Theosemiotic and the Ethics of Attention

The purpose of this lecture is to suggest that the philosophical pragmatists supplied resources that are of great significance for the articulation and development of an ethics of attention. Among the pragmatists, Charles Peirce is singled out here for special consideration. Indeed, “theosemiotic” is a term created in 1989 as the label for a distinctively Peircean perspective on religion and related topics. The “ethics of attention” is a moral philosophy most closely associated with the thought of Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch. The centerpiece of that philosophy is the insight that paying attention is itself a kind of doing, something that we can do poorly or well, or fail to do altogether. In our contemporary late-capitalist, consumerist, media-driven, high-information society, the choices we make about how to invest our attention take on a whole new depth of meaning and importance. The ideas of Peirce, Weil, and Murdoch enable us to construct a philosophical framework in which such choices can be understood and evaluated.