Categoria: Barbara Cassin

“Sign,” as a being or thing, encompasses a great diversity of fields. If, in an Augustinian perspective, every sign is first of all a thing, a thing is not necessarily a sign, even if it can always, to an extent, become one ( De doctrina Christiana, 1.2.2 ); thus, for example, for Christians the events recorded in…

But the fact that in modern Greek the ancient terminologies of thought ( noêsis [νόησις] ) and reflection ( skepsis [σϰέψις] ) have been fused together leads to more palpable difficulties. Skepsis, a concept discussed by the Skeptical school, leads to paradoxes in modern texts, when we speak, for example, of “the thought of the Skeptics”( η σϰέψη τῶν σϰεπτιϰών )…

Some of them are old, such as “theology.” Plato coins theologia [θεоλоγία] to refer to the way in which the gods should be spoken of, one more dignified than what is later called “mythology” ( Republic II, 379a ). The word “theology” keeps that meaning for a long time, as found in Pascal: “The poets made a…