Semiotics of Being and Uexküllian Phenomenology1

Abstract

German-Baltic biologist Jakob von Uexk__ll (1864-1944) did not regard himself as a phenomenologist. Neither did he conceive of himself as a semiotician. Nevertheless, his 'Umwelt' terminology has of late been utilized and further developed within the framework of semiotics and various other disciplines – and, as I will argue, essential points in his work can fruitfully be taken to represent a distinctive Uexk__llian phenomenology, characterized not least by an assumption of the (in the realm of life) universal existence of a genuine first person perspective, i.e., of experienced worlds. Uexk__llian phenomenology is an example of – a special case of – a semiotics of being, taken to be a study of signs designed so as to emphasize the reality of the phenomena of the living. In the course of this paper, I will relate Uexk__llian phenomenology to the eco-existentialism of Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899-1990), eco-phenomenology (including David Abram and Ted Toadvine), and semiotics of nature (bi