Four ages of understanding : the first postmodern survey of philosophy from ancient times to the turn of the twenty-first century / John Deely.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The first full-scale demonstration of the centrality of the theory of signs to the history of philosophy, Four Ages of Understanding provides a new vantage point from which to review and reinterpret the development of intellectual culture at the threshold of "globalization".

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CHOICE Review

This massive study attempts to offer both an interpretive history of philosophy and an agenda for contemporary philosophy to follow. Deely (Univ. of St. Thomas, TX) focuses on four epochs: Greek antiquity, the Middle Ages, the modern period, and postmodernism. Yet the historical survey is also interpretive. Deely argues that the Middle Ages continued a discussion of the sign, which was begun in Greek antiquity. In the work of such writers as Poinsot, the classical notion of the sign is disassembled into a suprasubjective mode of being. Unfortunately, this work was forgotten with the onset of the modern period, which emphasized the sign's status as representation. It is only with postmodernism that this "road not taken" begins to be explored. Deely concludes with a discussion of Peirce and Eco. The book's shortcomings fall, perhaps, under the category of honesty in advertising--it is more a history of the understanding of the sign than it is a history of philosophy. The large claims about philosophy need to be tempered, since Peirce essentially is allowed to stand for all of postmodern thought! Nonetheless Deely's work merits serious study--it is scholarly, informative, and stimulating. S. Barnett Central Connecticut State University