"Banarach" le Johannes VERMEER (c. 1658)
§ 4 - CIALL MAR BHUN-AINMEAR NA FEALLSANACHD-IMEANACH AGUS GUN AIG GRÙNND AN DÌOFAIR EADAR CIALL IS FÌORBHITH SAN FHEALLSANACHD SEO ACH CIALL FHÈIN.
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§ 4 - MEANING AS THE BASIC DENOMINATOR IN IMMANENCE-PHILOSOPHY AND THE GROUND FOR THE DISTINCTION IN THIS PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN MEANING AND REALITY AS MERELY HAVING MEANING.
In the light of our transcendental basic Idea the criterion of the modal diversity of the law-spheres can only have for its transcendent created foundation the religious fulness of meaning as embodied in Christ, as the new root of our cosmos.
The sinful subjectivity of temporal reality, as will be presently explained in greater detail, has its sinful mode of being as (apostate) meaning only by virtue of the religious fulness of meaning of divine law, without whose determination and delimitation sinful reality would have no meaning and hence no existence or being.
The religious fulness of meaning (in no way self-sufficient, but wholly dependent) is the meaning-ground of all created existence.
This conception of meaning was defended in the Prolegomena of vol. I, where we repudiated any possible misinterpretation of our philosophy as a kind of symbolical idealism, a kind of meaning-ism.
Now the moment has come for a definitive comparison of this conception of meaning with that of immanence-philosophy.
It is remarkable that in Humanistic philosophy there has never been so much talk of 'meaning', of 'rendering meaningful', of 'interpreting meaning', as in recent times. And this is happening at the very moment when the former foundations of the idea of 'being of what is' -- as established in the Humanistic cosmonomic Idea by the ideals of science and of personality — are being relativistically dissolved.
In the earlier phases of immanence-philosophy the metaphysical idea of being as the basis of the modal diversity of meaning appeared to be founded in the hypostatizing of reason.
Meaning was abstracted from its true religious fulness and from the real Archè. Being, as the ultimate metaphysical idea of reason, is indeed the being of a reason that has been made self-sufficient and independent, the "Vernunft", the νοῦς, in which the selfhood thinks it has found its Archimedean point.
In post-Kantian freedom-idealism the Idea becomes the only ground of being in a more and more radical sense; it contains the totality of meaning which it expands [in the modal diversity] through its dialectical self-development within time.
The metaphysical basis for the distinction between meaning and reality in immanence-philosophy.
In ancient idealistic metaphysics there is, however, always some μή ὄν in temporal reality as a counter-instance opposed to the true being, the rational ground of meaning. It is the ἄπειρον, the ὕλη (formless matter), the principle of becoming and decay. It is a constitutive element of the phenomenal sensory perceivable world. Nevertheless the phenomenon shares in the true 'Being' (οὔσια), and in this way becomes meaningful only through its relation to the latter (cf. the μέθεξις in PLATO and his doctrine of temporal, changeable reality as a γένεσις εἰς οὔσιαν). In Aristotelian metaphysics the phenomenon shares in the true being by means of its immanent essential form, which actualizes matter and has a teleological relation to the Deity as pure actual Form. The latter was identified with absolute theoretical thought having only itself as object (νόησις νοησέως).
Thus it was conceivable that temporal reality derives its meaning solely from reason without being itself meaning.
In pre-Kantian Humanistic metaphysics the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon continues to play its dominating part, and the true ground of Being is found in divine creative mathematical thought.
'Nature' as meaningless reality in FICHTE and the South-Western German school of neo-Kantianism.
When KANT ascribes primacy to the ideal of personality, and attributes to the Idea as noumenon a practical-moral sense, the true ground of being of temporal reality can no longer be found in mathematical thought. In FICHTE 'nature' as 'phenomenon' becomes the dialectical counterpole of the free I-ness, a dialectical negation (the non-ego) which —being meaningless in itself— acquires meaning only through its relation to the Idea, (as the material for the fulfilment of duty).
