The Work of Community in Raposa's Theosemiotic

Michael Raposa says an obligation lies at the root of his writing Theosemiotic: Religion, Reading, and the Gift of Meaning (2020). The chapter introducing and coining the term ‘theosemiotic’ in his earlier work Peirce's Philosophy of Religion (1989), was like a “promissory note” for a future development of that idea.1Theosemiotic wonderfully pays the bill. Although this essay is first and foremost an attempt to illuminate the meaning and internal logic of Raposa's book, it also takes up meaning in terms of “what follows from” the text. Raposa incites a community of inquiry centered on Peirce and religion, and in this essay, I follow and extend that work by exploring agreements, challenges, and possible developments from the platform of theosemiotic.Though he focuses primarily on the thought of Charles Sanders Peirce, this is much, much more than a Peirce book. It was Peirce, the systematic and enigmatic powerhouse of American pragmatism, that first connected me to Raposa's work.2 Although our scholarly efforts circulate around Peirce, our methodologies trace different orbits. Raposa develops the foundational history of Peirce in the work of Duns Scotus, John Poinsot, Ignatius of Loyola, even stretching back to deeper Augustinian roots. The strength of this book resides in the thorough and careful development of Peirce's ideas in their historical depth and systematic potential. Raposa brings Theosemiotic into shape as a system, a stream of thought, that Peirce does not originate but lifts to peculiar view and explores like a hungry prospector. This faithful work by Peirce enables those following in his task to set some beams in place and explore galleries and shafts that expand his peculiar additions in anticipation of larger constructive work to follow. A central pillar of both the excavation and construction in this book is Raposa's perception of the charged interrelation of “philosophical theology and a theology of the spiritual life,” a dynamism within our obligations of understanding and acting that connects philosophical construction to an organic and religious core of life.3Raposa enters the work of Theosemiotic as a work of community; Peirce is his Beatrice. He takes the measure of this stream or vein of inquiry by telling its history and sketching out its key features and drops confessional clues about his attraction to the system along the way. There is space here for considering individual lives in relation to robust community, for examining the connection between reason and theology, self-control, and liberation. Raposa emulates Peirce's philosophical orientation to nurture ideas as he describes in “Evolutionary Love,” warming ideas and selves into life. Raposa turns aside from both Cartesian razing and forced construction of ideas, as well as Hegelian abstraction and de-personalizing of reason. Inquiry is a product of selves following connections into the remoter realms of inference, a movement that depends upon an orientation toward a telos that itself is developing with and through the actions of inquiry. Inquiry is the guided discovery of a knowable but infinitely extending realm of truth, like a great cathedral that adds rooms, wings, and chapels as we continue to explore it.Chapter one presents the historical argument for Theosemiotic, followed by six chapters of systematic development. I did not find an explanation for the development or arrangement of the content of these chapters, so as a good synechistic Peircean I have developed one. Abbreviating slightly, the content of chapters 2–4 is Selves/Love/Inquiry. Readers familiar with Peirce will notice the reach of this triad, drawing together the Cognition Series with the later Evolutionary Love in service of pragmatic inquiry best described in the 1903 Harvard lectures. Chapters 5–7 develop Community/Discernment/Prayer, expanding from a base of Peircean ideas into speculative development. This second triad, and particularly Community, is my focus for the balance of this essay. Before I turn to this analysis, though, let me say a brief word about prayer in a philosophical text. Raposa is elegant and courageous in the way he brings this idea from Peirce into connection with our 21st century philosophical abilities and disabilities.My outline places Inquiry and Prayer as thirdness-place holders in Raposa's system of Theosemiotic. Inquiry has a robust sense of inferential effort and testing, motivated by the traditional warrant of pursuing truth—the “object” of inquiry. But Prayer—what is its object? It is more than petition or lament, although these can be forms of Prayer. How does philosophy lead a person or a community to Prayer? Could that be the telos of a philosophical/religious pursuit? Raposa wants to bring our imaginations and critical thought to this idea. So, following an explication of community (section II) and its development in prayer (section III), I take a step in the direction of what Jonathan Edwards would call “improvement” by following the impulse in Raposa to the roots of religion, conversion, and extending the scope of theosemiotic identity (section IV).Communities of Interpretation link Peirce and Royce. Raposa takes up the conditions that make such communities possible and the ideals that connect their living sense to evolutionary development. The triad of shared similarity/orientation to ideal(s)/evolutionary development echoes in the three sections of the chapter; I Conditions of community, II Peirce and Royce on communities of interpretation, and III Extending the concept of communities of interpretation. This last step of development leads to a theosemiotic account of world religion that exhibits resistance to reductionism, affirms a naturalism that attends features of being human, communities are complex living symbols as far as they share attention and commitment to certain ideals, and presents the developmental test of neighborliness in Jesus’ parable to the afflictions attending humans.4Since individuals are text-like interpreters of other texts, a theory of intertextuality is essential for understanding communities as nexi of interpretation. “This kind of intertextuality,” Raposa says, “does not involve making one text the key for understanding the other. It does involve creating a semiotic space in which a lively conversation between different reading experiences might be able to occur, not by abandoning any set of beliefs as though one did not have them.”5 Raposa's approach reflects Peirce's claim that we begin any inquiry recognizing the “prejudices” with which we come to the question, beliefs that we do not conceive can be questioned.6 The semiotic space Raposa calls for, therefore, moves between the nodes of individuals