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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. (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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