SaH0047 The following essay, originally written in 2016, comments on a book by a Lutheran Pastor about heretical influences in contemporary American society. The author is Peter Burfeind. The title of the work is Gnostic America: A Reading of Contemporary American Culture according to Christianity’s Oldest Heresy (Pax Domini Press, 2014). Please have this book at hand for the full story.
These comments are not a close reading. They situate Burfeind’s text with category-based models. These models were proposed and developed in How to Define the Word “Religion”, plus Primers 1 through 10. They were refined in the Course on Implicit and Explicit Abstraction. They portray relational and logical structures.
Also, my discussion presumes the first singularity. Gnosticism was cultivated in an early ancient civilization. As such, I expect its origin myth to be a fairy tale about the first singularity. The first singularity is discussed in the Crystallizations of the Fall series plus An Archaeology of the Fall, available at www.smashwords.com and other e-book venues.
In short, these comments apply a suite of postmodern scholastic hypotheses to Burfeind’s excellent text. They are different from, yet complementary to, Burfeind’s passionate argument.
SaH0048 This exposition constitutes a strand in the Razie Mah’s online course: Semiotics and History.
The various strands are listed in Razie Mah’s blog for February 3, 2026
‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.
0001 Peter Burfeind wrote Gnostic America: A Reading of Contemporary American Culture according to Christianity’s Oldest Heresy (Pax Domini Press, 2014).
This book is composed of four parts. The first part covers the fundamentals of Gnosticism as a Christian heresy. The second and third parts explore cultural manifestations. The fourth part applies these fundamentals and explorations to contemporary American Neo-Evangelical Christian churches.
0002 Burfeind argues that two Gnostic movements contend for sovereign power, progressives and Neo-Evangelical Christians.
To me, big government (il)liberals (BG(il)Ls) beat these Christians to the punch. The federal government has established a religion. It is not Christian. BG(il)Ls run Gnostic bureaucracies where authorities deny that they are religious at all. BG(il)Ls are the self-anointed angels (or more accurately, daemons) of a New Age dawning in America.
Christians who self-describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious” accommodate BGL’s increasing sovereign power and aggression.
0003 Burfeind is not alone in this awareness. Over 60 years ago, Eric Voegelin expressed similar ideas in his short but significant book, The New Science of Politics.
This raises a question. What is the meaning, the presence and the message underlying the word “Gnosticism”?
With this question in mind, I turn my attention to Burfeind’s text.
Students should read chapter 1 of Burfeind’s text before proceeding.
0004 From Burfeind’s introduction, I know that Gnosticism is a very old heresy.
How old?
From chapter 1, I suspect that Gnosticism predated Christianity. Indeed, the death and the resurrection of Jesusrebuked Gnostic intuition. Why would Jesus retain the evil material shell of His body?
Jesus highlights all the ways that the Mosaic tradition offended Gnostic sensibilities. Both Christians and Jews are enamored of the material world. Gnostics, not so much.
0005 The Judeo-Christians believe in one God. So do the Gnostics. But, the one God of the Judeo-Christians is not the same as the Gnostic Source. The Source is a Monad, a complex singularity capable of putting everything into perspective. The Monad is the source of meaning.
0006 The Monad plays a key role in the Gnostic origin myth. The myth begins with the Source, beyond spoken language and in eternal time. From the Monad, male and female pairs emanated, each according to its aeon. The totality of theaeons is called the “pleroma”.
For the last era, our own, the female of the pair acted without her male consort. He was missing in action, so to speak. Sophia became pregnant with Yaltabaoth, half lion and half snake. She thought to herself, “This is not me.” So she took action, ripping the monster from her womb and hiding him in a cloud.
0007 Born yet aborted, living in a fog, Yaltabaoth decided to build his own world. He decided to create. What else was this demiurge supposed to do? He constructed his own world, which is our universe. He assigned archons (powers and governors) to rule his cosmos.
He was proud of his accomplishments.
Here I make an admission, there is more than one way to spell Yaltabaoth. That exercise is left to the reader.
Okay, back to the story.
0008 What else does this builder god do?
He manufactures our physical bodies. He steals a spark from the Monad (a soul) and pulls it into his world. As the soul descends, Yaltabaoth adds matter. At birth, each person is a spark wrapped in a mortal cloak. The spark is not material. The body is material. The two will war with one another.
0009 Therefore, Sophia pities us and offers this myth. The Self has a mission: Return to the Source. Sophia offers secret knowledge, gnosis, opening a path out of Yaltabaoth’s apparently all-encompassing cloud.
