To signify

The irruption of the specifically human difference in opposition to the natural animal world is from the start on under the sign of the sign. If that were not… But already it is! This page does not remain white. Signs are traced there. And these signs are readable. They have meaning in a community of sense, in a common need to share meaning.

At first is the gesture which makes 'sign'. As soon as the possibility is given of making sign, an infinity opens. The infinity of the word. The infinity of speech.

The animal lacks a signifier function. Only man has one. It is a specific possibility which comes from an absolutely new hunger and thirst within nature. Something like a metaphorical Eros. An infinite desire to exceed all the limits for 'posing further'. This Eros opens the space of an infinite questioning. A space where sense is given.

The properly indefinable sense… since any definition presupposes it and is there only for delimiting purposes. The sense is at the same time origin and end of the meaning function. It includes it and overflows it. Like the hand which includes and overflows the tool. The sense is the act of the significance open to indefinite creation.

Two dimensions characterize the human mental approach: the articulatory process and the significant aiming. The first articulates its object according to the logical necessities of the systemic coherence of a system. The second creates significances in the opening of sense. Concretely these dimensions are distinguished like two divergent polarities. They are interactively and dialectically complementary. However such or such activity of the spirit privileges rather one or the other, science, for example, holds rather to the 'articulating' logos, philosophy, on the other side, rather to the 'meaning' logos.

 
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