10.13125/CH/5454
application/pdf
2533-1825
5454
2
en
urn:nbn:it:unica-28975
Mirela Oliva
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Critical Hermeneutics
Realist Meaning
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch
6
Articles
2023-01-26
2023-01-24
2023-01-27
2023-01-27
211-234
1
Mirela Oliva
2022
10.13125/CH/5454
211
2533-1825
2
234
urn:nbn:it:unica-28975
Realist Meaning
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/download/5454/5357
6
Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)                     Submission date: 22 January 2023
Biannual International Journal of Philosophy           Acceptance date: 22 January 2023
http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/index               Date of publication: 27 January 2023
ISSN 2533-1825 (on line); DOI 10.13125/CH/5454




                                 Realist Meaning


                                      Mirela Oliva


Abstract
The medieval Biblical hermeneutics universalizes the notion of mean-
ing and begins a trend that reaches its peak in contemporary herme-
neutics, crossing also into analytic philosophy. Accordingly, meaning
conveys properties of the known object, its origin and transformation,
its action upon other objects, and its place within a larger context.
Meaning attaches to all things in the universe – not just language.
Therefore, things have meaning, too. This paper first shows how
hermeneutics extended the sphere of meaning from language to
things. My short historical survey starts with medieval Biblical herme-
neutics, continues with German Protestant hermeneutics, and finishes
with    contemporary          hermeneutics       and     the     influence        of    Neo-
Kantianism. Then, I discuss the various significations of meaning that
pertain to the object’s aspects and question how this polysemy can
be fruitful. Finally, I draw from Nozick’s account of meaning that has
many similarities with hermeneutics.
Keywords: meaning, Biblical hermeneutics, philosophical hermeneu-
tics, Neo-Kantianism, Nozick




This paper shows that meaning is not just an ingredient of under-
standing but expresses real connections between the known object
and other objects, a larger context, or even the world. Thus meaning
is not the arbitrary product of subjective evaluation (what something
Mirela Oliva, Realist Meaning




means to me, personally) but conveys properties of the object, its
origin and transformation, its action upon other objects, and its place
within a larger context. In hermeneutics, meaning attaches to all
things in the universe – not just language. Things have meaning, too.
This universalization of meaning started already in the medieval her-
meneutics of the Bible and reached its peak in contemporary herme-
neutics, crossing also into analytic philosophy. The hermeneutic ex-
tension is not merely a philosophical invention. It does justice to nu-
merous everyday uses of meaning that attach it to situations, con-
crete objects, human life, and the universe, in addition to words.
Meaning means, besides the signification of words, origin, purpose,
cause, value, relevance, and direction. What I call realist meaning
rests thus on the capacity for meaning to be expressed in a wide va-
riety of objective aspects. In this paper, I first show how hermeneu-
tics extended the sphere of meaning from language to things. My
short historical survey starts with medieval Biblical hermeneutics,
continues with German Protestant hermeneutics, and finishes with
contemporary hermeneutics and the influence of Neo-Kantianism.
Then, I discuss the significations of meaning that pertain to the ob-
ject’s aspects and question in which way this polysemy can be fruit-
ful. I draw from Nozick’s account of meaning that has many similari-
ties with hermeneutics.


1. From the meaning of words to the meaning of things:
Biblical hermeneutics
The modern term meaning and its synonym sense have roots in the
Latin term sensus. In the Roman and medieval vocabulary, sensus
designates either the sensible or intellectual capacity of a subject or
the signification of a verbal utterance – simple or composite, spoken
or written. When not referring to cognitive operations, sensus has a
predominantly linguistic nature. However, there are cases in which


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medievals employ sensus not only for words but also for things. Bibli-
cal hermeneutics is an exemplary case. It steps beyond linguistic
boundaries by inquiring into the meaning of things narrated by the
Scripture. Medieval Biblical exegetes distinguish between two types of
meaning: the literal sense and the spiritual sense. The literal sense of
the Bible corresponds to the linguistic meaning, namely the meaning
of words and texts. The spiritual sense represents the meaning of
narrated things, signified by Biblical words. Medievals distinguish be-
tween three types of spiritual senses: sensus allegoricus (concerning
the contents of faith), sensus moralis (concerning the moral guidance
following the model of Christ) and sensus anagogicus (concerning the
afterlife). Aquinas clearly expresses this distinction:


    Therefore, that first signification whereby words signify
    things belongs to the first sense, the historical or literal.
    That signification whereby things signified by words have
    themselves also a signification is called a spiritual sense,
    which is based on the literal and presupposes it. Now this
    spiritual sense has a threefold division. For as the Apostle
    says (Hebrews X:1) the Old Law is a figure of the New Law,
    and Dionysius says (Cael. Hier. 1) the New law itself is a fig-
    ure of future glory. Therefore, so far as the things of the Old
    Law signify the things of the New Law, there is the allegori-
    cal sense; so far as the things done in Christ, or so far as
    the things which signify Christ, are types of what we ought
    to do, there is the moral sense. But so far as they signify
    what relates to eternal glory, there is the anagogical sense
    (Aquinas 1984: 7).