In fact, this myth, which joins cosmic and personal origins, contains a secret. It describes a location where you can find your Self.
0010 Clearly, this origin myth provides meaning. This meaning coincides with the model of social construction in Razie Mah’s How to Define the Word “Religion”. This model is further detailed in A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction.
0011 The model is an interscope, a nested form of category-based nested forms. The interscope offers nine slots. Features in the above myth associate with different slots.
Here is the open interscope, before any associations.
0012 My intent is to associate elements of the Gnostic origin myth with slots in the interscope of social construction.
0013 My first association concerns the Monad. The Source has the potential to put the situation into perspective, so it goes into slot 1c. The pleroma automatically becomes the normal context of the perspective level (slot 3c). The pleroma3c brings the possibilities inherent in the Monad1c into relation with the actuality of Sophia2c.
0014 So what is the secret about Sophia?
Sophia is Personified Wisdom. It is not much of a secret. After all, philosophy is rooted in love (philos) and Wisdom (sophia).
0015 If Sophia2c is the mother of the builder god, Yaltabaoth, then I should put the builder god into slot 2b. Yaltabaoth2b situates our universe within the normal context of blind rationality (slot 3b).
Or should I say, “mindless rationality”?
The builder god lives in a cloud, isolated, without awareness of even his own mother. Sure, he snatches sparks from the Monad. He does this blindly. Who knows what spark goes into what body? Yaltabaoth operates in a fog. His archons are like bureaucrats, always following their rulebooks. His social norms? They constitute the Establishment.
The Establishment is the social arm of Yaltabaoth’s evil material world of blind chance and mindless necessity. For teenage Gnostics, that includes all parents. For big-government Gnostics, this includes everything associated with the American Founding.
0016 So, why does the builder god need a spark from the Source in order to animate the human body?
Yaltabaoth is so clueless. He does not realize that the spark comes from the Monad. It is just another thing at his disposal. Obviously, there is no better way to animate humans. He snatches an unwitting soul from its contemplation of Sophia and uses it to bring breath to a breathless body. Inspire. Hold it. Expire. I can feel it.
0017 Here, let me put my associations into the open interscope.
0465 A type 1 Gnostic, who has been indoctrinated to be your Self, has an ego that says, “I am inadequate.” Otherwise, why would I need a Self-help book, or a drink, or a hit? Why would Sophia call to me?
Sophia says, “Escape. Return to the Monad.”
0466 A type 2 Gnostic, who may be so far into the conflict that the Self has won, projects her fallen ego onto others. She demeans others as puppets of a rigid, doctrinaire, paranoid, traditional, Yaltabaoth-worshipping superego.
The ego of the Self-anointed is no longer responsible for the Self. The Self may use her body for whatever purposes suits her proclivities.
0467 What do I mean by “her”?
I am “she” when my Self is my normal context. My Self is an image of Sophia.
If everything is determined by culture, why can’t I declare my own culture?
My Self-wish transforms into a program for development.
My ego is like my ex-. My superego is like his paranoid delusions. My idreal is like a golden ring, serving as a gilded cage.
0468 A type 2 Gnostic sees others as marionettes of Yaltabaoth and the Establishment. She stands beyond freedom and responsibility. She serves another master. She works for an institution. She supports a cause. She stands righteous among the Self-anointed.
She knows about Freud. She adores Jung. She is a Marxist. She is a big government liberal, demanding sovereign power. Does that make her il-liberal? Not in a world where “liberal” means “anything goes”.
Sovereign power constellates Personified Wisdom.
The type 2 Gnostic strives to grasp sovereign power. She will master social evil. Her Self-wish is to control the builder gods and the Establishment, forcing them to work for her organizational objectives. Her Self-wish is to regulate and educate the pathetic ego-driven masses.
She is a post-religious social activist.
0469 A type 2 Gnostic will contextualize himself as a member of a New Age, the next emanation of the pleroma.
0470 What do I mean by “him”?
Is “he” the missing ingredient?
By “him”, I suppose, I mean Sophia-Self gives birth to… or rather, gives abortion to… the next Yaltabaoth. She will put him into a cloud. He will create the next age, even if he is a she, whatever that means.
0471 The next age comes in like a lion, then out like a snake.
Or, should it be, in like an ego, then out like a Self?
0472 Gnosticism is a religion of secret knowledge.
The Gnostic origin myth, itself, opens like lockbox, when the key is fashioned in truth.
0478 Ah, then, here we have it: What is truth?
On one hand, the words of the Gnostic are never to be taken literally. They are symbols evoking fantasies that inform the Self. The Self reads word-gestures. The Self relies on touch.
