Editor’s Words: The Significance of John Deely's Pre-modern Research in Post-modern Semiotics
Jia Peng
In every sense, John Deely was a unique scholar in semiotic studies: while most of his peers rely heavily on the thoughts of modern or contemporary philosophers, he, on the other hand, spends decades on the pre-modern philosophic classics and establishes a cenoscopic semiotic system, by returning to medieval doctrines of signs, tracing the threads along pre-modern semiotics to Piecean semiotics, and therefore, laying a solid foundation for the latest trends in post-modern semiotcs: phenomenologic semiotics, biosemiotics, semioethics, etc. He was, in the words of Chinese semiotician Henry Yiheng Zhao, the most erudite and diligent semiotician of our time.
Deely’s work is firstly introduced into China by Jinsong Zhou, who translates and publishes Impact on Philosophy of Semiotics in 2011. After its publication, several Chinese reviews on this work are published, in Signs & Media, and Bulletin of Semiotics and Media Studies. In the following year, Chinese translation of Basics of Semiotics is published. In its translation notes, Zujian Zhang, a famous Chinese scholar, points out the significance of Deely’s redefinition of “Post-modernism” from semiotic perspective and emphasizes Deely’s broad view and great contributions in building a cenoscopic postmodern semiotics.
In this issue in memorial of John Deely, we have solicited the published reviews on and translation of Deely’s works, including the excerpts from the Chinese version of Impact on Philosophy of Semiotics, namely, “‘A Sign Is What’: A Conversation between a ‘Semiotist’and a ‘Realist’Diagram”, “The State of the Questions”, “Demarcating Modernity within Philosophy”, and “How Semiotics Restores Tradition to Philosophy”, and the review by the translator on the English version of this book, in which he compares the systematic philosophic doctrines of signs sort out by Deely to Ariadne’s thread in the labyrinth of semiotics, leading us with our unremitting efforts to rewrite the history of philosophy. In Li Liu’s “Amongst various voices: A Review of John Deely’s Impact on Philosophy of Semiotics, it is argued by the author that Deely’s writing as a sustained exploration of western semiotic epistemology reveals and highlights the bonds between doctrines of signs and studies on meaning. In “Origins and Trends of Semiotics: Review of Basics of Semiotics”, Yijie He makes a critical summary of different traditions in semiotics, and emphasizes the ethnic dimension of Deely’s study. Henry Yiheng Zhao’s memorial essay on John Deely recalls Deely’s friendship and collaboration with himself and other Chinese colleagues, which reminds us Deely’s unwavering support of Chinese semioticians, as well as his great passion for and contribution to semiotic fields, which are the most valuable legacy for all the semioticians today to embrace and carry on.
编者的话：在后现代符号学中，约翰·迪利前现代研究的意义
从任何意义上来讲，约翰·迪利在符号学研究中都是一位特别的学者：当他的大多数同行很大程度上依赖于现代或当代哲学家的思想时，他花费数十年时间专注于前现代的哲学经典，并建立了一个通观的符号学体系，通过回到中世纪教义中的符号，从前现代符号学的线索追踪到皮尔斯符号学，由此，为后现代符号学的最新发展趋势奠定了坚实基础：现象学符号学，生物符号学，伦理符号学等。用赵毅衡教授的话来说，约翰·迪利是我们这个时代最博学和勤奋的符号学家。
约翰·迪利的著作最早由周劲松介绍到中国，在2011年，周劲松翻译并出版了《符号学对哲学的冲击》一书。在此之后，一些关于这部著作的评论也陆续发表在《符号与传媒》与《符号学-传媒学研究动态》中。2012年，中译本《符号学基础》出版。在这本书的翻译笔记中，中国著名学者张祖建指出了约翰·迪利从符号学视角重新界定“后现代主义”的意义，并且强调了迪利在建构一个通观的后现代符号学上的广阔视野和巨大贡献。
为了纪念约翰·迪利，我们已经汇集了一些关于迪利著作的评论和翻译，包括从《符号学对哲学的冲击》中译本中摘录出来的文章《什么是符号？——“符号学家”与“准唯实论哲学家”之间的对话》、《该问题的状况》、《符号学与哲学现代性》、《符号学如何恢复为哲学》四篇文章。周劲松的评论认为，迪利工作中所凸显的普安索到皮尔斯的线索，可以作为符号学者深入哲学迷宫的阿里阿德涅之线，引领我们不懈努力去重写哲学史。在刘丽所撰写的书评《众声喧哗，静默相随的符号——评约翰·迪利<符号学对哲学的冲击>》中，她认为，作为对西方符号学认识论的持续探索，迪利的写作，揭示并强调了符号学说与意义研究的联系。在《符号学的源流与开拓——评约翰·迪利<符号学基础>》一文中，何一杰总结了符号学的不同传统，并强调了迪利研究的伦理维度。赵毅衡在《怀念约翰·迪利：一位哲学符号学家》中回忆了迪利与他和其他中国学者的友谊和合作。这提醒我们迪利对于中国符号学家坚定的支持，以及他对于符号学领域的热情和贡献，这对于今天所有的符号学家而言都是最宝贵的遗产，值得我们继承。
周劲松：《哲学史的符号学透视——迪利眼中“符号学对哲学的冲击”》
刘丽：《众声喧哗，静默相随的符号——评约翰·迪利<符号学对哲学的冲击>》
何一杰：《符号学的源流与开拓——评约翰·迪利<符号学基础>》
