Peirce 's Phenomenology And Its Religious Meaning

As one of the most innovative philosophers, Peirce’s semiotics reflects language-analysis turn in modern philosophy. In the view of language-analysis, all of the truths and real objects will reveal in semiotic interpretation. In comparison with other semiologists, Peirce built the unique triadic semiotics which analyzes the relationships between object, sign and interpretant. This triadic semiotics benefits by Peirce’s philosophical analysis on belief and habit. Then semiotic interpretation is not only the process that relates sign and object, but also makes interpreter’s practice engage in this process. The triadic system is the essence of Peirce’s pragmatism, that is, triadic semiotics makes practice involve in the reality of object. Meanwhile, the process of interpretation must open to all of the tests by practical experience. Inquiry of truth means the real object will be understood in a long run and practices can test the understandings. The uniqueness of Peirce’s pragmaticism depends on his insistence of realism. Peirce use signs to unite realism and experience. That is, the transcendental object will be confirmed by a undefined inquiry community in a long run.Peirce’s semiotics shows rich consequences of theology. We can find a new angle to understand semiotics from the discussion on religious questions by Peirce. Holy object, religious idea and religious practice construct the triadic relation of semiotics. Even though Peirce didn’t provide a systemic discussion about theology, but since the 1980s, the academic history about applying semiotics to religion is clear for us. Michael L. Raposa focused on religious philosophy of Peirce and interpreted this kind of religious philosophy as Theosemiotic. Raposa’s research points the way to study religious semiotics. Robert Cummings Neville and Peter Ochs separately interpret Peirce’s semiotics with respect to religious studies of themselves.This essay will analyze how modern religious philosophers interpret and use Peirce’s semiotics, and find out the implication and consequence of semiotics as a kind of theological hermeneutics. Facing to the actual problems of multiple traditions, I want to explore how the semiotics could provide a kind of helpful perspective and intellectual methodology for us. We can develop a dialogical mutual-interpretation as theological hermeneutics which provide a kind of complex logic for our practice. I will put Peirce’s semiotics in the horizon of religious studies and interpret it as a cross-cultural hermeneutics with the consequence of public theology. And I wish to find some kind of methodology for religious studies in the context of multiple traditions.