Signs of the Times: On the death of Umberto Eco – FAZ – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

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Author: Claudius Seidl, Managing Editor for the feature section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin. Follow

Eco, the semiotician, who could decipher not only the character, knew exactly what message he formulated when he, bearded, sensual and very handsome and dressed, photographed in his library was – it was the image of an Italian whose presence could be just not cut from the historical roots, the image of a professor, whose learning ranged from neo-Platonism to the good food, the image of a man whose unconditional faith in the reason exuded a confidence that was infectious

one popular legend, Eco was once asked with whom he identifies himself when he wrote his bestseller “the name of the Rose” -. and Eco, it is said, replied: “of course with the adjectives.” whether it’s true voices it is, anyway. Among the Italian writers Eco was always the best scientists in the scientific community, he was the best writer. And in the space between where the journalism and essayism bloom, he knew well enough in order to write about his last novel “zero point”. He was a public intellectual, the it was when he wrote for the newspaper, earlier the hot-running production opinion as to the analytical thinking; and he was so popular that you could almost forget how valid, for example, “Open Artwork” and his “Introduction to Semiotics” are still.

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There are not allersteilsten theses that Eco had there, rather he wrote the pragmatic semiotics of Peirce and Morris continued when, on the one hand, the freedom of recipients extent, a work to be read as it is to him just opened up. And on the other hand, against constructivists poststructuralists and Derrida praise of misinterpretation, insisted that one should have a reader at least a vague idea about the intentions of a text before formulating his own interpretations. The Monsieur Derrida’ll notice no later than at the moment, because the text he read, was an invitation to an awards ceremony is said to have proposed Eco. On Friday, he died. He now already missing.