Abstract

The author uses Eco's The Name of the Rose to pose the problem of the relation between the infinite aesthetic play of semiotics and pragmatic moral responsibility for human conduct. This problem is addressed through Peirce's semiotic theory, which not only links signs to objects, but situates them in an interpretant relation that is formative of human conduct. Religion is advanced as the paradigm of this relation; a "categorial semiotic" where concrete symbolic acts move beyond nominalism through real experience of the divine, to which "fallibilistic" doctrines are always subject.