    For instance, the twelve stones chosen from the Jordan in Joshua
4:3 signify the twelve apostles (allegorical sense); the white gar-


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Mirela Oliva, Realist Meaning




ments of angels that appeared at the resurrection signify the human
body’s splendor in the afterlife (anagogical sense); and the temple
signifies a morally balanced soul (moral sense). In some cases, one
real object can carry all three spiritual senses. Jerusalem is one ex-
ample: It signifies the Church (allegorical sense), the just soul (moral
sense), and the heavenly city of God (anagogical sense) (Lubac
2000: 199; Dahan 2008: 325–350).
      The diversity of spiritual senses rests on the abundance of divine
inspiration and the variety of properties one thing has. Commenting
on Henry of Ghent’s defense of spiritual senses, Ian Christopher Levy
notes that the hidden Scriptural meanings are bestowed by the Holy
Spirit and involve properties of things (Levy 2018: 227). While a word
points to only one thing at a time, a thing has properties that open up
various simultaneously valid significations. One word can signify sev-
eral things, but not simultaneously in the same context. For instance,
the sensus as a signification of one word cannot simultaneously mean
the sensorial power. The object Jerusalem, however, has properties
that allow for multiple simultaneous significations: It is the site of the
Church’s birth, it uplifts and guides the soul through its holiness, and
it is the place of resurrection and promise of salvation.
      Since the exegesis must follow the order of spiritual senses as it
reflects the order of things ruled by God, it can never be a subjective
bestowing of meaning upon things represented by the Scripture. The
spiritual sense is not the interpreter’s construction, and the symbol-
ism of things is distinct from the figurative language (Valente 1995:
21). Aquinas distinguishes between words and fictional works, on the
one hand, and things that Scripture refers to on the other. While the
first are human products, the latter are divine ones. For this reason,
the interpretation of things is not arbitrary but must pursue the divine
order:




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    Now, positioning things in their own course so that they can
    be used to signify other things is the sole prerogative of the
    one whose providence governs things – namely God alone.
    Just as human beings can use words or fictitious representa-
    tions to signify things, God uses the course of things subject
    to divine providence in order to signify other things. But sig-
    nifying things with words or with fictitious representations
    whose sole purpose is to signify such things does not make
    for anything but the literal sense, as is clear from what we
    said earlier. Properly speaking, therefore, only the literal
    sense can be found in any branch of knowledge developed
    by human effort. The other senses are only to be found in
    writings whose author is the Holy Spirit, with human beings
    serving only as instrument (Aquinas 2020: 33).


    The distinction between a literal sense and a deeper sense of the
sacred text also appears in the medieval Jewish and Islamic exegesis.
As in the Christian case, the Jewish and Islamic exegesis, too, require
discipline and avoidance of subjective speculations. The practice of
interpretation stimulates life transformation, and access to the inner
meaning of the sacred text facilitates the reader’s union with the di-
vine. Jewish exegesis distinguishes between four senses of the Bible:
peshat (the literal sense, the plain meaning), derashah (the homileti-
cal sense), remez (the philosophical-allegorical sense), and sod (the
mystical sense) (Talmage 1999: 114–115). These four senses do not
entirely reproduce the Christian four senses, even though there are
some clear correspondences. For instance, derashah includes but is
not limited to the moral sense. The four terms are united in the acro-
nym pardes (from the initials P, R, D, S), which in Biblical Hebrew
means “garden”. In early rabbinic works, pardes was a metaphor for
Torah’s divine secrets. Islamic medieval exegesis distinguishes be-


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Mirela Oliva, Realist Meaning




tween two main meanings of the Qur’an: zahir (the literal, apparent,
exoteric meaning) and batin (the inner, esoteric meaning). In this
sense, the Shi’ite ta’wil is a spiritual exegesis that takes material
things as symbols of spiritual ones. Henry Corbin notes that this exe-
gesis follows an order given by Suhrawardi’s and Ibn Arabi’s science
of scales, thus corroborating the esoteric meanings with the geomet-
ric laws of the science of perspective (Corbin 2014: 28).
      Medieval hermeneutics was the first significant step in extending
the domain of meaning from language to all things. For this reason,
Gadamer credits the passage from sensus litteralis to sensus spiritu-
alis with the awareness of the universality of meaning:


      One encounters such universality already in the doctrine of
      meaning put forward by Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas
      Aquinas when they saw that the meaning of signs (of words)
      is surpassed in importance by the meaning of the matter
      being discussed, and because of this they were justified in
      going beyond the sensus litteralis (Gadamer 2007: 65).