Sophia interpellates the Self through desire.
On the other hand, the possibilities inherent in the truth support the perspective-level actuality of the Holy Spirit.
The Father virtually situates the Son[redeeming] me.
0478 I can put my hands together, with this conclusion:
The origin stories of Gnosticism and the Bible both point to a transition from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt.
The Gnostic origin story mythically re-creates a repetition disorder characteristic of unconstrained social complexity.
The Biblical origin story mythically portrays the transition as an actual historic event, serving as a fountainhead for disaster after disaster.
0480 Aren’t both these origin myths about Original Sin?
SaH0045 This strand of Semiotics and History considers the rise of capitalism in early modernism in terms of changes of political theology.
Oh, I meant to say “mercantilism”.
Okay, how about a label for whatever Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and income taxes in twenty-first century Americahave in common?
Also, I should have also said, “political economy”, instead of “political theology”.
Be that as it may, please enjoy the following commentary on Eric Santner’s challenging book.
This strand starts with of Looking at Daniel Novotny’s Article (2016) Izquierdo and Universals (and appears in Razie Mah’s blog in May 7-1, 2026, for orientation, see Razie Mah’s blog for May 7, 2026).
As well as Looking atEric Santner’s Book (2016) The Weight of All Flesh (appearing in Razie Mah’s Blog in June, 2026, go to month and scroll down).
SaH0046 For a full list of strands in the course on Semiotics and History, see Razie Mah’s blog for February 3, 2026.
0001 The following 2017 essay comments on a recent book by a Professor of Literature about the subject matter of the political economy. Eric Santner tries to figure out its immaterial measure.
Why do I say immaterial measure?
Consider the complete title: The Weight of All Flesh: On the Subject Matter of Political Economy.
Weight is a measure of something material. However, weight itself is not material.
Similarly, matter ought to be material. But, subject matter is not.
Also, the economy processes materials. Politics does not.
Will literalism do under these circumstances?
Once the flesh has weight, then it is no longer simply what it is.
Once matter is taken to be a subject, then it is no longer merely what it is.
Once the economy is taken to be political, then it is no longer only what it is.
0002 To me, the category-based nested form applies.
The actualities of flesh, matter and economics exist by themselves. But, humans evolved to consider more than what is at hand. We are designed to put actuality into a nested form.
So, these actualities exist, for us, in the normal contexts of weight, subject and politics. These are not the only normal contexts. They are the contexts raised by the author.
The contextualization of actuality raises another question.
What potentiates the weight of flesh, subject matter and political economy?
You may already know the answer. I do not. Consequently, I turn to this text to see what I may discover. This will be a fairly close reading, so have Santner’s book at hand.
‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.
0003 Eric Santner wrote The Weight of All Flesh: On the Subject-Matter of Political Economy (Oxford University Press, 2016). The main body of the book consists in a preface and two lectures. The two lectures constitute chapters 1 and 2. These chapters are broken into parts.
Santner’s presentations are works of art, composing the 2014 Tanner Lectures on Human Values at the University of California, Berkeley.
0004 The front piece is an introduction by Kevis Goodman. The end piece is a suite of comments by Bonnie Honig, Peter E. Gordon and Hent de Vries, followed by a reply by Eric Santner.
The responses are very challenging. How does one reply to something that sounds like free association?
Unfortunately, the front and end pieces will not be covered in these comments. However, the end piece may be used as an exercise in the methodology that composes these comments.
0005 Why is this interesting?
My interest is obvious once one looks at How To Define the Word “Religion” plus the first ten associated primers.
The tenth primer ends before the majesty of sovereign power. Primers 8, 9 and 10 tell of the difficulty of seeing beyond these mountains. Anyone who argues about politics can stir up an avalanche.
What does Primer 8 tell me?
Infrasovereign religions grasp for sovereign power in order to impose their organizational objectives on those outside their organization.
What about Primer 9?
Socrates had to drink hemlock. Why did he have to do that?
Primer 10?
Rene Girard proposes that a scapegoat mechanism is apparent in all civilizations. Plus, the mechanism comes into play when power structures try to preserve themselves.
Overall, politics and religion map a dangerous landscape. Eric Santner walks where angels fear to tread.
0006 Primers 8, 9 and 10 explore the presence underlying the word “religion”.
Institutions occupy the content level of the society tier. They contextualize the organization tier. These institutions harbor organizational objects, objectsorganization, that call the individual into organization. These objectsorg are virtually situated by sovereign acts, laws and decrees.
0007 Eric Santner reads literature. He observes art. He sees that something changed in the West over the past few centuries.
What is this something?