In the neo-Kantian philosophy of the South-Western German school this conception of meaning is carried through in its pregnant sense, but at the same time KANT's practical ethical metaphysics is given up. The practical Idea turns into an absolute, extra-temporal valid value, which as such is elevated to the transcendent ground of all temporal meaning.
The empirical reality of 'nature', as conceived of by natural science, is meaningless in itself; however, it assumes meaning through its relation to value, a relation which has not an ontological sense, but can be effectuated only by the judging subject in a synthetical act of consciousness. Thus the immanent "Akt-Sinn", accomplishing a subjective synthesis of reality and value, finds its ultimate ground in the transcendent meaning: viz, in value.
Meaning in HUSSERL's phenomonology.
In HUSSERL'S phenomenology, meaning also remains 'ideal'. At least in the Logische Untersuchungen the words 'meaning' (Sinn) and 'signification' (Bedeutung) are used promiscuously. The phenomenologist seeks to restrict himself to the data by exclusively directing his intuitive gaze to the intentional acts of consciousness with their entire contents. From this point of view meaning becomes identical with the intentional relationship of the absolute, pure ego to the 'Gegenstand' intended in the act of consciousness. It becomes identical with the 'reine Aktwesen' both as regards its subjective noetic (= rendering meaningful) and its objective noematic (= possessing meaning) aspect [1].
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[1] Ideen I, p. 185: "Ähnlich wie der Wahrnehmung hat jedes intentionale Erlebnis — eben das macht das Grundstück der Intentionalität aus — sein "intentionales Objekt", d.i. seinen gegenständlichen Sinn. Nur in anderen Worten: Sinn zu haben, bezw. etwas "im Sinne zu haben" ist der Grundcharakter alles Bewustseins, das darum nicht nur überhaupt Erlebnis, sondern Sinnhabendes, "Noetisches ist." [Just as observation, every intentional experience — and this very fact forms the fundamental element of intentionality — has its 'intentional object' i.e. its objective meaning. Or in other words: 'to mean' or 'to intend' is the fundamental character of all consciousness, which for this reason is not merely experience, but something that has meaning, something 'noetic'.
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In a typical absolutizing of the phenomenological attitude the transcendental noetic consciousness is conceived of as the absolute consciousness. The absolute consciousness with its immanent intentional content is held to form the residue of the methodical 'destruction of the world' (Weltvernichtung) which phenomenology pretends it can effect by a methodical ἐποχή of the entire natural attitude of experience, including its appreciative function [2].
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[2] Ideen I, S. 91 ff.
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The Greek word ἐποχή (epochè) here means: putting in parentheses, replacing the naïve attitude by the theoretical-phenomenological one without neglecting anything of the real content of the intentional act of consciousness.
"All real units are 'units of meaning'. Units of meaning presuppose the noetic consciousness, which on its part is absolute and does not owe its existence to another noesis" [3].
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[3] Ideen I, S. 106. "Alle realen Einheite sind "Einheiten des Sinnes", Sinneseinheiten setzen sinngebendens Bewusstsein voraus, das seinerseits absolut und nicht selbst wieder durch Sinngebung ist."
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Meaning is consequently conceived of by HUSSERL as the intentional content of an 'act of consciousness' (Bewusstseinsakt), which content, characterized through 'intentions of the act', is sharply distinguished from purely sensory impressions (Empfindungen), in the same way as BRENTANO distinguishes them. These sense impressions can at the most be objects of intentions [4].
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[4] Log. Unters. II, I (2e Aufl.), S. 391 ff.
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'Every Noema,' says HUSSERL, 'has a content, viz, its 'meaning', and through this it refers to its Gegenstand' [5].
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[5] Ideen I, S. 267: "Jedes Noema hat einen "Inhalt", nämlich seinen "Sinn" und bezieht sich durch ihn auf seinen Gegenstand."
