An uncertain couple?

Abstract

This article approaches the problem of immanence without separating
it from the original dichotomy of which it forms a part,  both in philosophy and semiotics. Therein lies the question posed in the title, which casts doubt on the entire dichotomy. In order to answer this question and thereby contribute to the present project, this study develops the following hypothesis: transcendence is the boundary of accepted immanence. This concept can also be expressed in two different ways: one, positive and enunciated from the perspective of transcendence, in which transcendence would be considered to be the space that encompasses unresolved or poorly resolved difficulties in immanence; the other, negative and enunciated from the perspective of immanence, in which we would say that the lack of affective domain limits its rejection to the open space of transcendence. This approach emanates from tensive semiotics, in which everything can become a matter of degrees and tensions, a theory that views categories as the result of a correlation between domains, a diversifying, while not exclusionary, efflorescence. The immanence/transcendence relationship is simply an alternation that is dependent upon another deeper one, approached from the theory of value in semiotics: absolute values/universal values. It is, ultimately, the subject who evaluates, measures and relativizes the domain of transcendence in relation to immanence; via the latter’s analysis operations, the dimensions of transcendence, be it intensity, extensivity, gain and lose the capacity to be analyzed.