It is completely missed by the current social and political sciences. However, it appears in Western paintings, poems, novels, plays, and other artistic works. This is the stuff that Eric Santner studies.
0008 Subject matter. What is it?
“Matter” is stuff. “Subject” is something that ends up objectified.
Okay, now what?
Does subject matter signal the objectification of matter?
Or does subject matter signify the objectification of something that matters?
0009 At the end of the Latin Age and the beginning of the Age of Ideas, around the 1600s AD, the subject matter of political theology was the king’s two bodies. One body was mortal. The other was sublime.
The object of the king’s glorious body supplemented the subject of the king’s mortal body. Santner labels the process spectral (glorious body) materiality (mortal body).
0010 To me, the glorious body is the normal context for the actuality of the king’s mortal body.
The nested form looks like this:
Sublime body3( mortal body2( potential of kingly being1))
0011 Does this express the character of the subject matter?
The mortal body is matter. The sublime body is the normal context that objectifies the mortal body. Thus, the king’s mortal body becomes a subject for political theology. The something that underlies the mortal body, giving its flesh weight, is the quality of being king.
0012 Moving to the present day, the matter of political theory falls to the people, rather than the king. The subject gets dispersed from one king to many citizens. The glorious body translates into what Michel Foucault calls “discipline”. The qualities that weight the mortal body of the king turn into “biopower”.
To me, modern political theory translates into the following nested form:
Discipline3( citizen2( possibilities inherent in biopower1))
0013 The two nested forms are shown below:
Normal context3 and possibility1 surcharge actuality2.
0014 The mortal body of the king is more than it otherwise would be in any other context. Its actuality possesses a surplus of immanence because it now has potential.
Similarly, one citizen may heroically rise above others as an expression of the biopower released by discipline. Other citizens are weighed and measured in the exercise of biopower.
0015 The pressure cooker of the royal person expanded to the business of the citizen. Medieval and early modern political theology gave way to modern political economy.
0016 Take a look at a painting. Jacques Louis David painted the extraordinary Death of Marat, during the French Revolution.
Compare this image to a wax effigy of a dead medieval king, or some other memorial, placed on the throne during official mourning.
0017 Jean-Paul Marat, the citizen, dies in his tub. David paints the death scene.
The king’s mortal body is buried. An icon of his sublime body is placed on the throne.
Clearly, David paints the equivalent to the sublime body of the citizen, Marat.
0018 One could say that this represents a loss of enchantment. After all, Marat, the revolutionary, hardly behaved royally.
This lack of royalty aligns with the emptiness above Marat, the corpse. The upper half of David’s painting is empty. If Marat had been royalty, the upper register would be full of angels and saints welcoming the glorious king.
What happened to the angels and saints?
0019 Heck, not even Marat’s fellow citizens are in the upper frame, registering the emotions of shock, grief, and, perhaps, relief. Critics have called the nondescript space above the dead Marat oppressive, abstract and unmotivated, characteristic of a representational deadlock.
0020 Perhaps, the cunning and ambitious artist was saying, “Do not let this be you.”, while painting, “This fellow was a citizen hero.”
Santner does not tell why Marat got knifed in his enclosed bathtub, filled with medicinal waters. Marat was a radical agitator. He named his newspaper, “The People’s Friend”. He was murdered by a woman who had come to him, claiming news from one of the districts of France.
During her trial, she testified that she killed one man in order to save one hundred thousand. She was found guilty. Her head was chopped off with a guillotine.
0021 Jacques-Louis David was charged with organizing Marat’s funeral. Surely, Marat was a martyr for the Revolution. Yet, despite the acclamation, no other figure appears in the painting.
0022 Why?
The reason is simple.
No sane person (whether angel, saint or fellow citizen) wanted to be associated with this crazy person, who was typical of the Jacobins, the party that celebrated the Cult of Reason and the Cult of the Supreme Being.
0023 David’s painting is both a warning and a paean.
0024 To Santner, the empty upper register of the painting associates to the impossibility of transcendence in the modern age. Business is busy-ness.
In the preceding section, Santner dwells on the word “doxologies”.
0548 There are two doxologies flowing upwards in the following figure.
This pair of doxologies is glory and money.
One is societal. The other is organizational.
0548 Santner coins the word, paradoxology, for exploring this double flow.
The subject matter of the political economy is a paradoxology.
0549 There are two movements flowing downwards in the preceding figure.
The pair of condensates are busy-ness and identity / purpose.
One is societal. The other is organizational.
One is enforced through sovereign laws and decrees. The other is inculcated through broadcast advertising.