interpreting themselves within their own traditions and in relation to other traditions and individuals constituting them.The will to community, which is central for Royce, provides the impulse for individuals to engage in this intertextual work of interpretation. Raposa develops the will to community as a work of attention; “human agency is primarily embodied in our capacity to direct our attention to this rather than that . . . Love is impossible without paying attention.”7 Raposa ties this voluntarism to Peirce's appropriation of Scotus’ haecceity, the particularity of the other to whom we can direct our attention: “Here we are exposing once again the kind of philosophical voluntarism that seems most congenial for inquiry in theosemiotic. Love must begin with volition.”8 From the platform of volition Raposa draws in the ultimate question of community; who is my neighbor? Reflecting on the parable of the Good Samaritan, he points out that the battered victim and his Samaritan rescuer were strangers before the encounter . . . this separateness was not sufficient to preclude their becoming neighbors. Here it is just such a love that seems crucial for establishing real relation as neighbors, and on this issue Peirce and Royce seem very close to Jesus (whose parable, after all, they would have had in mind even as they were raising the question.)9The connection point of voluntarism between Peirce and Royce, who Raposa says provided the first theological development of Peirce, lays the ground for his development of community, discernment, and prayer that concludes the book.And it is just this point of voluntarism that I want to explore a bit more thoroughly. I agree with Royce and Raposa that “will to community” and the “will to interpret” are deeply integrated, and as such are essential to understanding the universe.10But I think Peirce does not balance the community of interpretation completely on the will of individuals. It is more complicated than just a will to it, but takes the will as subject to a call, a demand. The question, “who is my neighbor?” was framed, after all, in the context of figuring out the most important commandment. The story of the parable answers the question “what does Torah bind me to most ultimately?” It is not a question of will so much as obedience.In “The Doctrine of Chances” in the Illustrations of the Logic of Science series, Peirce develops the argument that community is based on the very essence of logicality, “It seems to me that we are driven to this,” Peirce says, that logicality inexorably requires that our interests shall not be limited. They must not stop at our own fate but must embrace the whole community. This community, again, must not be limited, but must extend to all races of beings with whom we can come into immediate or mediate intellectual relation. It must reach, however vaguely, beyond this geological epoch, beyond all bounds. He who would not sacrifice his own soul to save the whole world, is, as it seems to me, illogical in all his inferences, collectively. Logic is rooted in the social principle. . . Now it is not necessary for logicality that a man should himself be capable of the heroism of self-sacrifice. It is sufficient that he should recognize the possibility of it, should perceive that only that man's inferences who has it are really logical, and should consequently regard his own being only so far valid as they would be accepted by the hero. So far as he thus refers his inferences to that standard, he becomes identified with such a mind.11This emphasis on logic as rooted in the social principle reduces the force of community as a choice of willing or attention. Certainly, we do will to become part of a community or to extend our communal identity by understanding the ideals that hold us together with others. For Peirce, though, all these actions are expressions of the principles of logic, laws of thought, that we do not choose. The Christological sacrifice Peirce evokes in the image of the “hero” who “saves the whole world” as the appropriate recognition of the universal demand of logic. This aligns more clearly with the Torah basis of the “who is my neighbor?” question. Not who we choose to extend humanity to, but “all races of beings . . . beyond all bounds.” This is the obligation at the root of logic, the social meaning of the very possibility of inference.Peirce salts his philosophical writing with biblical and Christian allusions, as I have made a habit of pointing out. Chapter One of my book, Peirce and Religion, follows Peirce's early adult conviction about Christianity and its importance in framing his philosophical perspective.12 The question these references raise is the centrality of Christianity to Peirce's philosophical system. Is religion and Christianity just a word/myth pool he draws from for emphasis? Or do the references and images comprise a context of “prejudice” or “beliefs” Peirce takes as his own platform for inquiry? Scholars taking the first branch read Peirce as invoking a vague God, who must at all costs remain vague, in order to undercut any creedal divisions that would necessarily appear with a less vague God. Raposa follows the anti-creedal approach to Peirce and religious community. God is poet, the world is perfused with signs making an argument, religious traditions are related to the interpretation of these signs but end “dangerously” in cul-de-sacs of specific creeds and statements of belief.13Peirce seems more sanguine about religion, though. For example, he writes in 1893 about the marriage of Religion and Science, not the subsumption of religion into science, but as partners bound in a complex and fruitful relation. After discussing Science, he turns to did find that creeds were to from community rather than to the he has in But even those creeds are from which inquiry and can in the direction of a to a great that is place he says, a of to the historical but is the on the of the and he who would that should be willing to on his to his work the last bit of for the Peirce in the is his effort to the that Peirce's is on the in an and He or his way back on to the in The community Peirce aligns himself with is not a vague community which can be but an community that by traditions are but necessary in the of community, and inquiry. For as an realm of logicality within which the of in the community of interpretation exhibits a of orientation proper for inquiry into the meaning of God. are in the inquiry into the the life of the is science, as he up from Duns Scotus, to do primarily with individual of actions and we do is bound up with what we we do in our actions is the meaning of the we on our or the we are in the work of the interpretation of individual and community direction and meaning