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We begin this series with the early essay which gives its name to this column - written in 1959. (Final of six sections)  Summation – The Principle of Meaning At last, I hope I have been able to clarify some aspects of the principle of meaning. I have presented my theme by discussing meaning as the content of all identities. I have done this without insistence, beyond illustrative example, upon a specified meaning belonging to a specific thought or object. And I have collected the being of all, however variedly distinguished entities, under one name – meaning – and tried to show what principle rules the nature of all things under this generalization. Here at the end I wish to summarize the conclusions that perhaps have been reached. Meaning is the content of being. This content, that has been named “meaning in the absolute,” includes the potential power to contribute its meaning to the content of another being under the term “meaning in the relative,” for which meaning in the absolute is the presupposed condition. When man has reached the limit of knowledge accessible to his mind, he can yet relate to the remaining unfathomable existence or void by faith in an omnipotent, infinitely wise and just deity. I believe that, even without a living God, the act of faith would be valid and meaningful – for faith is included in the endowment of our identity. And because we desire to know ourselves, we must experience our own power of faith, not necessarily because in faith we believe correctly, but because perceiving ourselves in the act of faith enlarges our self-knowledge. To know himself and the role of his entire being, man must use his power to relate. This is absolutely his sovereign possession and, by employing it, he gives evidence of himself to himself. God, however, all-knowing, needs no such demonstration of his creator identity. His self-knowledge of it would be complete without the test of creation. In the end I have written this paper as a personal guide in my own endeavor to distinguish and separate meaning from non-meaning, sense from non-sense. The meaning contained in our being, and in other existences, becomes perceivable to us mainly in the relation of ourselves to the environment. In such a manner, the search in these pages may, over the years in a small measure, help to reveal the content of my own identity. This seeking, rewarded at best with only partial finding, is the task of our lives. We are committed to it because insight into the nature of our identity from within is the required condition for insightfully relating to the world without. By so seeking we acknowledge ourselves, in the realization that being is the vessel which holds all the meaning we can ever hope to find. 
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We begin this series with the early essay which gives its name to this column - written in 1959. (Fifth of six sections)  The Function of Principle The theme of this search, by reason of the vastness of the problem of meaning, is an investigation which hopes to discover the principle that has collective jurisdiction, not over the particular of a specific existence, but over the general content of all things for which the all-inclusive name “meaning” has been established as a mutual base. Thus I hold it to be necessary to examine the nature of principle itself, in the expectation of at least partially revealing its structure. I can possibly demonstrate the function of principle illustratively, by discussing the problem of comparison, to show how principles become actively engaged in ordering the world of thought as well as physical being. For good reason we are wont to see meaning between existences which are involved in comparative measuring. Partners in comparison are items of the same kind which, however, differ in the amount or degree of their same traits. Therefore, a comparison of significantly dissimilar things may only be effected if we invent for them a general and collective term and impose it as the common denominator. The comparative function is probably best exemplified by selecting adjectives which already have comparative significance in linguistic use. I propose the antonyms “large” and “small,” with the intent to seek out and make evident the nature of the intellectual act whose consequence is comparison. Assuming, as items of a wholly arbitrary collection, an egg, a chair, and a tank, which have no features in common except physical size in different degrees of magnitude, we reduce the identity of each by terming them all “objects,” and make them thereby available for comparison. The chair, seen merely as an object of size, is unquestionably larger than the egg, quite as certainly as it is smaller than the tank. And it does not seem possible that any of these items might relate by exerting an influence upon or making a contribution to any other. Relation, so it appears, in this random assortment of things, could only be the accidental result of an atypical selection, and it would then not be achieved by reason or under the condition of a comparison in size, but would be brought about by a fluke of circumstance. To place ourselves in a position to compare egg, chair, and tank, we have determined to ignore their respective identities by naming them collectively objects, and apparently have deprived them simultaneously of all power to contribute meaning. They have seemingly retained nothing but an ability to displace amounts of space by physical bulk. And their unequal sizes are their only visible contribution to each other. Yet, a difference in size can be as potent a contribution of one object to the other as that of wheels and chassis reaching the status of carriage, by being made to jointly