0550 Santner recounts a debate about how to interpret Kafka’s writings.
Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem expressed different views of the theological tracks of Kafka’s stories.
0551 Scholem argued that Kafka’s work shines like a revelation. But, it’s a tricky revealing. It does not lead the reader to God, but to some originating nothingness.
0552 Benjamin countered that Kafka’s work has a message: The gate to justice is study. But the question is: What to study? The Torah has been brushed over by modern inquiry. Students have lost the Holy Writ.
0553 Scholem replied: No, those who study have not lost the Scriptures. They have lost the ability to decipher them.
0554 Does this conversation fit into the previous figure?
A suprasovereign religion was brushed over by the time that Marx projected the transcendent (a political theology) onto the immanent (the machinations of the organization tier).
0555 Santner concludes with Walter Benjamin’s tripartite image of capitalism.
In one panel, capitalism is a purely cultic religion. It has no doctrine. It has no dogma. Adam Smith’s theories of the self-regulation of markets are exemplar. What is the invisible hand? It is dogma? Or is a way to describe events that cannot be reduced to cause and effect?
In the next panel, capitalism is always “on”. It never takes a holiday. Santner associates this to the doxologies of everyday life. Work is always waiting. Duties are never completed.
In the final panel, capitalism creates guilt, not atonement. In other words, it creates more debt, more burdens and more work.
Does the sovereignty of debt become sovereign debt?
Not necessarily, but it happens often enough. After all, who pays for the political entrepreneurs? Who pays for the busy-ness of citizensMarat?
0556 Does each of Benjamin’s panels describe a level of the organization tier as understood from the communist perspective?
How curious.
0557 Certainly, capitalism is a religion worthy of contempt.
Too bad it is a projection of Marxist ideology.
Walter Benjamin’s career as literary critic expanded the cognitive space opened by the Marxist religion.
This is the nature of religions.
0558 Marxist ideology projects a plausible theology onto something in the organization tier that everyone encounters.
0559 Marx selected one of the best encounters.
In every purchase, I, the buyer, encounter a corporation that I do not belong to.
Is this alienating, or what?
0560 My money goes up from the product (content) through the price (situation) and becomes surplus value(perspective).
A quality of the product comes down, from the brand name (perspective) through the abstract material guaranteed by the brand name (situation) to the aspects of my identity congruent with this abstract material (content).
0561 Following this pattern, I only purchase bread from The Staff of Life Bakery.
It is my paradoxology.
My devotion increases the glory of the bakery. The bakery provides me with a mission, “Eat the bread of life.”
My money keeps the bakery in business. The brand name makes my mouth water.
0562 When Adam Smith attempted to describe this process, he saw an invisible hand, guaranteeing high quality products for low price. There was no dogma. There were no doctrines. There was only rational self-interest.
0563 When Karl Marx passed judgment on this process, he reified the theological dogmas of mercantilism. Everywhere that Marx looked in the organization tier, he found religious expression.
If he were to start his own religion, then what better way than to project the theology of mercantilism onto the operations of the organization tier and then declare it evil?
Indeed, the organization tier becomes evil when viewed as an unholy ascent of money and a devilish descent of brand names.
0564 Thus, the paradoxology of Marxism becomes clear.
A doxology of communist powerrises through the society tier in response to a projected evil doxology, called “capitalism”, arising in the organization tier.
0565 The organizational objectives of Marxism become inevitable once its projections are assumed and never questioned.
0566 To me, this conclusion makes the works of Eric Santner and Giorgio Agamben fascinating to behold. Here is the subject matter of political economy.
0841 The article before me is published by Sign System Studies (volume 45(3/4), 2017, pages 335-360) by Mikhail Trunin in the School of Humanities at Tallinn University, Estonia. The full title is “Semiosphere and history: Towards the origins of the semiotic approach to history”. This particular volume is dedicated to semiotics and history.
0842 Juri Lotman (1922-1993 AD) and Boris Uspenskij (1937-present) are central characters in the first ascent of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics during the 1960s through the 1980s.
Lotman’s treatment of a semiotics of history connects to his conceptualization of the semiosphere. Of course, “semiotics” stands in the place of “semiology”.
Uspenskij’s treatment of the semiotics of history starts with the Latin phrase, “historia sub species semioticae”. The phrase transliterates (more or less) into “history as a species of semiotics”.
Or maybe, “historical under the semiotic species”.
Of course, “semiotics” stands in the place of “semiology”.
0843 Previous examinations of articles in this and other volumes of Sign System Studies provide a way to appreciate what these semiologists have in common.
