A prelude to a semioethics of dialogue the aesthetics of enchantment in a new key

This paper interrogates the phenomenological experience of enchantment as a sign process. I argue that our ethical intentionality in the world is significantly enhanced when we understand how the aesthetics of enchantment conditions the very possibility of such an ethic as a semiotic phenomenological event of dialogue. First, I discuss a key problematic of contemporary life-our culture of distraction and its impact on our dialogic relations. Next, I outline my thematic-enchantment as consequence of sign actions, both in what I call its "inauthentic" and "authentic" forms. Third, I interpret each form and their impact on the ethics of dialogic relations. Finally, I contend that authentic enchantment, as a semiotic interpretant, signifies an "answering comprehension" or unique expression that resonates with the greater whole, the greater good-demonstrating what Susan Petrilli describes as a productive or pragmatic semioethic.