What is the meaning of Meaning?
(I)
To find it we need to open the concept up to the absolute condition: the meaning of Meaning lies in the reason for being, and as such is buried in the idea of why it all exists. The fundamental question that needs to be answered is, therefore, why does anything exist at all?, which has traditionally been a metaphysical conundrum (God willed it) but will only ultimately be resolved through a scientific understanding. However, the answer could also well be that there is no reason why the universe exists, and that might be resolved when we can be sure of how it came into existent (again, through science). But this does not negate the meaning of Meaning as such, it merely points to a condition that Meaning has evolved. In such case, the meaning of Meaning will need to be found by examining cosmological evolution (once more, through science).
If we seek the answer from a personal perspective, however, the process becomes far more convoluted, although it also starts from an absolute idea of Meaning. Ultimately, the meaning of my Meaning is the meaning for my being here, and this also bifurcates between the metaphysical idea of destiny and the natural, scientific observation of genetic propagation, and between these two there is the socio-psychological idea of the social destiny set out for us by our cultural identity and social indoctrinations. But this drags any personal solution to the enigma through a whirlwind of relativity that in turn devalues any attempt at tackling the conundrum and invites a nihilistic surrender – just get on with your life, for there can be no obvious purpose to it at all – and our task here is precisely to overcome all nihilisms. So, how do we turn back or leap over this demon of nihilism.
In order to make Meaning meaningful, it needs to be, above all, practical. Nihilism is so successful today because it offers a very lazy kind of pragmatism: no need to stress oneself with vain reasons for doing things, just accept that there are no good reasons for anything and get on with doing whatever you find enjoyment from. However, this philosophy that seems like a very workable kind of hedonism, ideal for our consumerist culture, eventually reaches the dead end it has always been rushing to and collapses in on itself, like a dragon devouring its own tail. To escape this void-creating tendency therefore, purpose has to compete on the pragmatic level with nihilism. And to do that we now have to ask ourselves, what is the practical side of the meaning of Meaning?
The answer to this question resides in what it avoids, for meaningfulness escapes nihilism. The practical side of discovering the meaning of Meaning is, therefore, that it liberates us from nihilistic pitfalls such as superficiality, emptiness, unfulfillment and depression. What’s more, because of its Absolute condition, the meaning of Meaning transcends the personal and offers solutions on a universal plane that also transcends political ideologies and cultural identities, animating the intersubjective, pan-human side of existence.
In order to know the meaning of Meaning it seems logical that we would firstly have to deduce what Meaning is, but Meaning in the absolute sense is hidden from us and is only intuited to exist or not exist at all. So, our problem now is: How can we know the meaning of something that is unknown to us? To discover Meaning at an absolute level means to decipher the meaning for the existence of the universe, and this can only be done through metaphysical speculation (which will never provide a satisfactory conclusion), or through a cosmological investigation. The latter, which is made more practical by being more tangibly and intellectually conclusive, will have to be carried out by a thorough cosmological analysis of the present state of the universe, an investigation driven by the question why?: Why has the cosmos evolved in this way and not in any other way?. This question will be partly answered by investigating how?: How have be come to be in this condition?. But as our general concern is Meaning, the fundamental part of our investigation needs to be concerned with why?.
(II)
Let us begin with a logical proposition: Anything that is meaningful is qualitatively better than anything that is meaningless. For a universe to be a good universe, therefore, it needs to be embedded in purpose or meaning. In the case, the term good now functions in the wider sense of anything that is meaningful. And what this also means, is that a universe devoid of purpose is bad.
Arguably, a nihilist could reason that none of this is important because these concepts of meaning and meaninglessness or good and bad are merely human concepts, and therefore ephemeral and transcendental in a cosmological sense, that have no absolute bearing on reality and so should not be taken seriously in any scientific analysis of reality – yet this also presents another truth, which is that the meaning of the universe is a psychological one only, and is therefore completely dependent on the complexity of intelligences capable of forming rational, ethical propositions, i.e., Meaning and its consequences depend on human rationality and this demonstrates our importance; our meaningful role in the meaning of Meaning.
(III)
In his General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, Husserl makes an interesting comparison between the factualness of things and the essence of them[i]. For Husserl, our individual experience of our existence in the world is universally contingent, a contingency that he calls ‘factualness’, but that the random behaviour implied by contingency is actually moderated by the essence of things that stem from the very shapes and forms of things comprising the Eidos of reality. It is through things like shape, form, or tone that individual items fall into an essential group of items, or species, and that: “Everything belonging to the essence of the individuum another individuum can have too.”[ii] Or, in other words, we, as individuals, are most definitely random, contingent entities, but everything belonging to the essence one of us can be a part of everyone else.
What this means is that we are united by our shared essence, i.e., by our humanity. And this also means that the best way to resist divisiveness is to accentuate this shared essence.