0844 So, let me briefly review.
The academic development of semiological consciousness for humanities scholars starts in the Departments of Slavic languages, during the so-called “Cold War”, since the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics casts its dominant ideology as that of science. These humanities scholars begin to frame their interpretations of Slavic literature in terms of Saussure’s semiology and structuralism. After all, semiology and structuralism are scientific, aren’t they?
0845 Semiology deals with content, the relation between parole (spoken words) and langue (corresponding ideation). Technically, the relation between speech and thought is not motivated (hence the qualifier, “arbitrary”), since spoken words do not image or point to their referents. Nonetheless, civilized humans behave as if they do. But, that behavior may be attributed to grammatical structure (for a mother tongue) or a style system (for specialized discourse).
0846 Structuralism deals with how content is situated. Humans do not behave as if a spoken word is arbitrarily related to a mental act (or thought). Humans act as if words and thoughts are one thing.
Rather than attributing this behavior to an innate trait evolved under conditions where a parole (manual-brachial word gesture) images and indicates its referent (by way of the natural sign-qualities of icons and indexes, respectively), the modern scientist must attribute the behavior to truncated material and efficient causes.
In this case, the situating efficient and material causes are due to a system3b. Both mother tongue and specialized discourses3boperate on the potential of ‘laws of the system’1b.
0847 Here is a fundamental interscope containing semiology3a and structuralism3b.
0848 On the content level, the normal context of Saussure’s semiology3a brings the actuality of the dyad {langue as matter2am [substantiates] parole as form2af}2a into relation with the potential of ‘signifier and signified’1a.
Cleverly, the content-level potential1a buries the evolution of language in the milieu of hand-talk in the ambiguity of the co-existence of signifier and signified. Can a signifier exist without a signified? Of course not. They must be belong to a monad, a single element.
Can a thought about ‘something’ exist without an image or indication of that ‘something’?
Does a manual-brachial word-gesture picture or point to its referent?
0849 Ironically, both Charles Peirce (1839-1914 AD) and Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) live right before the monumental, civilization transforming battles among the enlightenment gods. Peirce focuses on the nature of signs as triadic relations. Saussure focuses on language as a thing (that is, a dyadic actuality).
0850 The above figure tells the tale. The content and situation level actualities2 are dyads, as suggested by Saussure. Normal contexts3 and potentials1 are presumed in Saussure’s tradition, but explicit in terms of Peirce’s categories.
The category-based nested form is a triadic relation. Triadic relations constitute the human niche. Hominins adapt into the potential of triadic relations.
The content-level appears to be a reasonable expression of Saussure’s semiology because it expresses a triadic relation. Not only that, but the content-level category-based nested form manifests all four of Aristotle’s causalities. The dyadic actuality, corresponding to Peirce’s category of secondness, parallels Aristotle’s hylomorphe, the home of material causes and one terminus for efficient causation.
0851 Here is a picture of the category-based nested form as a manifestation of Aristotle’s causalities. Peirce’s category of secondness contains two contiguous real elements. For Aristotle’s hylomorphe, the one real element is matter. The other real element is form. The contiguity is [substantiates] or [substance].
0852 So, what does this imply?
First, Lotman and Uspenskij start out as scholars of Slavic literature in Russia, under a socialist regime, which extols its scientific credentials. Academics in literature adapt to regime incentives by adopting Saussure’s scientific approach to language. Saussure’s semiology is regarded as a scientific theory explaining the phenomena of language in our civilized world.
Second, the fundament interscope starts with Saussure’s semiology3a as a content-level nested form. The actuality2 is {langue2am [substantiates] parole2af}.
Third, the category-based nested form manifests all three of Peirce’s categories as well as all four of Aristotle’s causalities.
Fourth (and yet to be discussed), Lotman’s and Upsenskij’s treatment of history and semiology starts with the fundament interscope. Semiology characterizes a content-level interscope. History enters the picture as a literature-based situation-level form2bf.
0853 If these implications stand, then Upsenskij’s Latin title, “history as a species of semiotics”, will convert into “history as a species of literary text”.
Lotman and Uspenskij publish an article in Russian (in 1971), which is translated into English (in 1978), titled “On the semiotic mechanism of culture”.
This is followed by intense study of Vernadskij’s language of life-pressure, then the publication of Lotman’s seminal paper, “On the semiosphere”, in Russian (in 1984).
0936 The author goes to some length to distance Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere and Teilhard de Chardin’s (1881-1955) framework of Alpha-Omega Points.
Why?
De Chardin’s concept does not put the dyad, {cognition as matter2bm [substantiates] social interaction as form2bf}, into a semiological message1c. De Chardin packages this actuality2b into a theological message1c. A theological message1cdoes not comport with the TMS positivist intellect3a.