fulfill their possibilities in practical reality. For, in their dissimilar properties, those two were capable of supplying the exact needs that left each short of the identity they assumed in collaboration. Thus, unequal magnitudes are the essential supplements in the assertion of the new identity, namely, size comparison. With these differing sizes as the granted prerequisite, the mind of man must cooperate to the extent of qualifying – without loss of inherent meaning – egg, chair and tank, by exploiting the tolerance which their identity owns. This flexibility permits the generalization that designates them simply as objects and makes them available for the act of comparison. As largeness or smallness will forever change location from one object to the other when one surpasses another in either quality, we recognize that largeness, bound to the visible object, is always excelled by another still larger that reduces the first to smallness. From this we infer that only an infinite, all-inclusive vastness of magnitude may claim “largeness,” as also solely the dimensionless, infinitely tiny point in space cannot be surpassed in “smallness.” Only incomprehensible infinity possesses these designations of extremes in magnitude without either question or challenge. But the mind of the human being needs an instrument – and finds it in comparison – which will reduce the infinitely large and small to the dimensions of his intellect or even physical mass. In expressing a thing as “large” or “small,” we state in reality that it is larger or smaller than a certain point of reference in the environment, and impose thereby the measure of our own experience. The generalization, in which I have gathered nouns of very unequal meaning by collectively calling them objects, provides a guiding hint how the nature of principle can be revealed. The particular condition which is shared and recognized as identical in otherwise most dissimilar items is precisely the factor that provides their collective name and imposes sameness, under the identity of this name only, upon all relative activities carried on in terms of that general definition. In this manner, the collective and general principle governs diverse things in the exact areas that are recognizable as common ground. So, egg, chair and tank under the principle of comparison assume a common denominator in the designation “object” and act the same, by all offering their physical size to be measured against each other and also in contrasting reference to environmental experience. In this way, the principle of comparison extends to man the most precious gift of allowing him to comprehend his world in terms of proportions that he can himself establish in accord with his limitations. Principle, by definition, requires difference in the identities that it contains within one law. As well it requires that, pertaining to these differences, an area of overlap of function is found where those diversities act identically and as equals. Since principle unifies differences under one jurisdiction, it cannot therefore reveal itself in things whose identity is the same in all respects. Thus, recognition of principle is the instrument of comprehensive understanding. For it makes huge complications explicable by concentratedly simplifying them. By virtue of this reduction, they become manageable for the mind.   We begin this series with the early essay which gives its name to this column - written in 1959. (Fourth of six sections) Power of Implication The linkage, then, of one fully recognized fact to the identity of another is an exploitation of the relative powers contained in each. In so linking the implications of facts to one another, we achieve a highly mobile process that we know on the intellectual level as thinking. On this basis I must describe thinking as a moving from the acknowledgment of one identity to further assessments, prescribed and directed by the relative energy of the identity already recognized. Thus our thoughts insist on conceiving themselves, as soon as the location of our interest has determined the theme. Once before I have touched on this peculiar insistence of things made by man for taking their fate in their own hands and permitting us to see in our products not invention, but only discovery. Whatever we begin to validly conceive or make is contained already in its potential nature as part of the condition of worldly being, and is well able to direct us by its demands. Our most fruitful activity in thinking and making is bound to insight and recognition, not to a willful burst of egotism. Potential Meaning The potential being of all our concepts and works must, however, be recognized in its difference from an existence in perceivable reality. For the potential is not its realization in the actual until potentiality is turned to fulfill its implied assignment. In the potential, then, is the contributive power to be relatively involved that we find included in the identity of all things. These, from their own actuality, may be extended to seize the relative endowment of another equally real existence and enter a union with it. The resulting compound would possess the sovereignty of the actual and be endowed in its turn with ability to extend relative energy in the direction of a still further independent identity. Evidently the human being, too, is self-contained in a unit of meaning that, in the absoluteness of identity, possesses gifts of relative implication in the ability to recognize and conceive intellectually and to make physically. A number of disks, designed to rotate around their axes, and a box-like framework or structure each own the properties of their identity, including the potential relative functions of wheel and chassis. But the acknowledged