eco's remark on the modistae (cited in Deely 1985b: 316).
28. Solesmes (1931: xxx): 'Quodsi igitur critica tibi audiat editio quaecumque monumentis
diligenter scrutatis, testimoniis undique collectis et attente ponderatis, originalem textum
eruere studet, eique, nisi aperte corrupto sancte adhaeret, arbitrio privato mutationem
concedens nullam, omnibus interim annotatis lectionibus variis wide aliquid commodi
speretur: et si quando conjecturalis correctio sit introducenda, numquam reticens quid
praeferant festes antiqui: hujusmodi criticam editionem elaborasse nobis in votisfuit.'
29. The problem may be the narrowness with which Ash worth construes logic, and the
screening out of the traditional logics as a pars semiotica. Certainly, if we take a
semiotic point of view, the post-1550 landscape is not as barren as Ashworth seems to
think. Compare the observations of Doyle:
'As I said when we talked, the best [discussion of signs after Poinsot] is that of the
Conimbricenses, which I wrote about in Semiotics 1984.
'Beyond that, the next best, especially because of its importance within early 17th
century Protestant thought, was authored by the Calvinist philosopher, Clemens
Timpler. Timpler's work on signs, which is explicitly dependent upon the Conimbri-
censes, is actually found in two places: (1) his Metaphysicae Systema Methodicum,
which originally appeared in Steinfurt in 1604 but which I have seen in a Hanover
edition of 1616, and (2) his Logica Systema Methodicum of which I have seen a 1612
Hanover edition. The longer treatment in the Metaphysics, Book Three, chapter four
(De Signo et Signato) runs from pages 298 to 321, while in the Logic, Book Two,
chapter three, it runs between pages 274 and 282. Timpler was well known to other
Protestant, particularly Calvinist, philosophers of the period, e.g., Rudolph Goclenius
and Bartholomew Keckermann. Of course, theory of signs had special importance for
Calvinist theology, for example, of the Eucharist. In addition, Timpler's own
understanding of metaphysics as dealing not with being, but rather with "everything
intelligible", seems tailor-made for a semiotic understanding and presentation.
'In the Lutheran tradition with dependence upon both the Conimbricenses and
Timpler, mention must be made of Christoph Scheibler (1589-1653). Called "the
Protestant Suarez", Scheibler authored a much used (both in Europe and at Harvard
in the New World) Opus Metaphysicum. First published at Giessen in 1617, this work
comprised 1250 octavo pages in two volumes. Subsequent editions were printed at
Giessen in 1622, Marburg 1629, Geneva 1636, Marburg 1636-1637, Giessen 1657, as