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Hence: meaning is 'the intended as such' in the intentional experience, and as such it can be fixed eidetically, i.e.: by means of the logical identification of its eidos (essence) abstracting all the individual possibilities of variation, as the nucleus of the noema, i.e. as the kernel of the intended 'Gegenstand'. Meaning as the noematic kernel is then sharply distinguished from the apperceptional meaning ("Auffassungssinn", i.e. the intending of a 'Gegenstand' in observation, imagination, remembrance, etc.) and the latter is also considered as an essential element in the full 'noema'. Finally, meaning is spoken of as the 'noematic kernel in the mode of its fulness' ("im Modus seiner Fülle"), in which meaning is not only conceived in the intention of the "Gegenstand im Was" (the object in the what), but also in the intention of the "Gegenstand im Wie" (the object in the how) e.g. the different "Klarheitsfüllen" (fulnesses of clarity), i.e. in the intended concreteness of the noematic meaning [6].
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[6] Ideen I, S. 273.
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The subjectivistic view of meaning in PAUL HOFMANN.
A purely subjectivistic notion of meaning is advocated by PAUL HOFMANN, an adherent of the phenomenological school derived from DILTHEY's vitalistic philosophy. It forms a contrast with HUSSERL's conception of meaning as something objective (objektives Wesen) offering itself to the pure phenomenological intuition. 'Thing' means 'object'. Meaning, however, is that in which or through which I experience a thing (knowing it and in every respect always valuing it also), i.e. that which, in contradistinction to its 'own' object, is no longer experienced as object, and cannot be conceived of as object without any residue. Just as 'meaning' is the opposite of 'thing', 'Verstehen' is the opposite of 'Schauen' (i.e. having the intended thing itself)' [7].
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[7] PAUL HOFMANN: Metaphysik oder verstehende Sinn-Wissenschaft (1929), S. 3: "Sache heisst "Gegenstand", Sinn aber ist dasjenige, in dem und durch das ich einen "Gegenstand" oder eine Sache erlebe (wissend und allerdings auch stets zugleich wertend), was also diesem "seinem" Gegenstand gegenüber jedenfalls nicht mehr als Gegenstand erlebt wird, und was überhaupt nicht ohne Rest als Gegenstand gefasst werden kann. Wie nun Sinn das Gegenteil von Sache, so ist Verstehen das Gegenteil von Schauen, d.h. von die-Sache (vermeintlich)-selbst-haben." Cf. his study Das Verstehen von Sinn und Seine Allgemeingültigkeit (Jahrbuch für Charakterologie VI).
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HOFMANN, too, reverts to a 'pure I' in the sense of a pure (no longer objectifiable) "Erleben" (experience) which he explicitly conceives of as a limiting concept. However, he does not want to hypostatize meaning [8].
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[8] As HUSSERL does, (and, according to HOFMANN, as HEIDEGGER does, too) by elevating meaning to an ideal "für sich seiendes objectives Wesen" (an ideal objective essence in itself).
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Rather he wishes to consider it as existing exclusively in the subjective sphere, as a 'mode of pure experience' (reines Erleben) that understands itself. Thus 'meaning' becomes the opposite of any kind of 'Gegenständlichkeit'. This phenomenological 'vitalistic philosophy' attempts to identify meaning and transcendental experience without perceiving that this "reines Erleben" (pure experience) itself, in its opposition to all temporal reality, results in a theoretical hypostasis, and as such is abstracted from true self-reflexion.
What is the meaning of a "reines Erleben" (pure experience) of which nothing can be said but this negation that it is opposed to all matter-of-factness, to all "Gegenständlichkeit" (identified with objectivity)?
It is typical for HOFMANN to call his philosophy, as the science of meaning, 'Logology' [9].
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[9] Op. cit. p. 61.
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It was intended as the science "vom Sinne überhaupt" (of meaning as such) and this concept of "Sinn überhaupt" we shall make acquaintance with as a logicist, and therefore meaningless, generic concept.
A more detailed explanation of our own conception of meaning.
At the present stage, our discussion of the above-mentioned Humanistic views of meaning will suffice, and we shall now expound our own conception in greater detail.