One of our essential human traits, for example, is the complexity of human language that we use to communicate and understand each other and the universe in which we live. Although we have thousands of languages and dialects, and many more that have disappeared, there is an essential quality of all those languages which is communication and comprehension, that is only possible between human beings, or between human beings and the animals that live with humans, or between humans and the machines that are built or programmed to understand our languages.
This means that a primary essence of being human is meaning. Without meaning language would make no sense; would be pointless; would not be used; and from this we can say that without meaning there could not be any humanity or human beings. Meaning then comes before language, even though it is language which has to uncover meaning.
The idea that the essence of humanity and, as such, of each individual human being, is meaning immediately creates a problem, for while we understand the general meaning of things it is not so easy to say what an absolute meaning of Meaning is: What is the meaning of our existence, of being human, of being here?
Ironically, the search for the meaning of that essential question has led to humanity’s greatest metaphysical errors – the idea of God, or the notion that is no meaning at all, or that the answer to the question of Meaning is elsewhere and impossible to grasp here.
If instead of God, we had used the term Meaning, and subsequently affirmed that the meaning of Meaning is Meaning, the history of humanity could have been a far less turbulent phenomenon. If, instead of claiming that God were the Alpha and Omega, we had understood that Meaning is the beginning and end of the universe. If we had been capable of understanding that the universe had to have emerged out of a void of non-meaning, and seen such an emergence embedded with, an albeit, purely intuitive purpose to create the meaningful; if we had understood how this process would have required the formation of cosmological conditions apt for the creation of and ability to sustain life-forms capable of evolving into sentient organisms that could ask and resolve the question of Meaning; and if we had been able to rationalise how by doing so, cosmic evolution was capable of making the meaningless universe meaningful, then we would now be able to appreciate the meaningful place of our own humanity within the domain of the Absolute that is cosmological purposiveness, and by so doing having a far more purposeful and confident, and less anxious, idea of our own selves and our shared humanity.
By looking for the meaning of Meaning by investigating our own inquisitive instincts that evolve from the raw question of Meaning that is such an integral part of the essence of humanity, we will allow the beautiful blossom of a Meaningfulness (in the absolute sense) that is being unravelled, uncovered and in a continuous state of becoming known.
It is this meaning, understood as an essence, that gives us our why and what for.
Through our intuitions we are able to sense an absolute Meaning to the universe, and it was such an intuition that created the concept of God. But it is Meaning that is the essence, not God. This essence can only be known vaguely, through intuition, because the nature of the essence as Meaning is only an intuitive one. Meaning as an essence is an intuition of what Meaning could be when the Universe which is the subject and final object of Meaning matures to the state of Absolute Meaningfulness.
In the beginning there was an intuition of Meaning.
Meaning as an essence needs a factual, material-world environment (with three dimensions of space and a forward, unilinear motion of time) in order for it to become existence.
For an essence to exist it must be given form. The form given to, or created by, the essence that is Meaning for us, is our Universe.
(IV)
If the essence of the Meaningful Universe is the intuition of Meaning, then everything in the Universe is imbued with Meaning via intuition, although this does not mean that all activity is meaningful.
The intuited Meaning has to be grasped, but, in order to grasp it, it needs to be located. An intuition of Meaning does not tell us what that Meaning actually is. Only when we can be completely sure of what the Universe really is and what it could be will we be able to clarify what Meaning is. At the moment we can know the Universe from what our cosmology tells us about it. We know it is expanding and that it will probably continue to expand until everything freezes and dies. However, reason tells us that this is an absurdity.
Via intuition we are told that there can be a thing we call eternity. Eternity, therefore, is a possibility in Meaning, and as Meaning will always gravitate towards meaningfulness, and abhor meaninglessness, the eternal is a logical component of cosmological will.
As for what eternity is for such a will, we define it as a Permanence of Being (wherein Being means cognitive existence – that which knows and is known).
Meaning in essence has no syntactical form: it is, in a grammatical sense, itself void of meaning. It comes out of its opposite, the Meaningless void and, from that antagonistic birth, is immediately imbued with positivism. Meaning is a will for the Meaningful. Creation of an inanimate, meaningless universe is not enough: Meaning needs the silent space to become animated and capable of possessing its own creativity.
In order to achieve the physical conditions allowing for conscious existence to be possible, in order for that to happen, life-forms needed to be created. The evolutionary process unto life was therefore a logical imperative imposed on the universe via Meaning. Living organisms that could reproduce, morph, adapt, evolve, learn, advance, and change the environment around them were necessary for the meaning of Meaning and the subsequent meaning of everything to become possible via consciousness. For the meaning of Meaning to be grasped the universe needed organisms capable of asking: What is the meaning of this universe?. And for Permanence of Being to be possible, the Universe needs a consciousness capable of acting according to the logical answers found around this ultimate of all questions which is What is the meaning of Meaning?.
[i] Edmund Husserl, General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, Martinus Nijhoff, 1983, Chapter 1, § 2, p. 7
[ii] Ibid, p. 8
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