Authenticated
120 John Deely
well as at Oxford in 1636-1637. The treatise, De Signo et Signato, in this work (Book
One, chapter 24) runs 50 pages (pp. 776-825 in Giessen 1617).
'Among 17th-century Catholic authors whom I have seen, besides the Conimbri-
censes and Poinsot, there are others who at varying lengths deal with signs. Indeed, in
just about every Logician (especially where they are commenting on the De Interpreta-
tion) there is some mention of signs and signification. Two that come readily to mind
are the Jesuits, Roderigo de Arriaga and Thomas Compton-Carleton. With regard to
Compton-Carleton, let me say that he figures in a future plan which I have for a
Semiotic Society Conference.
One final point to make is that while I have explored it only in regard to Suarez, a
place where I would expect to find very sophisticated treatment of signs both among
Catholics and Protestants in the 17th century is in their general treatment of
sacraments.' (Doyle, correspondence 22 December 1986.)
Doyle also well discerns the difference between claims of philosophical and of
historical scholarship, and the relations between the two. Doyle's discernment makes it
all the more interesting that he sees in Poinsot's semiotic, as did Poinsot himself, a
philosophical preeminence in the Latin literature. The TDS demonstrates this preemi-
nence on the philosophical level, while also being heedful of the historical materials
adjacent to the philosophical matter-at-issue.
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Poinso t 's place 125
—(1643a). Tomus Secundus Cursus Theologici. Lyons. Equivalent in Solesmes ed. vol. 2,
p. 530-end amd vol. 3. Paris: Desclee, 1934 and 1937 respectively.
—(1643b). Tomus Tertius Cursus Theologici. Lyons. Equivalent in Solesmes ed. vol. 4. Paris:
Desclee, 1946.
Bibliographical note: Poinsot died in June of 1644, having corrected page proofs of his
theological Cursus (which was already in press with a Madrid publisher — discussion in
EA: 444, notes 68 and 69) as far as disp. 18 of Vol. V, Vol. IV being already corrected
and in press. After his death, all the manuscripts for the remaining volumes except one
were brought to publication by Poinsot's friend, literary executor, and first biographer,
Didacus Ramirez, who inserted his biography into the first of the posthumously
published volumes, i.e. Vol. IV of the Cursus Theologicus. The one manuscript Ramirez
did not bring to press was that for the eighth and final volume, which surfaced many
years later in Paris and was brought to publication there. Following the principle and
newer practice of historical layering, which requires that primary reference dates be
taken from within the lifetime of the source, we therefore refer to the six posthumous
volumes of the Cursus. Theologicus as 4a.l644' — that is, written prior to Poinsot's
demise — followed by the suffixes 4a' through 'e\ with the posthumous editors and years
of publication indicated in the reference.
—(a.!644a). Tomus Quartus Cursus Theologici. Didacus Ramirez (ed.). Madrid, 1645.
Equivalent in Solesmes edition is Vol. V; Matiscone: Protat Freres, 1946, 1953 with added
Preface.
—(a.!644b). Tomus Quintus Cursus Theologici, Didacus Ramirez (ed.). Madrid, 1645.
Equivalent in Vives edition is Vol. VI; Paris, 1885.
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John Deely (b. 1942) is Professor of Philosophy at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa. He is
the author of a wide range of scholarly articles, and several books, including Introducing
Semiotic (1982), The Tradition via Heidegger (1971), and the bilingual edition of John
Poinsot's Tractatus de Signis (1985). He is the Senior Editor of the annual Proceedings of the
Semiotic Society of America and the anthology Frontiers in Semiotics (1986).

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Comment

The semiotic of John Poinsot: Yesterday and

C'est dans la tradition de Peirce, Locke, et

Semiotica 69-1/2 (1988), 31-127. 0037-1998/88/0069-0031 $2.00

blue-blooded scholars of traditional cultivation, particularly those of a

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Beyond the reassessment of individual thinkers, the historical reassess-

The developing discussion

The foundational and seminal character of Poinsot's Tractatus de Signis is

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have arisen in reviews submitted for publication by Bird (1987), Fisch

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ary or not can be made without having to engage in a deep study of

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more revolutionary than they actually are', Nuchelmans takes as his

Nuchelmans neglects to mention on these points that the books he cites

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hopelessly inadequate as the principal reference point for determining

The Ashworth review: Strategy, background, and imbalances

Part of the interest of the Ashworth review is that it provides vivid

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Ashworth might further have informed her readers that Franciscus

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reader that he is drawing either from Cajetan, an earlier contemporary of

The historical interpretation of Poinsot

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Ockham's time and the problematic called 'epistemological' today was

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Of John of St. Thomas himself, our Poinsot, Maritain makes the

And of course there is Maritain's famous question concerning Poinsot,

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Poinsot's doctrine of signs, no longer controlled, balanced, qualified, and

That it would require, as Ashworth points out, a lifetime of research 'to

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If the 'theory of interpretation' is to become transparent to itself and grounded in

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To this, Ashworth counters with what she optimistically calls a

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rather, it is purely the quest for deepened and deepening insight in

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discussion as they bear, on the one hand, in counterpoint to the transition

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mentioning., especially in the context of Ashworth's observation that in the

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the sign within one part of a standard introduction to, or commentary

Poinsot's doctrine of the sign as a relative secundum esse11

The great achievement of Poinsot's Tractatus de Signis is the unification

Discussion o/TDS 86, n. 16

In her discussion of Poinsot's use of the theory of relation relative to

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astray, but in a direction rather more interesting than Ashworth's

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the main presentation of Poinsot's argument [TDS: 80-83] before Poinsot

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In expressing himself thus, Bird has tangled three interpretive threads