This text aims at pointing out some of the philosophy of law present in the works of the Hellenist philosopher and physician Sextus Empiricus (ΣΕΞΤΟϒ ΕΜΠΕΙΡΙΚΟϒ), and supports two main theses: the first, based on an epistemological point of view, presupposes that exact knowledge of the world — that is, an entirely adequate relationship between the mind of each human being and the events around — is not possible, which insurmountably renders all perception relative. The second thesis, from an axiological point of view, postulates that Skepticism does not necessarily imply disregarding concepts of justice or abandoning any ethical parameters, but functions as an immunizing element against intolerance and dogmatism.

At the beginning there was an act of extraordinary generosity: when I first met Jeff at a legal semiotics conference in the early eighties, he approached me after my presentation of mostly half-baked ideas and wild conjectures, congratulating me on my visual displays, and enquiring if I should be interested in developing my work into a joint book project. In the portrait of the scholar as a young man or woman, this is the kind of turn of events I should hope will happen for all my colleagues in the first, still insecure phases of their careers. I have had the honour and privilege of becoming a member of the Collegium Invisibile Semioticae with Jeff as the Decanus subtilis of this enterprise, special in many ways. In the abstract of my contribution to his festschrift colloquium I remarked that “The idea of the academy has to be recreated from nothing. Ex nihilo quodlibet: ad multos annos” — hoping for many more than the seven years that were to follow. In the following seven Paninian quodlibeta I have endeavoured to come to terms with the intellectual and existential appeal of economy and minimalism: fail, fail again, fail better.

Jeff Bernard was a distinguished semiotician, always au courant with the main accomplishments in the field. Although Jeff himself had specialized in socio-semiotics, his architectural training and his artistic youth had lent him a really open mind, able to comprehend almost everything.Jeff Bernard was also an excellent administrator. He and Gloria organized countless international conferences, most of them based in Vienna (at the Institute for Socio-Semiotic Studies Jeff was the director of ), but also in other places in Austria, Germany, Italy. All of them were a success. Jeff ran the ISSS almost single-handed. He edited books (he published three of mine, among many, many others), anthologies, semiotic journals. He knew how to raise funding, of which the whole semiotic community benefitted. In 2003, he acted as my “impresario”, as he jokingly said, and organized a lecturing tour through Central Europe for me.Jeff was also a wonderful host; he considered his guests as part of the family and treated them accordingly. Many were the times when he picked me up from one Viennese railway station or the other, or when he drove me there, when I stopped in Vienna, to or from other places. It was owing to Jeff and Gloria that I discovered Grinzig, Baden, and various other cozy places in and around Vienna. Last but not least, it was also due to Jeff and Gloria that I discovered the charm of many Viennese restaurants.Jeff was kind and generous, elegant and discreet. He helped quite a lot of semioticians to forward their careers, and more important still, he did it unobtrusively. Jeff was also a likeable person, with an entertaining conversation and a fine sense of humor.“I am a Feminist”, Jeff once said. (For the sake of historical accuracy, it was in September 1997, round a dinner table at the Early-Fall School of Semiotics, thenheld in Bankya, Bulgaria). And he further expanded: “Otherwise, we couldn’t be living with Gloria. And my life would be pretty difficult, virtually surrounded as I am by so many professional women. But they all think I am a Feminist, and they are happy to work for my benefit. So I sit at my desk in Vienna, and my women colleagues from all over the world send me contributions for this and that, come over to participate in conferences, etc. It pays being a Feminist”.“Ich bin ein Berliner”, said Jeff on another occasion. For historical accuracy, it was in September 2003, during the conference celebrating his 60th birthday, in answer to a remark made by Roland Posner. It seemed a humorous statement, and everybody smiled. But I think this was true in spirit. These few lines, as well as (I suppose) those written by other colleagues who have contributed to the present issue, are meant to illustrate this self-definition. Jeff had always sympathized with the less privileged people everywhere.

“Hallo, hier ist Jeff ” / “Hello, this is Jeff ” — the typical words, distinctively articulated, the hint of a question mark, when Jeff called you, usually with a splendid idea for a “nice little symposium”, some conference, an invitation to give a lecture, to participate in a colloquium, to contribute an article. During the decades I have known him, never once has there been less than complete commitment to semiotics, an ongoing fascination that never slackened, paired with an outlook, principally in regard to politics, going far beyond the confines of a scholarly field. It was an inclusive vision of the world that was typical of him, albeit a Weltanschauung guided by unequivocal conceptions and based on ample reflection. Even so, Jeff had no misgivings about assumptions divergent from his own although these were deeply held: rather, that plurality seemed to energize him even more, and the resulting expression of his views would, as a rule, get highly animated and intense. His engagement had to be strong: semiotics has hardly ever been a popular discipline (discounting a brief voguish celebrity in France,chiefly caused by a deficient and reductive reception of Barthes). Indeed semiotics was (and still is) widely considered to be a pretentious undesirability, maybe particularly in Jeff’s native Austria (where he organized all the same a very substantial number of subsidized colloquies). It was, I think, not least the tenacity resulting from an inauspicious situation which made Jeff such a fighter. No doubt, he had to be ─ his outstanding services to semiotics in general, that’s to say in large measure on the international scene, by no means a setting mastered easily, give ample proof. And prodigal too was the incredible amount of publications to his credit, pouring forth in rapid succession, throughout the years. The loss we had to suffer this year will be felt for a long time; at least there are the memories of unparalleled engagement and the testimony of a stupendous oeuvre. And for some among us there are even quite private remembrances to cherish: in my case, for instance, an extended visit of Jeff’s ─ not so long ago at our place in south-western France ─ together with his companion and collaborator Gloria Withalm.

Dedication. A version of this paper has been discussed in 2007, in Dunabogdány (Hungary), on the occasion of an informal meeting, organized by Jeff Bernard. It was the last occasion I had the chance to meet him, one of my closest friends during many years, to whose memory I dedicate this essay.