Susan Petrilli develops the notion of semioethics by grounding it in a specific conception of the human being: the human as semiotic animal. This expression, introduced in the volume Semiotic Animal co-authored with John Deely and Augusto Ponzio, designates a life form endowed not only with the capacity for semiosis, but with a distinctive aptitude for metasemiosis—the ability to reflect on signs, to deliberate upon them, and to take responsibility for their effects.
From Semiosis to Metasemiosis
All living beings participate in semiosis, that is, in sign activity. However, Petrilli insists that human semiosis is characterized by a unique feature: the capacity for metasemiosis, or semiotics in the strict sense. Humans do not merely respond to signs; they can suspend action, reflect upon sign processes, and intervene consciously in their development. This capacity allows for critical thinking, decision-making, and ethical deliberation.
In this sense, semiotics has a double meaning. On the one hand, it names the general science of signs; on the other, it designates a species-specific modality of semiosis. The human being, as a semiotic animal, is capable of transforming semiosis into an object of reflection, thereby assuming responsibility for the sign processes that permeate both human culture and the broader biosphere.
The Semioethical Animal
Because metasemiosis entails responsibility, Petrilli argues that the semiotic animal is also a semioethical animal. Ethical responsibility does not arise as an external moral injunction, but as an intrinsic consequence of reflective sign activity. To reflect on signs is already to respond to them, to answer for them, and to answer to others through them.
This responsibility is not limited to social roles, professional functions, or institutional frameworks. Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas and Mikhail Bakhtin, Petrilli emphasizes that responsibility precedes all codified norms and justifications. It is not grounded in identity, but in alterity: in responsiveness to the other that exceeds the logic of being, classification, and functional exchange.
Human responsibility, in this perspective, is unlimited and without alibis. It concerns not only the immediate other, but life in its global interconnectedness. Because semiosis and life coincide, responsibility for signs becomes responsibility for life itself.
Global Semiotics and Planetary Responsibility
The ethical implications of the semiotic animal become fully visible within the framework of global semiotics, a concept developed by Thomas Sebeok and adopted by Petrilli. Global semiotics emphasizes the continuity between biosemiosis and anthroposemiosis, between human communication and the broader sign processes that sustain life across the planet.
From this standpoint, human beings are not external observers of the semiosphere but active participants whose sign practices affect the entire biosphere. The capacity for metasemiosis confers a unique burden: humans alone can reflect on the consequences of their sign activity and are therefore uniquely responsible for the health of semiosis at a planetary level.
Petrilli stresses that global responsibility cannot be totalizing in the sense of domination or control. Rather, it must be detotalizing: attentive to difference, heterogeneity, and otherness. Responsibility involves listening to the plurality of signs and voices that constitute life, rather than imposing uniform models or reductive explanations.
Ethics Before Ontology
A central claim of Petrilli’s argument is that ethics precedes ontology. Following Levinas, she maintains that responsibility for the other is antecedent to all forms of knowledge, categorization, and representation. Being is not the first philosophical problem; relation to the other is.
Within this framework, semiotics becomes a privileged site for ethical reflection. As a science concerned with sign relations, it reveals that meaning itself is relational, dialogical, and value-laden. The semiotic animal is thus not merely a rational animal, but a being whose rationality is inseparable from responsiveness, care, and concern for the other.
The Responsibility of the Semiotician
Petrilli draws a further distinction between the responsibility of the human as semiotic animal and that of the semiotician. If every human is capable of metasemiosis, the semiotician practices metametasemiosis: reflection on reflection. This heightened level of awareness entails an even greater ethical responsibility.
The semiotician is called not only to analyze sign systems, but to care for semiosis itself—to expose alienation, to critique destructive communicative practices, and to listen to the signs of life and suffering across the semiosphere. In this sense, semiotics becomes inseparable from ethical commitment.
The semiotic animal, Petrilli concludes, is responsible for life because it can reflect on signs. To refuse this responsibility is not ignorance but indifference—a failure to respond to the call of the other inscribed in every act of semiosis.
Riferimento bibliografico: Susan Petrilli, Semiotics in Ethics and Caring, in Bloomsbury Semiotics. Semiotics in the Arts and Social Sciences, Vol. 3, Bloomsbury, 2023.