Sartre on environment/Umwelt

[essius]

Jean-Paul Sartre, in Being and Nothingness, briefly discusses the German concept of Umwelt that has become vitally important for semiotic inquiry. He writes,

My “environment” must not be confused with the place which I occupy and which we have already discussed. My environment is made up of the instrumental-things which surround me, including their

Comments

[tcpip]

OK, help me out here. How is this important to semiotics? The quotation seems to refer strongly to the physical nature of the environment, not their meaning...

[essius]

On the contrary, the "environment" or Umwelt "is made up of the instrumental-things which surround me, including their peculiar coefficients of adversity and utility." Umwelten are partly constituted by things, but the object/thing distinction is clear. Sartre refers to projects and personal ends, and how these influence the Umwelt. Physical factors always enter in, but they enter in as filtered through perception-hence, "it is through the project that the wind can appear as a headwind or as a good wind, through the project that the sun is revealed as a propitious or an inconvenient warmth."

[tcpip]

OK, so it's deriving meaning of physical objects due to their environment context. The example that Sartre gives is illustrative; it's a phenomenological approach to semiotics.