In Theosemiotic, Michael Raposa uses Charles Peirce’s theory of semiotic to rethink certain issues in contemporary philosophical theology and the philosophy of religion. Raposa sketches a history that links Peirce’s thought to that of earlier figures (such as Augustine, Duns Scotus, Ignatius of Loyola, John Poinsot, Jonathan Edwards, and Ralph Waldo Emerson), some of Peirce’s contemporaries (especially William James and Josiah Royce), and later thinkers and developments (most notably, H. Richard Niebuhr, Simone Weil, and Gustavo Gutierrez). At the same time, Raposa distances Peirce’s thought from that of contemporary neo-pragmatist philosophers and instead draws him more closely to the often-ignored Edwards and Royce.
Drawing on Peirce’s ideas, Raposa develops a semiotic conception of persons/selves and of community by analyzing the role that acts of attention play in shaping human inferences and perception, while also exploring the relationship between attention, volition, and love. Raposa’s central Peircean presuppositions are that all human experience takes the form of semiosis and that the universe is “perfused” with signs. Theology is portrayed here in its manifestations as inquiry, therapy, and praxis. By drawing on both Peirce’s logic of vagueness and his logic of relations, Raposa makes sense out of how we talk about the nature and reality of God, and also about the relationship between different religious communities. An exploration of what Peirce meant by “musement” illuminates the nature and purpose of prayer. Theosemiotic is portrayed here as a form of religious naturalism, broadly conceived. At the same time, the potential links between any philosophical theology conceived as theosemiotic and liberation theology are carefully exposed.
