In his 'Letter on Humanism' of 1947 Heidegger declared that the subject object opposition and
the terminology that accrues to it had still not been properly addressed in the history of
philosophy and he awaited a proper disquisition that resolved the problem. To date that has
not been provided. This volume explains and solves the prevailing problems in the subjectivity
objectivity couplet in the process making an indispensable contribution both to semiotics and
to philosophy. This book shows that what is thought to be 'objective' in the commonplace use of
the term is demonstrably different from what objectivity entails when it is revealed by
semiotic analysis. It demonstrates in its exegesis of the 'objective' that human existence is
frequently governed by examples of a 'purely objective reality' a fiction which nevertheless
perfuses is perfused by and guides experience. The ontology of the sign can be mind-dependent
or mind-independent just as the status of relation can be as legitimate on its own terms
whether it is found in ens rationis or in ens reale. The difference in the awareness of human
animals consists in this very contextualization that Deely's writings in general have made so
evident: the ability to identify signs as sign relations and the ability to enact relations on
a mind-dependent basis. Purely Objective Reality offers the first sustained and theoretically
consistent interrogation of the means by which human understanding of 'reality' will be
instrumental in the survival or destruction of planet Earth.
