Edusemiotics and Karl-Otto Apel’s transcendental semiotics

Abstract

The semiotic turn and the twentieth century critique of the philosophy of consciousness presented a unique challenge and stressed the problematic status of old binary oppositions such as the subject versus the object, the mind versus the body, and the private versus the public. Karl-Otto Apel has responded to this philosophical occurrence with a theory of transcendental semiotics, a highly original endeavor to avoid mere reversals of older binary oppositions and pernicious consolidations of new hierarchies. This article aims to unravel Apel’s semiotics and to make it relevant to the philosophical-educational themes that preoccupy edusemiotics. After a brief overview of how Apel reworks the theories that influenced him into his own transcendental-semiotic account, the article focuses on some specific points adding more depth to the venture of associating Apel’s theory and edusemiotics.

Analytic philosophy of education: Some suggested questions and directions

“…Echoing this development, APE now constitutes one perspective on educational-philosophical topics in a more complex connection with alternative or rival ways of doing philosophy, instead of being either isolated and hegemonized or tarnished and discarded. Right now, apart from APE, there are diverse trends in educational philosophy with the French-continental variety being a widely dispersed one, rivalled by edusemiotic, Frankfurt School-critical-theoretical, virtue-epistemological and postcolonial alternatives (Papastephanou, 2016). From Papastephanou’s (2021) stereoscopic optic, it is important to avoid reductions of philosophy to master discourses and trends.…”