Sign and Symbol

Abstract

No problems are more complex or more fundamental to the concerns of man and civilization than those regarding signs. The sign is relevant to the whole extent of knowledge and of human life ; it is a universal instrument in the world of human beings, like motion in the world of physical nature. A study of signs and symbols of the kind we should like one day to achieve would set itself in the first place to recapture the essentials of that extensive and detailed intellectual system which mediaeval thinkers attained on this question, above all in logic (of the theory of the concept and the judgment) and in theology (of the theory of the sacraments). Such a study would in the second place seek to make use of the Denkmittel thus prepared for linking up the preoccupations of present-day science with that vast mass of problems whose importance was so rightly recognized by Warburg and his successors-problems concerning symbolism, its r61le in primitive civilizations, in magic, in the art and science of our developed civilizations, etc. The programme of a study of this kind should, in my view, include the following : (I) a philosophical theory of signs (general theory of signs, speculative signs, practical signs) ; (2) reflections and hypotheses on the magical sign; (3) considerations on art and signs, science and signs, social life and signs, religion, ethics, mysticism and signs. The present study will do no more than touch the fringes of the subject by offering one or two sketchy suggestions on a few of the topics relevant to the two first parts of this programme.