Where do your Borders Lie? Reflections on the Semiotical Ethics of Nature

Bibliographic Data

ID23700780
AuthorsTimo Maran (corresponding author)
Year2006
Pages455-476
Publication date2006-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueNature in Literary and Cultural Studies (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/9789401203555_023
OpenAlexW4250782594
ISBN9789401203555
LanguageEN
Citations received2

Ethical aspects of culture-nature relations are an essential part of environmental studies, having been most thoroughly studied in environmental ethics. This approach can be complemented by a fresh perspective provided by semiotics of nature. According to the biosemiotic theory, sign processes take place not only in human culture but also everywhere in nature. Proceeding from this view, the present article discusses ethical aspects of communicative relations between the human subject and his/her surrounding environment that abounds with all kinds of other living creatures. By using Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of Umwelt and the definition of sign given by Charles Sanders Peirce, it is argued that in sign processes the human subject and the object of nature become joined into an inseparable unit of meaning. In the course of such interactions the human subject is changed and therefore also every sensation, cognition or contemplation about nature should then be carefully considered. By demonstrating the direct connection between personal identity and ethical issues through sign processes, such approach holds considerable ethical potential.

Aesthetics · Contemplation · Creatures · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Identity (music) · Linguistics · Meaning (existential) · Natural (archaeology) · Object (grammar) · Perspective (graphical) · Semiotics · Sign (mathematics) · Sociology · Subject (documents) · Computer Science · Ecology, Conservation, and Geographical Studies · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · History · Origins and Evolution of Life · Philosophy

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