0937 Or does it1c now that the USSR no longer reigns?
That is question for another day.
0938 For this examination, I must stay with a positivist-loving message1c.
The crucial point is that culture-pressure2b is like life-pressure2b and the perspective-level model1c that is appropriate for this culture-pressure2b is esse_tially semiotic.
Esse_tailly?
Yes, esse_ce is matter substantiating and essence is substantiated form.
So, semiotic arrangements as matter2cm [substantiate] human conditions as form2cf.
0939 Here is a picture.
0940 Esse_ce is {semiotic arrangements as matter2cm [substantiating]}.
Essence is {[substantiated] human conditions as form2cf}.
0941 Do I need to note that the universe of messages1c is Lotman’s “semiosphere1c“?
0942 The semiosphere1c parallels the concept of biosphere1c.
One can say that the semiosphere1c contains the totality of individual texts and independent languages. They all relate to one another.
Why?
All texts and statements are forms2af that entangle matters of the language of meaning2am. The presence of the language of meaning2am has the potential1b of engendering the matter of cognition2bm.Cognition as matter2amsubstantiates social interactions as form2bf. These forms2bfare contextualized as messages1c. A universe of messages1cundergirds the doctrine2c that semiotic arrangements2cm substantiate human conditions2cf, in the normal context of mind theory3c.
0943 And what else?
This explanation also applies to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. See Razie Mah’s e-book, The Human Niche. The human niche is the potential of triadic relations.
0944 According to the author, Lotman and Uspenskij agree.
They also disagree.
That is the nature of intellectual discourse and discovery.
The author tells some of the story in a section titled, “How Lotman and Uspenskij influence each other”.
0945 In our current Lebenswelt,cultural studies3b (the situation-level normal context in the derivative interscope) always involve historical processes and texts2bf (situation-level actualities of the fundament interscope).
0946 How so?
The normal context of cultural processes3b brings the dyadic actuality2b of {cognition2bm [substantiates] social interaction2bf} into relation with the possibility of presence1b.
The presence1b of what?
Literary texts2af [entangling] a language of meaning2am.
0947 In the twentieth volume of Sign Systems Studies (1987), Uspenskij publishes “On the problem of the genesis of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics”.
This examination adds value by commenting on Mikhail Trunin’s 2017 review of Uspenskij’s conflation of semiotics and history.
0948 The subtitle of the twenty-fifth volume of Sign Systems Studies (1992), the last volume edited Juri Lotman, is “Semiotics and history”.
Twenty-five years later, the forty fifth volume (2017) contains a special issue on semiotics and history.
0949 Finally, in 2025, Kaveli Kull and Ekaterina Velmezova publish Sphere of Understanding: Tartu Dialogues with Semioticians. The book contains interviews with several of the figures mentioned in this article (volume 23 of Semiotics, Communication and Cognition, edited by Paul Cobley and Kalevi Kull, Walter De Gruyter, Boston/Berlin).
0950 One wonders whether the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics will find a path to a second ascent.
0951 Surely the scenery will differ.
In the first ascent, science is god and {material arrangements [substantiate] human conditions}2c.
In the second, the divine Trinity is God and {semiotic arrangements [substantiate] human conditions}2c.
0744 The article before me is published by Sign System Studies (volume 45(3/4), 2017, pages 263-283) by Mihhail Lotman in the Department of Semiotics at Tartu University, Estonia. The full title is “History as Geography: In Search for Russian Identity”. This particular volume is dedicated to semiotics and history.
0745 The year is 2026. Hundreds of thousands of young men from the currently sovereign states of Ukraine and Russia are now buried in the geography of their sovereign states. The war is senseless to anyone who is not moving money or armaments. A theoretically defensive NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) covets a vulnerable ember of the former USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). Or is this a proxy war between the USDB (Unsuspecting Subjects Dominated by Bigilibs) and the CCP (Communist Chinese Party)?
Bigilib?
Big-government (il)liberal.
0746 Is Estonia’s geography its history?
Surely, the way the map of sovereign territories alters over the past few centuries is a sign of historical turmoil.
But, do not expect the corporate media to broadcast any information that does not comport with the interests of their clients.
You know, the ones moving money and armaments.
History appears to be irrelevant. Geography and client interests are all that matter.
The form is war.
0747 And, the most important territory to be occupied seems to be what people say.
Corporate broadcasters talk about territory. Territory establishes that we all agree upon the ideology. If we speak the same rhetoric about geography in a time of war, then we must all think the same. How obvious is that?