The question: what is meaning? cannot be answered without our reflecting on the Origin and unity of all temporal meaning, because this answer depends on the cosmonomic Idea of philosophical thought. Not a single temporal structure of meaning exists in itself (an sich). That which makes it into meaning lies beyond the limit of time. Meaning is 'ex origine' the convergence of all temporal aspects of existence into one supertemporal focus, and this focus, as we have seen, is the religious root of creation, which has meaning and hence existence only in virtue of the sovereign creative act of God.
The fulness of meaning is implied in the religious image of God, expressing itself in the root of our cosmos and in the splitting up of that root in time.
This religious fulness of meaning, given only in Christ, as the new root of creation, is not an abstract 'eidos', not an 'Idea', but it implies the fulness of created reality, again directed to God.
Especially in accordance with the Christian confession about Creation, the Fall into sin, and Redemption, it will not do to conceive of created reality as merely the bearer of meaning, as possessing meaning, as is done in immanence-philosophy. Such a conception remains founded in an Idea of the 'being of what is', which is incompatible with the radically Christian confession of the absolute sovereignty of God, the Creator, and of the fulness of created meaning in Christ. It is especially in conflict with the view resulting from the Christian attitude, stating that no single aspect of the meaning of reality may be depreciated in favour of certain absolutized aspects. There is an after-effect of the form-matter-scheme of immanence-philosophy discernible in the distinction between reality and meaning. In particular it is the opinion that 'meaning' would be exclusively ideal, supertemporal and abstract — a view found again in THEODOR LITT's conception of thinking in the so-called cultural sciences — which is the foundation of this distinction.
HUSSERL thinks he can carry ad absurdum the view that natural reality itself would be meaning, by means of the simple remark: meaning cannot be burnt down like a house. And again this remark is founded in the concept of matter and the (semi-Platonic) concept of form of immanence-philosophy: the sensory impressions of nature are 'merely factual reality'; meaning, however, is the 'eidos', the ideal "Bedeutung" (signification). But, in the Christian attitude the Archimedean point is radically different from that of immanence-philosophy. If it is admitted that all the aspects of reality are aspects of meaning, and that all individual things exist only in a structure of meaning, so that the burning house itself, as regards its temporal mode of being as a 'thing', has an individual temporal structure of meaning, then HUSSERL'S remark loses all its value.
If created things are only the bearers of meaning, they themselves must have another mode of being different from that of the dependent creaturely existence referring beyond and above itself, and in no way self-sufficient. Then with immanence-philosophy it must be possible to abstract meaning from reality.
Then we fall back into the form-matter-scheme of immanence-philosophy in whatever different varieties and shades of meaning it may be propounded. Then the religious fulness of meaning of our created cosmos in Christ must be an abstract value or a transcendental Idea and nothing more.
But, if 'meaning' is nothing but the creaturely mode of being under the law, consisting exclusively in a religious relation of dependence on God, then branding the philosophy of the cosmonomic Idea as a kind of 'meaning-idealism' appears to be based on a fundamental misunderstanding.
I trust I have precluded once for all this misconception, which has arisen in a quarter so congenial to this philosophy.
The struggle to shake off the fetters of the basic schemes of immanence-philosophy from our thinking is an extremely difficult task, and it is quite explicable that there may arise some misunderstandings.
Should there be some misconception on my part, and should it be possible on biblical grounds to show that (religious) meaning is not the mode of being of created reality, I shall not for a moment hesitate to revise my conception on this point. If I see aright, however, the difference on this head between my view and that of STOKER, mentioned in the Prolegomena, is of a provisional character and is connected with the question raised by him, if Christian philosophy can indeed do without the concept of substance. Now I stick to my opinion that this question can only be considered to some purpose, if beforehand the preliminary question has been answered: What is the creaturely mode of being, what is the being of all created existence? The answer to the latter question is of primary importance; for the sense in which a new concept of substance, if any, is to be taken, depends on this answer.