is a demand in of meaning as communal is in on the mind or life of individuals. expand in terms of and There is the demand on an individual for in relation to a actions and There is also a demand on the community to its own that of and to its in of inquiry and to on a communal Royce both I into to is that Peirce would this Royce takes the of the community. Peirce the of to a and an community of the Samaritan story is by the question about the it turns out that the Samaritan his in to the Torah without of that Jesus was his community than to Peirce to this kind of in a more universal way that both individuals and communities willing to sacrifice themselves for I in the to this essay, prayer as a chapter in a philosophy book is is the Raposa from his inquiry into community to and to The organic of ideas is it so is what like in a community, the by which we ideas into Jonathan Edwards provides good ground for the of in developing Peirce's development of self-control, in the 1903 Harvard has its roots in The of the to the in the this that is the of and “The man will do what is in regard both to and for he would have The communal of in the to bring us to the of meaning into a of by the selves who read and such a life a kind of or Raposa says, the person is life into what is this this question Raposa focuses on in Peirce's for the of Raposa this essay as an a argument for the of God, and also that its outline the for any future theology of and are central to Raposa's of Theosemiotic. in this is of the both in its and as a content that in an sufficient for developing an of It in in which in to the one principle that Peirce described as the of From a platform of the individual can itself in this way into the of the idea of God. is into an active and of is in the development of that in life into The community is the ground for the of the of life can only be in relation with a community. I think the community is as both the and telos of Raposa community in the context of through and will of thought and It is a living in which and habit depends on the conversation within the community. The of community is like the recognition of not only in thought but also in the choice of the to himself and he says I have and the living of God and this parable a conversation of with to selves and recognizing their intertextual to is a of the The community the of the in the life of its relation of community and prayer is in the and Raposa in this and is particularly for the the of in relation to a community, as the but in a way that the meaning of the to as central to a kind of is in Raposa's that the of at the of The of God for and The of God the space for but the of or within the features of attention. lifts into like the Samaritan the and on the of the as a and back to life. as the the social order and he to the only to find a of images and to me for I I a man of from a of of his or the of his connect with what he is The of through back out the and only a of in the his with a can the This seems at with the image of a of of the to the of the world, and the evolutionary work of of individuals to and for the But all of interpretation on some a in a or even that is as a point of resistance as in the of of interpretation of spiritual life is that the interpreters can with their ground of meaning even as conversation from I to Or we into the of only is even we our attention the is more religion as and for the It turns God into a as John to say in thought such religion was a of He a in which real was But is real in a world it is only a is a world in which real is that than is the one God is and is not the to in the to I back in this relation to the of Raposa takes as a of the Theosemiotic along with Jonathan Edwards they are both familiar with for God into the of I would like to at with those but I want to their Prayer is about the and the is by a Peirce's The the and the like the on my that do not to or that are from us in the for self-control, to say what is before God and and to say it with and The meaning of is our our become in the argument of God. There is more in our than we Raposa's is by the that philosophical theology can be or by Raposa's book me of John my life. that is it seems back early encounter with American philosophy and Charles Sanders Peirce my religious was and but I the of American philosophy for some point of on this Jonathan one of and my have it, or it have just up in a of the at I read about Edwards to a shape to what I was in focus on the or of in what we think and with an impulse to bring all of humanity into a of of and I just all the question I made in the of of Peirce's of to my about and Peirce's take on Peirce's Philosophy of Religion was and in Raposa to the in the I had to and together in the system he would later I followed my own into Peirce, I to about the essential of Peirce's commitment to the and Christianity that we are this of Theosemiotic I more clearly the at from my and our of Peirce can us along in that an with Christianity within the of the and of semiotic inquiry and around the of inquiry and meaning that to out to the of religious and philosophical I share that but from is that as such a is really an of the principle of religion in the of the Christian community. But the of the as my it, be out of the For I find that Christianity in the thought of Jonathan for example, is more on the than it from the Theosemiotic inquiry through the of Christianity rather than being by There is a in the idea that like an in inquiry and of the truth, a truth that can only be as a of to ideas and a communal It but they are to work the we are to on our and I can a to the theosemiotic I story from to Christianity is in and account of the is that these into the community, good in and made into a He has that in is from earlier which were and these are and they from and are by God by to which of itself it would not have in the world also into forms that a beyond the that calls are the basis of and ideas that and community. through The of for is the and living to the in which God our about Jesus as the of religious focus and He is more of a a but not an any into on and points to the character the There is theory just a a that itself that so much like Peirce in “The of he says, first therefore, the of the was at the of our of inquiry within an as and we engage in the work a of Raposa's book the work of inquiry into theology and making an claim on of Peirce and the signs together as we are not just able to, but for, our into the of communal interpretation. Raposa his to embrace the and its developing meaning in our own Not a to do so would be a or an but to on or the of Raposa's account brings us to with a of in the meaning of the

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