Semiosphere, biosemiotics, and semioethics. The Tartu–Moscow school and the current challenges of the semioses of life

Abstract

The Tartu-Moscow School epistemologically inherits the methods and theories of Russian Formalism and European Structuralism. This entails a specific conception of knowledge: from structures to forms, to relations among signs, based on systemic and scientific models (codes, rules of translation — understood not in a literal sense —, generative structures of meaning), with research being produced, transmitted, and organized in an interdisciplinary manner. Within the pioneering field of the Semiotics of Culture, the Tartu-Moscow School emphasized the intercultural dimensions of encounter and dialogue, as well as the notion of a “boundary” as a space that translates. The Tartu-Moscow School played a fundamental role in configuring culture as a complex semiotic-biological environment, thereby acting as a catalyst for new forms of inquiry. Today, it has become inevitable to address the challenges posed by contemporary social forms through philosophical, semiotic, and ethical reflection: semioethics. This concept epistemologically originates from certain aspects of Sebeok’s global semiotics, in particular from the assumption that semiosis = communication = life, itself rooted in Peirce’s pragmatics. Clear references emerge to Bakhtin’s “philosophy of responsibility”: the Russian term otvetstvennost’ (responsibility) derives from otvet, meaning “response.” To be dialogically responsible — individually, in an unrepeatable and non-delegable manner, here and now — means responding to the other and to the world, within a “polyphonic” ethics of multiplicity and openness to alterity.