Abstract
German-Baltic biologist Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) did not regard himself as a phenomenologist. Neither did he conceive of himself as a semiotician. Nevertheless, his Umwelt terminology has of late been utilized and further developed within the framework of semiotics and various other disciplines – and, as I will argue, essential points in his work can fruitfully be taken to represent a distinctive Uexküllian phenomenology, characterized not least by an assumption of the (in the realm of life) universal existence of a genuine first person perspective, i.e., of experienced worlds. Uexküllian phenomenology is an example of – a special case of – a semiotics of being, taken to be a study of signs designed so as to emphasize the reality of the phenomena of the living. In the course of this paper, I will relate Uexküllian phenomenology to the eco-existentialism of Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990), eco-phenomenology (including David Abram and Ted Toadvine), and semiotics of nature (biosemiotics, ecosemiotics, zoosemiotics). I will further make a few remarks on the partial resemblance between Uexküllian phenomenology and Tymieniecka’s “phenomenology of life”, and its difference from the “phaneroscopy” of Peirce.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abram, David. 1997. The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world. New York: Vintage Books.
Barbieri, Marcello. (ed.). 2007. Introduction to biosemiotics: The new biological synthesis. Dordrecht: Springer.
Brown, C.S., and T. Toadvine. (eds.). 2003. Eco-phenomenology: Back to the earth itself. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Harrington, Anne. 1999. Reenchanted science: Holism in German culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hoffmeyer, Jesper. 2004. Uexküllian Planmässigkeit. Sign Systems Studies 31(1/2):73–97.
Hoffmeyer, Jesper. 2008. Biosemiotics: An examination into the signs of life and the life of signs (trans: Hoffmeyer, J. and trans: and ed. D. Favareau). Scranton and London: University of Scranton Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1987 [1790]. Critique of judgment. Kritik der Urteilskraft (trans: Pluhar, W.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
Kant, Immanuel. 1996 [1787]. Critique of pure reason. Kritik der reinen Vernunft (second edition) (trans: Pluhar, W.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
Kull, Kalevi. 1998. Semiotic ecology: Different natures in the semiosphere. Sign Systems Studies 26:344–371.
Kull, Kalevi. 2001. Jakob von Uexküll: An introduction. Semiotica 134(1/4):1–59.
Kull, Kalevi, Claus Emmeche, and Donald Favareau. 2008. Biosemiotic questions. Biosemiotics 1(1):41–55.
Luisi, Maria. 2006. Percept and perceptual judgment in Peirce’s phenomenology. Cognito-estudos: Revista Eletrônica de Filosofia (São Paulo) 3(1):65–70.
Martinelli, Dario, and Otto Lehto (Guest Editors). 2009. Special issue: Zoosemiotics. Sign Systems Studies 37(3/4):349–660.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962 [1945]. Phenomenology of perception (trans: Smith, Colin). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Nöth, Winfried. 1998. Ecosemiotics. Sign Systems Studies 26:332–343.
Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1931–1958. In Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. 8 volumes. Vols. 1–6, eds. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, vols. 7–8, ed. Arthur W. Burks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Polanyi, Michael. 2009 [1966]. The tacit dimension. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago press.
Sebeok, Thomas A. 1972. Perspectives in Zoosemiotics (= Janua Linguarum. Series Minor 122). The Hague: Mouton.
Sebeok, Thomas A. 1990. Essays in Zoosemiotics (= Monograph Series of the TSC 5). Toronto: Toronto Semiotic Circle/Victoria College in the University of Toronto.
de Tienne, André. 2004. Is phaneroscopy as a pre-semiotic science possible? Semiotiche no. 2 (Special issue “Fenomeni – Segni – Realtà”). Torino: Ananke.
Toadvine, Ted. 2003. Singing the world in a new key: Merleau-Ponty and the ontology of sense. Janus Head 7(2):273–283.
Tønnessen, Morten. 2003. Umwelt ethics. Sign Systems Studies 31.1:281–299.
Tønnessen, Morten. 2009a. Umwelt transitions: Uexküll and environmental change. Biosemiotics 2(2):47–64.
Tønnessen, Morten. 2009b. Where I end and you begin: The threshold of the self and the intrinsic value of the phenomenal world. In Communication: understanding/misunderstanding; Proceedings of the 9th congress of the IASS/AIS – Helsinki/Imatra, 11/17 June, 2007 (= Acta Semiotica Fennica XXXIV), vol. III, ed. Eero Tarasti, 1798–1803. Imatra: The International Semiotics Institute.
Tønnessen, Morten. 2010. Steps to a semiotics of being. Biosemiotics 3(3):375–392.
Torjussen, Lars Petter, Johannes Servan, and Simen Andersen Øyen. 2009. An interview with Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. Phenomenological Inquiry 32:25–34.
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa. 2007. From sentience to consciousness: Sentient intentionality as the thread of living continuity in the ontopoietic unfolding of life. In Phenomenology of life from the animal soul to the human mind. In search of experience (= Analecta Husserliana – The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research vol. XCIII), ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, xix–xxv.
von Uexküll, Jakob. 1928. Theoretische Biologie [Theoretical biology] (second edition). Berlin: Verlag von Julius Springer. [There is an English translation of this work, but it is of poor standard. A new translation is in process.]
von Uexküll, Jakob. 1957 [1934]. A stroll through the worlds of animal and men: A picture book of invisible worlds. Translation of Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen (1934) by Claire H. Schiller, pp. 5–80. In Instinctive behavior, ed. C.H. Schiller. New York: International Universities Press. Reprinted in Semiotica 89.4 (1992), 319–391.
von Uexküll, Jakob. 1982 [1940]. The theory of meaning. Translation of Bedeutungslehre by Barry Stone and Herbert Weiner. Semiotica 42.1:25–82.
von Uexküll, Jakob. 1985 [1909, 1921]. Environment [Umwelt] and inner world of animals. Translation (in selection) of Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere, 222–245. In Foundations of comparative ethology, ed. Gordon Burghardt (trans: Mellor, C.J., and D. Gove). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Zapffe, Peter Wessel. 1996 [1941]. Om det tragiske [On the tragic]. Oslo: Pax forlag.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tønnessen, M. (2011). Semiotics of Being and Uexküllian Phenomenology1 . In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Phenomenology/Ontopoiesis Retrieving Geo-cosmic Horizons of Antiquity. Analecta Husserliana, vol 110. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1691-9_27
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1691-9_27
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-1690-2
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-1691-9
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)