[Saris Aurelius] “I believe meaning exists, this is why I have will. There is meaning in that I have a sense to engage.”
{AK (CJ)}: “If both ‘meaning’ and ‘existence’ are forms of ‘standing forth’, then to ask whether “meaning exists”, suggests a simple statement of tautology; ‘meaning means’, or, ‘existence exists’?”
If both ‘meaning’ and ‘existence’ are forms of ‘standing forth’, then they are both forms of distinction or difference; ‘standing forth’, necessarily implies ‘that which stands forth’, as a distinct difference, with regard to ‘that which it stands out from’. Thus both ‘meaning’ and ‘existence’ share this differential structuring of the distinct.
Obviously, for you, the order of ‘meaning’ is not the same as the order of ‘existence’, as you locate the order of ‘meaning’, first, in a statement of belief, concerning an existential claim, which seems to assume the separation of the ‘order of meaning’ from the ‘order of existence’. The assumption of this separation suggests a very particular and determinate concept of ‘existence’, for which the mere quality of ‘standing forth’, ‘distinction’, and ‘difference’, are not sufficiently qualifying attributes. However, you link the belief in existential meaning, to the concept of will, presumably granting the concept of will membership within this specifically determinate concept of ‘existence’, a specificity initially separate from the ‘order of meaning’.
Obviously, the concept of will, in your discursive arrangement, functions as immediately existential, in the specifically determinate sense previously implied; whilst the ‘order of meaning’ does not so function, having to traverse the detour of belief before arriving at such existential immediacy, as configured by the concept of will. An additional detour, the possession of a “sense to engage” is stated, as another condition for the specifically determinate ‘existence’ of the ‘order of meaning’.
An initial separation between two forms of ‘standing forth’; producing an ‘order of meaning’ without determinate ‘existence’, and a specifically determinate ‘order of existence’, but without determinate ‘meaning’.
Yet the common background for both orders is ‘standing forth’ – the differential structuring of the distinct.
So we then have to ask why it is that a specifically determinate ‘order of existence’ gets produced?
What are the reasons for the production of such an ‘existential’ determination?
And why is the ‘order of meaning’ existentially indeterminate in the absence of the detours of ‘belief’, ‘will’, and the ‘sense to engage’.
Not mentioned, but present as background assumption, is the metaphysics of subject/object.
>The concept of will, functioning as existential immediacy, is thus ‘objective’, an ‘objective feature’ belonging to the specifically determinate ‘order of existence’.
>The concept of belief, functions as a switching point, between the separated orders of ‘existentially indeterminate Meaning’ and ‘meaningfully indeterminate Existence’.
>This switching point oscillates between the ‘objectivity’ of the specifically determinate ‘order of existence’, and the presumably ‘subjectively’ accessed ‘order of meaning.
Given the background assumption and traditional conventions of the metaphysics of subject/object, the underlying rationale structuring the implicit presuppositions of your initial statement, become clear. The obvious resonances that might be suggested, are a metaphysics of the will, particularly as inflected by Friedrich Nietzsche, though earlier precursors might well be relevant, too. The structure is traditional, after all. There is a kind of metaphysical centring on psychological, perhaps sociological, motifs: ‘belief’; ‘will’; ‘sense to engage’; as anchoring points.
But one of the most important assumptions, the unanalysed assumption of separation, between subjectively accessed ‘meaning’ and objective ‘existence’; no clear criteria has been given for this separation; it is simply assumed, as a ‘given’; in this it follows a Cartesian route, the route of modernity.
The other, connected assumption, again taken as a ‘given’, is the production of a specifically determinate, concept of ‘existence’; again, offered without clear criteria, those criteria being largely social in origin, an unquestioned and shared habit of consensual inculcation.
The issue of existential legitimacy, of what counts as ‘objectively existent’ beyond the fluctuations of subjectivity; beyond the fluctuating subjective access to an ‘order of meaning’ characterised by existential indeterminacy; such existential legitimacy can only occur with respect to a concept of existence no longer bound only to the discernible difference of ‘standing forth’. In order for the concept of existential legitimacy to even arise, further criteria enabling such a legitimacy are required, these have to be invented and produced. What it is that does the inventing and producing, is an open question, and one can look perhaps to the ‘order of meaning’ for various entertainments, in this regard.
But equally, all the notions and habits constituting the metaphysical conventions issuing from the metaphysics of subject/object, are interpretative inventions produced out of the ‘order of meaning’, largely as a result of what can conventionally be called ‘social production’. Because social production is susceptible to the variousness of uses, the notion of shared consensuality arises and is enabled. This commonality, in systematic forms accounting for variousness of use, is the ‘metaphysics of objectivity’, said metaphysics being systematically linked to those forms as a mutually confirming corollary. Existential legitimacy, is a functioning protocol of metaphysical registration belonging to that systematic network.
But the limits of that network, are the limits of its ‘existential legitimacy’.