The hylomorphe, where what I say (as form) is substantiated by what I think (as matter), turns out to be very useful for empirio-normative domination. See Razie Mah’s three part e-book, Original Sin and the Post-Truth Condition, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.
0748 So, what are the interests of the citizen?
Who is the citizen?
The citizen is the subject (the empowerer) and the object (the um… “subject”) of sovereign power.
The truth serves the interests of the citizen.
0749 If truth serves the interests of the citizen, then what serves the interests of the unelected bureaucrats?
Oh, it must be the will of the citizen.
0750 Is the citizen reasonable3a,when allowing experts to decide which tidbits of what I say2afshall be ascribed to um… the citizen’s will1a?
Here is the category-based nested form.
If perplexed, consult Razie Mah’s e-books, A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction.
0751 I ask, “What is the author, Mihhail Lotman, searching for?”
Intellect3a conveys identity. There are two types of identity. One is potentiated by truth1a. The other is potentiated by my will1a.
Notice, that the term, “identity”, which labels myintellect3a based of the potentials of truth or my will1a, cannot be pictured or pointed to. Like all normal contexts and potentials, identity is crucial for understanding. But, what is understanding?Understanding comes when an actuality2 is placed into its proper normal context3 and potential1.
0752 Identity3a is a style of understanding. Is3a it not?
After all, it3a changes with potential1a. Does it3a not?
One cannot picture or point to identity3a.
If one searches for it3a, it3a will always prove elusive, because it3a contextualizes3 and potentiates1what I think2am and what I say2af.
0953 The article before me is published by Sign System Studies (volume 45(3/4), 2017, pages 317-334) by Peeter Torop in the Department of Semiotics at Tartu University, Estonia. This particular volume is dedicated to semiotics and history.
0002 Amazingly, this article has no subtitle.
Perhaps, I may add one: An Inquiry into the Chronotope.
0954 At first, I thought that the word, “chronotope”, coined by Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975 AD), was “chronotrope”, where “trope” is a label for a rhetorical trick that belies the complexity of things. Tropes change over time.
0955 For example, the Latin trope, “ens reale“, has been translated as “being that is real”, as well as “mind-independent being”. Add time, and the parole of the chronotrope stays the same, but the matter, the langue, shifts. “Ens reale” migrates from what the scholastics pursue in their philosophical discourses to what?… a being that is mind-independent? Does mind independence (as matter) somehow substantiate a form (that is the elusive goal of philosophical inquiry)?
0956 If I use Aristotle’s hylomorphe as an exemplar of Peirce’s secondness, I can diagram the following “chronotrope”.
0957 Peirce’s category of secondness consists of two contiguous real elements. For Aristotle’s hylomorphe, the real elements are matter and form. The contiguity, placed in brackets for proper notation, is [substance] or [substantiates]. Either noun or verb is appropriate, because the contiguity can be construed as either.
0958 Does Aristotle’s hylomorphe transmogrify, over time, into mind-independence as a real element and the term, “ens reale” as another real element?
Perhaps, mind-independence could work as matter that substantiates ens reale as form.
Or, maybe, mind-independence could associate to langue and ens reale could go with parole.
0959 I suppose that tropes can shift (in time) in awkward ways.
0960 That leaves me with Bakhtin’s term, “chronotope”.
In chemistry, the nucleus of an element contains protons and neutrons. The word, “element”, precisely labels a fixed number of protons in its nucleus. The number of neutrons may vary, resulting in different atomic masses for two different isotopes of the same element. The word, “isotope” labels a fixed number of protons (characterizing the element) and neutrons (contributing to the isotopic mass). Some isotopes have too few or too many neutrons, making the nucleus unstable and subject to radioactive decay.
0961 Here is a picture.
0962 By analogy, a “chronotope” is the same element, but its placement in time may vary.
Is that correct?
0963 Is time neutronic?
Maybe the analogy of radioactive decay can introduce time into the elemental thing by producing a confounding, in the following manner.
Yes, a confounding labels one form associated with two matters,one originating and one entangled.
0964 The problem is that radioactive decay as matter cannot resolve into a substantiation of the element as form, since it changes the elemental form by altering the miox of neutrons and protons in the atom.
Well, certainly the elemental thing, {protons and neutrons as matter [substantiate] a radioactive isotope}, is subject to decay. But, does decay itself constitute an entangled matter, especially when the occasion of radioactive decay changes the original element into another element plus a radioactive emission?
0965 In other words, if radioactive decay occupies the slot for entangled matter, then the original elemental thingchanges form upon resolution of the confounding.
