A Peircean transcendental framework for conceiving human and non-human culture

The semiotic realism of the American philosopher and scientist Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) originally emerged out of a systematic critique of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. As such, it does not only offer numerous notions that can be and have been, fruitfully applied to a large variety of cultural phenomena, but it also requires rethinking and reconceiving the concept of culture itself, especially as regards its relation to the concept of nature and its anthropocentric premises and biases. Accordingly, this essay aims to explore how to reconceive culture in a Peircean transcendental framework. I first describe that framework itself, sketching how Peirce’s semiotic realism can be understood as the result of the attempt to realize Kant’s project of a transcendental philosophy more consistently than Kant himself had done. On this basis, I then explore how the relation between culture and nature, and between culture and humanity can be conceived within Peirce’s semiotic paradigm. It is suggested that the relation between culture and nature cannot be sufficiently accounted for in terms of the distinction between symbolic and non-symbolic semiosis, and that various forms of non-human culture, including non-animal and cross-species cultures, are conceivable.