And that is why I believe that it is not right to criticize the conception of meaning as the creaturely mode of being by means of a concept of substance of which the meaning has not been further defined.
The 'problem of substance' cannot be discussed in more detail before the investigation of the structures of individuality of temporal reality. We have observed that the theory of the modal law-spheres must have precedence for purposes of method.
But both the theory of the law-spheres and that concerning the structures of individuality must he founded in an Idea of the mode of being of creaturely reality as such, an Idea that is implied in the transcendental basic Idea.
Meaning in the fall of man.
There remains, however, another central problem of extreme importance: As regards his human nature, Christ is the root of reborn creation, and as such the fulness of meaning, the creaturely Ground of the meaning of all temporal reality. But our temporal world in its apostate religious root lies under God's curse, under the curse of sin. Thus there is a radical antithesis in the subject-side of the root of the earthly cosmos. It may be that this antithesis has been reconciled by the Redemption in Jesus Christ, but in temporal reality the unrelenting struggle between the kingdom of God and that of darkness will go until the end of the world. The falling away from God has affected our cosmos in its root and its temporal refraction of meaning. Is not this a final and decisive reason to distinguish meaning from reality? Does not the radical antithesis between the kingdom of God and that of darkness, which our transcendental Idea itself also recognizes as fundamental for philosophic thought, compel us to accept an ultimate dualism between meaning and reality?
Is sinful reality still meaning? Is it not meaningless, or rather the adversary of meaning, since meaning can only exist in the religious dependence on its Origin?
Here we indeed touch the deepest problem of Christian philosophy. The latter cannot hope to solve it without the illumination of Divine Revelation if it wants to be guaranteed from falling back into the attitude of immanence-philosophy.
I for one do not venture to try and know anything concerning the problem that has been raised except what God has vouchsafed to reveal to us in His Word. I do not know what the full effect of unrestrained sin on reality would be like. Thanks to God this unhampered influence does not exist in our earthly cosmos. One thing we know, viz. that sin in its full effect does not mean the cutting through of the relation of dependence between Creator and depraved creation, but that the fulness of being of Divine justice will express itself in reprobate creation in a tremendous way, and that in this process depraved reality cannot but reveal its creaturely mode of being as meaning.
It will be meaning in the absolute subjective apostasy under the curse of God's wrath, but in this very condition it will not be a meaningless reality.
Sin causes spiritual death through the falling away from the Divine source of life, but sin is not merely privatio, not something merely negative, but a positive, guilty apostasy insofar as it reveals its power, derived from creation itself. Sinful reality remains apostate meaning under the law and under the curse of God's wrath. In our temporal cosmos God's Common Grace reveals itself, as KUYPER brought to light so emphatically, in the preservation of the cosmic world-order. Owing to this preserving grace the framework of the temporal refraction of meaning remains intact.
The Christian as a stranger in this world.
Although the fallen earthly cosmos is only a sad shadow of God's original creation, and although the Christian can only consider himself as a stranger and a pilgrim in this world, yet he cannot recognize the true creaturely ground of meaning in the apostate root of this cosmos, but only in the new root, Christ. Any other view would inevitably result in elevating sin to the rank of an independent counter-power opposed to the creative power of God [10].
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[10] In his Kirchliche Dogmatik KARL BARTH has tried to escape this consequence by deriving the positive power of sin from the 'Divine No' placed over against His 'Yes' with respect to His creative act. But this dialectical solution of the problem results in a dualistic (at the same time positive and negative) conception of creation.
The Divine 'No' cannot explain the power of sin, which as such is derived from creation itself, as we have stated in Vol. I.
The idea of a negative creation is destructive to the Biblical conception of the integral Origin of Heaven and earth, because it implies that sin has a power outside creation in its positive sense.
Creation itself implies the Divine 'No' with respect to sin in its negative sense as 'privatio'.
