New Beginnings: Early Modern Philosophy and Postmodern Thought (Toronto Studies in Semiotics)

Deely contends that the direction modern philosophy took did not make full or even good use of the Latin resources available to the classical modern authors. Part I of his book examines the mainstream Latin context of early modern philosophy at the time of Descartes in order to show that there were important speculative developments of the Latin tradition under way, especially in Iberia, of which Descartes himself had no knowledge. These Latin developments were subsequently screened out of the mainstream development of modern philosophy, but prove to have central relevance for the contemporary postmodern context of discourse analysis and culture studies in general. In particular, Deely shows that more than a century of late Latin development anticipated John Locke's proposal for a philosophical `doctrine of signs' or `semiotic' which would give us a sort of logic and critique of knowledge different from that which the mainstream of modern thought presaged. The Heideggerian `thought of Being' also finds an anticipation in the late latin context of early modern times.

Part II of the book develops the speculative connections between late Latin philosophical developments and postmodern thought. Deely provides a masterful synthesis of late Latin scholasticism and Peircean philosophy, which bears upon the role of signs as experiential reference to human knowledge. It is noteworthy that Deely traces the historical developments surrounding the concept of `cause' in science and philosophy; this provides what may well be the most complete outline for the concept of causality to be found in current literature.