identities, with their recognized relative implications, do not in themselves constitute a carriage. The powers of intelligent insight and physical making, contained in the identity of man, are extended as a contribution that renders the potential actual. Now in its own right this offers the relative powers that its new compound identity possesses to allow further speculation in the direction, for instance, of motorization and diverse transport services. Intellectual insight and the will and capacity for work based on that insight are the contribution which man is empowered to make to the contribution already offered by his environment. Wheels and chassis as a carriage are not a heap of accumulated junk. They are the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, greater to the precise extent of human collaboration in terms of wisdom and work. The Human Potential for God Insight and thinking, as well as physical making, are among the relative abilities included in the essence of the human being. But so are faith and believing. If we accept the existence of God, we give recognition to an inexplicable presence, to a being whom we understand to surpass all comprehensible limits, whose content is “meaning in the infinite.” The capacity for rational thought is no avenue to God, unless its logic compels the insight that faith and believing are fitting for those to whom it is not given to know. Instead of the light to see, there is the will to believe and, because willing is an act of sovereignty, surrender in faith does not diminish the human stature. By approaching God as His identity and our inability to understand requires, namely in faith, we are not submitting to some sort of tyranny, but on the contrary, exercising the prerogative to give or withhold ourselves. As no gift is reduced or altered by the change of hands from giver to receiver, so the gift of ourselves to the majesty of God suffers no reduction in meaning. And its unique identity remains intact, for we must possess as property what we offer as a gift. In the act of faith we hold the strength to find function and purpose in the void. This emptiness would cancel all meaning beyond the limits of humanly possible knowledge if we were not fashioned to relate meaningfully to the inexplicable, by the will to believe where the insight to know is withheld. And so it appears that, by way of faith, we are committed, in a catechismic sense, to the doing of good and the surrender to God’s will. For we cannot, in all the essence of realism, ignore our gift to believe, where we meet cause to make use of it.  We begin this series with the early essay which gives its name to this column - written in 1959. (Second of six sections)  An Epitome of Meaning Human creativity, in all its man-made diversity, is perhaps more precisely qualified to provide insight into the nature of meaning than any object or condition which exists in a final, complete, and irrevocable state. For, what men think or make grows from shapeless nonexistence and vague notions to develop an integrity exclusively its own, by which it ripens into meaning. This meaning is the property of the thing so made and, if through the years it be wholly forgotten and engage in no relative activity, then the forgetting characterizes those who forget, but the integrity of a thing richly conceived and well-made is inviolate and therefore meaningful in itself. And so, to make myself more adequately clear, I am offering the invention of the following narrative. A lone traveler on a mule is riding slowly over a gray, barren land. Dusk is approaching and the jackass is weary, tottering ahead step by tortured step. As the two reach a muddy waterhole fringed with grass and clusters of sparse shrubs, the rider dismounts, his hand grips the bridle, and together they approach the edge of the pool. Man and animal drink side by side from the lukewarm and bitter water. Then the man unsaddles his mule and leaves it to graze. After gathering small pieces of dead wood, he lights a fire and cooks his indifferent meal. He eats slowly and, when the food is gone, he broods, buried in the thoughts of his mind. Stirred by something in his meditation, he takes a stubby pencil and a little paper from his saddlebag and, in the uncertain light of his low fire, begins to write. At one time he methodically whittles the point of his pencil, and at frequent intervals he crosses out what he has written and begins again. In the end, when he has crossed and rewritten for the last time, he turns to his animal and says, “Listen, Jackass, listen to what your master has written!” So, he reads his poem to an audience of none and a mule – a poem that is a small treasure of truth and humor, five or six lines wonderfully made. The man is sleepy now and the fire barely glowing, so he unfolds a blanket, wraps himself in it, and falls asleep. At sunrise he will wash, and boil his coffee, and ride away. Poem, poet, and jackass – nobody knowing what may become of them – will pass from sight. My little story may serve to illuminate the theme of absolute meaning by its particular insistence on isolating the integrity of the poem from all opportunity to communicate its content. I maintain that it was a meaningful poem nevertheless, a poem in a very complete and entire sense. For it was thoroughly and well done – all done – hence, all poem. And its identity and meaning rested in the strength it contained, not in the knowledge that a select group of people might have had of its existence, if it had been issued by a publishing house. Also, no significance may be attributed to the poem for another wrong reason, namely, that it must have related meaningfully to its author, as a kind of reciprocal gift in return for the love he so generously lavished