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And this would result in avoidance of the world, an unbiblical flight from the world. We have nothing to avoid in the world but sin. The war that the Christian wages in God's power in this temporal life against the Kingdom of darkness, is a joyful struggle, not only for his own salvation, but for God's creation as a whole, which we do not hate, but love for Christ's sake. We must not hate anything in the world but sin.
The apostate world cannot maintain any meaning as its own property in opposition to Christ. Common Grace.
Nothing in our apostate world can get lost in Christ. There is not any part of space, there is no temporal life, no temporal movement or temporal energy, no temporal power, wisdom, beauty, love, faith or justice, which sinful reality can maintain as a kind of property of its own apart from Christ.
Whoever relinquishes the 'world' taken in the sense of sin, of the 'flesh' in its Scriptural meaning, does not really lose anything of the creaturely meaning, but on the contrary he gets a share in the fulness of meaning of Christ, in Whom God will give us everything. It is all due to God's common grace in Christ that there are still means left in the temporal world to resist the destructive force of the elements that have got loose; that there are still means to combat disease, to check psychic maladies, to practise logical thinking, to save cultural development from going down into savage barbarism, to develop language, to preserve the possibility of social intercourse, to withstand injustice, and so on. All these things are the fruits of Christ's work, even before His appearance on the earth. From the very beginning God has viewed His fallen creation in the light of the Redeemer.
We can only face the problem of the effect on temporal meaning that the partial working of the falling away from the fulness of meaning has in spite of common grace, when we have gained an insight into the modal structures of the law-spheres within the temporal coherence of meaning. But— and with this we definitively reject any separation of meaning from reality — meaning in apostasy remains real meaning in accordance with its creaturely mode of being. An illogical reasoning can occur only within the logical modality of meaning; illegality in its legal sense is only possible within the modality of meaning of the jural sphere; the non-beautiful can only be found within the modal aspect of meaning of the aesthetic law-sphere, just as organic disease remains something within the modal aspect of meaning of the biotic law-sphere, and so on. Sin, as the root of all evil, has no meaning or existence independent of the religious fulness of the Divine Law. In this sense St PAUL's word is to be understood, to the effect that but for the law sin is dead [11].
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[11] Rom. 7:8: χωρὶς γὰρ νόμου ἁμαρτία νεκρά.
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All along the line meaning remains the creaturely mode of being under the law which has been fulfilled by Christ. Even apostate meaning is related to Christ, though in a negative sense; it is nothing apart from Him.
As soon as thought tries to speculate on this religious basic truth, accessible to us only through faith in God's Revelation, it gets involved in insoluble antinomies. This is not due to any intrinsic contradiction between thought and faith, but rather to the mutinous attempt on the part of thought to exceed its temporal cosmic limits in its supposed self-sufficiency. But of this in the next section. For thought that submits to Divine Revelation and recognizes its own limits, the antithesis in the root of our cosmos is not one of antinomy; rather it is an opposition on the basis of the radical unity of Divine Law; just as in the temporal law-spheres justice and injustice, love and hatred are not internally antinomous, but only contrasts determined by the norms in the respective modalities of meaning.
The religious value of the modal criterion of meaning.
If created reality is to be conceived of as meaning, one cannot observe too strictly the limits of the temporal modal law-spheres in philosophic thought. These limits have been set by the cosmic order of time in the specific 'sovereignty of the modal aspects within their own spheres'.
Any attempt to obliterate these limits by a supposedly autonomous thought results in an attack upon the religious fulness of meaning of the temporal creation.
If the attempt is made to reduce the modal meaning of the jural or that of the economic law-sphere to the moral one of the temporal love of one's neighbour, or if the same effort is made to reduce the modal meaning of number or that of language to the meaning of logic, it must be distinctly understood that the abundance of meaning of creation is diminished by this subjective reduction. And perhaps without realizing what this procedure implies, one puts some temporal aspect of reality in the place of the religious fulness of meaning in Christ. The religious value of the criterion of meaning is that it saves philosophic thought from falling away from this fulness.
Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol II/ Part I/ Chapt 1/§ 4 pp 25-36)
