Meaning is All that I Encounter

Viktor Frankl is of the view that being human is always directed, and pointing, to something, or someone other than self.[1]

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a phenomenologist stunningly identifies the reality of meaning. He says, ‘because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning.’[2]                

Meaning is all that I encounter in my daily living moment by moment. Our whole life is a meaningful encounter with realities around. An the meaning of life can differ from person to person. Let us consider what Viktor Frankl has to say about meaning in life: 

The meaning of life, Frankl says, differs ‘from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.’[3]

Bernard Lonergan explains the fact that meaning is embodied or carried through arts, language, symbols, lives and deeds of persons and in human intersubjectivity.

The following is an illustration of how meaning is carried.


1. Meaning is carried through the intersubjectivity of feelings and actions.

Intersubjectivity occurs in spontaneous mutual aid:  Giving your hand spontaneously (not deliberately) to save one from falling (one does it not before it occurs but while it is occurring) is an apt example to enunciate the phenomena of the intersubjectivity of action.

A Spontaneous giving of hand to help someone

Intersubjectivity appears also in some of the ways in which feelings are communicated. Lonergan takes the hint from Max Scheler’s distinction of feelings – community of feeling[4], fellow feeling[5], psychic contagion[6], emotional identification[7].

Consoling

Berieved parents  

            

            

              

Undifferentiated consciousness

Strikes

The aspect of Intersubjectivity can also be explained through the phenomenology of a smile.

A smile does have a meaning and it is highly perceptible. The meaning of the smile and the act of smiling are natural and spontaneous. We do not learn to smile as we learn to walk, to talk, etc. we do not learn the meaning of smiling like learning the meaning of words. The meaning of a smile is a discovery on our own. The meaning does not seem to vary from culture to culture. It cannot be reduced.

It is different from linguistic meaning.[8] Smile is global and it has the intersubjective meaning, because meaning is not about some object. It reveals or even betrays. There is no inference. It is transparent.

2. The second carrier of meaning is Art.

It is enough to look at the art work on the coverpage of the Book, "The Wounded Healer" By Henri J.M. Nouwen. This piece of artwork sufficiently explains how it conveys meaning. Jesus was wounded for the sins of mankind. His wounds were the sources of healing. The concept of the wounded healer is a recent contemporary concept that is widespread in the psychological circle. It can mean that a person who has gone through suffering can as a result become a great source of wisdom, healing power and inspiration for others. The artist while working at the piece of art gives expression to his own experiences of suffering and intrumentalize his vision, imagination and meaning through the material production of the work of art itself.

3. The Third Carrier of Meaning is Symbols.

Symbol is an image of a real or imaginary object that evokes a feeling. Feelings are related to objects (desires food, enjoy meal, fears pain), to one another (to changes in the object – desires the good that is absent, disheartened if some evil happens, etc., related to one another through personal relationship) and to their subject. They change themselves to express the new affective capacities and dispositions needed for one’s growth. (eg. St. George and the dragon, Jonah’s whale.)

Symbols are very important for our growth, especially in understanding. When I was small I used to hear about the stories of Jonah the prophet, and St. George and the Dragon. My initial understanding was very minimal, but as the time went by I began to understand the hidden meanings of the symbols - Jonah stayed three days in the belly of the whale. As a child it was exciting to hear the stories without the implied meaning. Later I understood that Jonah's stay in the Belly of the Fish has a great significance since it parellels to the fact of the resurrection of Christ - His rising from the dead after three days. St. George symbolism is yet another illustration of hidden meanings. St. George overcomes the evil or rather he destroys the evil. Everyone has to fight against the evil one that stand against our spiritual gravitational pull.

4. Language

As we grow we also learn to talk in a language of our own. We are often initiated into the language by the mediated world of the adults. Then we learn with passion. We need words to express what we mean by what we want.

I remember having watched the Hindi Movie "Black". Rani Mukherjee learns with passion with the able guidance of Amitabh. We could clearly observe the intensity with which she learns each word and the desperation and the struggle to get the words to express the right thing at the right moment. Our language is full of implied and meant meaning. It is impossible to speak verbally without meaning anything. Language carries us through. It is through the language of the people that we enter into their hearts too.

Language orders one’s world and orients oneself within it. Language structures the world of the subject. Subject would mean the one who uses the language - we, you, he/she/they, etc. As language develops, there emerges a distinction between ordinary[9], technical[10] and literary language[11].

5. Incarnate Meaning

It combines all or at least many of the other carriers of meaning. It can be at once intersubjective, artistic, symbolic, and linguistic. It is the meaning of a person, of his way of life, of his words, of his deeds. It may be his meaning for just one person, for a group, for a nation, social, cultural or religious tradition.

For the Salesians Don Bosco is an incarnate meaning of the Charism - Da Mihi Animas Cetera Tolle (Give me souls and take away the rest). For Christians Christ is an incarnate meaning of all that means to be wounded, healed and saved.

Finally I would say that there are five acts of meaning:

1. Potential: this is the basic act of meaning. Here the  distinction between meaning and meant is not yet arrived (smile, work of art – interpretation by a critic is potentially intelligible)
2. The formal act of meaning: act of conceiving, thinking, considering, defining, formulating. There is a distinction meaning and meant. Here one is et to determine whether the concept is a an object of thought or more than that.
3. Full act of meaning. This comes when we do the act of judging.
4. Constitutive and effective acts of meaning: meaning rises to its active level and becomes communicative when it is used in human actions, decisions and judgments of values. It becomes effective in and through the individual and community.
5. Instrumental: this involves expressions. They externalize and exhibit for interpretation. (work of art for all the other acts of meaning)

          At last, everything is meaningful. Man is never devoid of meaning. We seek meaning. The fact that we are born, we are born to meaning....................And we seek for an ultimate meaning (God). Meaning cannot be reduced to any single element. Freud would reduce it to the Unconscious. It is significant to note the words of Rene Girard, who says,

"Man does not live by bread and sexuality alone, but he needs meaning."

Viktor Frankl observed the crisis of meaning today. He warns:

For too long we have been dreaming a dream from which we are now waking up: the dream that if we just improve the socioeconomic situation of people, everything will be okay, people will become happy. The truth is that as the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.[12]

               

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                [1] Frankl, “The Concept of Man in Logotherapy,” 74.
                    [2] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans., Colin Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962) xix.

                    [3] Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, 99.
                [4] Two or more persons respond in parallel fashion to the same object (parents express their emotion at the loss of their child)
                [5] A first person responds to an object, a second responds to the manifested feeling of the first
                [6] A matter of sharing another’s emotion without adverting to the object of emotion. (e.g. Strikes, mass-excitement. In general there is a disappearance of personal responsibility, a domination of drives over thinking, a decrease of intelligence level, and readiness for submission to a leader. It can be deliberately provoked, or exploited by political activists, entertainment industry, etc.
               [7] Either personal differentiation, a yet undeveloped or else there is a retreat from personal differentiation. (undeveloped differentiation – mother and child, retreat from differentiation – hypnosis, sexual intercourse)
               [8]Linguistic meanings tend to be univocal, smiles have a variety of different meanings – of recognition, welcome, appreciation, etc. linguistic meanings are propositional.
               [9] It is transient and used in day to day language. Expresses thought of the moment at the moment for the moment and it’s basis is commonsense.
               [10] As the common sense intelligence develops, there comes a time, when language is needed to distinguish field of specialization. In ancient time we have to distinguish people as fruit gatherers, hunters, gardeners, fishers, etc.
              [11] This is a permanent language.
              [12] Viktor E. Frankl, The Unheard Cry for Meaning: Psychotherapy and Humanism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978) 21.