in its making. We are bound by reality to accept the insight that, upon completion of a work, its dependence on the maker has also ended. Its existence is sovereign and can survive its author without reduction in meaning. Additionally, we must conclude that, for all the individuals who may know a given work, there must be a host of others who are entirely uninformed about its very existence. Thus, if we refuse to accept meaning in a definitive sense, we arrive at the nonsensical speculation whether the work has been rendered meaningful because of those, the author included, who know about it, or meaningless because of the others who do not. Moreover, meaningless work of poor quality in all fields is abundantly produced and displayed. Who could think in earnest that it has become meaningful because it has been made accessible to the public? So our lone traveler’s poem achieved meaning because it had been written, as the identity of its condition as a poem of whatever kind demanded to be written. A work, once its nature and intent are determined, requires, by dint of its emerging identity, treatment fitted to its own character, thereby in a sense insisting on making itself, as precisely and thoroughly as at all possible, so that nothing may either be taken from it or added. In this manner we are assured that the poem became in essence all of what it was and nothing that was not included in the particular nature and character to which it was committed.  We begin this series with the early essay which gives its name to this column - written in 1959. (First of six sections)  The Need for Meaning In the course of a daily increasing span of life, events and concepts accumulate to reach gradually a degree of confused complication that becomes unmanageable in its ever waxing quantity. The will to search for a basic principle which endows with meaning the enterprise of life, and all that it entails on the human scale, is at once natural and inevitable. These pages intend to examine the condition of meaning, in the hope of excavating a foundation upon which we may think and act – not perhaps with certainty but with, however, a resolution wholly unlike the uncommitted indecision that characterizes the waste of futility. From the recognition that we are able to discern meaning in nothing which does not in some manner take effect upon us, we obtain a first indication of a feasible direction in which we may pursue our search. Thus we have some reason to at least suspect that the particular way in which one thing makes its impact upon another contains what meaning is to be found, not in either one, but in the relation of each to the other. Consequently, we quite reasonably arrive at units of meaning of variable complexity, which must seek escape from futility in borrowing a reason for their existence by relating to yet further units. In this process of continuing and enlarging relationships, the point is ultimately reached where this interpenetration of related meanings is contained in one vast system which comprises all available associations and which, now in its turn, must find a source which will contribute meaning. Such a contribution can no longer be contained within the natural world and would have to be the prerogative of an infinite, almighty, and divine existence. Meaning, however, on the level of divinity, is totally incomprehensible to the mind of man. And if this investigation is to continue at all, I must assume that meaning in the lives of human beings takes its place in the natural world and may be understood -- within this deliberate reduction to the measure of man – by the natural powers at our disposal. If that assumption be a violation of the essential character of meaning, and if I possibly reduce something to my own scale which, in fact, bears no reduction at all, I would yet be forced to take upon myself the risk of committing such an error. For the realization that, without so risking, I should be deprived of my theme altogether, appears to justify that I confine the problem to humanly manageable proportions, because it does exist validly and perceivably in the earthbound environment of humanity. Relative or Absolute? As long as we look upon the substance of meaning as the result of the associations among all things, we find that these relationships will outdistance us to the point where human intelligence can simply not follow. It is hence necessary to at least make the attempt to discover meaning not in the indebtedness of one thing to the other, but in a more sovereign sense which I should like to name “meaning in the absolute.” – The expression “absolute” here is not an identification of divinity. Its intended interpretation is antonymous to the word “relative,” and therefore close to the Latin root “absolutus.” For, in spite of the fact that we have observed that experience with meaning tends to be limited to the effects that invade our lives from the outside, or more briefly, tends to be “meaning in the relative,” each of these sources of relating influences does have a character and quality particularly its own. Quite independent from any ties with its partner in relative meaning, it does have identity, and we shall have to ascertain whether this contains such significance in its own right that we obtain indeed meaning in an absolute sense.  |
A Blog containing longer text selections from essays by Johannes, on art, philosophy, religion and the humanities, written during the course of a lifetime. 
Artists are not art historians. People who write are not all learned scholars. This can lead to “repeat originality” on most rare occasions. When we briefly share a pathway of inquiry with others, we sometimes also must share the same results.
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