Sublime

Meaning is not some mysterious force or fluid that pervades the vacuum. No; life is what creates such meaning as exists in the cosmos. Only for living things—or, to speak more generally, for things that, by their very nature, are imbued with purposes and goals—can there be a “point.” I suspect it is in fact precisely by virtue of being a thing that

“The emergence of relations among things, more than the things themselves, always gives rise to new meanings.”

This ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man; in logotherapy, we speak in this context of a super-meaning. What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in

The term “existential” may be used in three ways: to refer to (1) existence itself, i.e., the specifically human mode of being; (2) the meaning of existence; and (3) the striving to find a concrete meaning in personal existence, that is to say, the will to meaning.

Ultimately, meaning almost always implies a connection to a greater sense of community, whether real or imagined. It has a spiritual underpinning.

They discovered that meaning (separate from happiness) is not inherently tied to social benchmarks such as comfort and wealth, while happiness (separate from meaning) is.

Do words have meaning or do we give them meaning?

It means precisely that transition from random encounter to a construction that is resilient, as if it had been necessary.