Anwesen Arche-tecture and the Amplification of the Natural Law

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss and theorize the semiosis that occurs when poetizing about dynamic, addressing, and mysterious Being-physis. Such poetizing is beneficial for the grasp of the natural law and, thus, for ethical formation. The defense of the natural law and its prescribed basic goods still is hindered to some extent by the modernist milieu that persists even today in our so-called postmodern era. I confront the lingering Cartesian spirit in its various modes—viz., the reductive obsession with speculative self-evident propositions as a foundation for moral ideas well as the tendency to trace the source of all intelligible insights to the subjective consciousness—in order to develop a different approach towards the defense of the natural law. Specifically, I marshal ideas in the later Martin Heidegger and the Thomistic tradition, including ideas in John of St. Thomas’ semiotics as retrieved by John Deely, to articulate the importance of “Anwesen arche-tecture” qua the environing of Being-physis and the poetizing of the same to amplify the voice of the natural law. I analyze the process of symbolic externalization when poetizing Being and consider the metaphysical implications of the medium’s contribution to semiosis, which would include an anti-nominalist theory of relations and an account of participated intentionality, and thus, of esse-in-the-world. This paper is a Thomistic appropriation of Heideggerian themes for “semioethical” or “significal” theorizing, moving back and forth (“translating”) across different philosophical paradigms and discourses to locate the matter (die Sache) for thinking.