      Because they relate to human life, spiritual senses constitute a
sort of existential meaning similar to what we call, nowadays, the
meaning of life (Oliva 2021a: 527). The successor of medieval Biblical
hermeneutics in modern times, German Protestant hermeneutics, in-
herited this preoccupation for existential meaning and continued to
enlarge the meaning’s domain from words to things. Indeed, Luther
maintained the idea of a deeper, existential meaning of the Bible, de-
spite his distaste for excessive symbolic interpretations. This com-
mitment to existential meaning comes to the fore especially in Schlei-
ermacher’s work that led the way in modern hermeneutics. Schleier-
macher, too, assigned meaning (Sinn) both to the linguistic and exis-
tential domains. For him, the awareness of language and the under-


216
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standing of the human person rest on meaning. Besides the meaning
of words and texts, Schleiermacher also talks about the meaning of
human beings. He distinguishes between the general meaning of hu-
man beings and the “individual meaning of a person and their par-
ticularities in relation to the concept of a human being” (Schleierma-
cher 1998: 13). In the existential context, meaning is synonymous
with value and purpose. What Schleiermacher calls the value of life
(Wert des Lebens) involves virtue (Tugend), destiny (Schicksal), pur-
pose (Zweck), and happiness (Glückseligkeit) (Schleiermacher 1995).


2. The Kantian legacy and the challenge of science: contempo-
rary hermeneutics
Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics stimulated German philosophy to de-
velop a robust notion of meaning. The inheritance of medieval her-
meneutics crossed paths with changes in modern philosophy, particu-
larly the rise of modern science and Kant’s Copernican revolution. The
notion of meaning became important for German philosophers ad-
dressing those changes, notably Hermann Lotze and Neo-Kantians. At
stake was a new way of making sense of the world emboldened by
(1) Kant’s search for the a priori, namely for conditions of intelligibil-
ity that make possible our knowledge (Coffa 1991: 1), and (2) the
need to address questions that science left unanswered. For Lotze,
meaning is a matter of connections that go beyond what science can
know through empirical methods of verification and statistical applica-
tion of natural laws. The philosophical inquiry into the meaning of the
universe must complement scientific research:


    Mechanical investigation, step by step, carries back the
    origin of events to their efficient causes, and makes no ob-
    jection when another line of inquiry thinks it discovers fur-




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Mirela Oliva, Realist Meaning




      ther a rational meaning in the total course of Nature (Lotze
      1886: 410).


      In Lotze’s view, meaning represents the origin and end of the
universe and human life as projected in a divine plan inaccessible to
science. Lotze speaks thus about the “universal cosmic meaning”
(16), “the meaning and plan of the cosmos” (302), “the end and
meaning of the whole” (392), “the secret meaning that gives life to
all things” (405), “the meaning of the universe” (451), “the meaning
and ends of our own action” (406) and “the meaning of the One of
which all its active elements are but dependent emanations” (449).
      This holistic account of meaning prevailed in German philosophy
from Neo-Kantians to hermeneutics. Neo-Kantians employed meaning
for all objects of knowledge and conceived it against the background
of a global intelligibility of the world. Neo-Kantian accounts of mean-
ing associate the world’s intelligibility with matters of value and va-
lidity. For Heinrich Rickert, Sinn is a determination of objectivity that
makes knowledge             possible.   Every   experience   entails meaning-
configurations (verstehbare Sinngebilde) (Rickert 1934: 81; Oliva
2006: 128). Likewise, for Emil Lask, meaning is a logical category
that belongs to a realm of intelligibility different from the sensible
realm and the transcendental structure of the self. Meaning desig-
nates the object’s essence understood in its formal and material
structure (Crowell 2001: 45). Finally, Cassirer places meaning within
what he calls the symbolic pregnance of elementary perception
shaped by various dimensions and connections: spatial-temporal or-
der, causal connections, and the properties of things:


      We determine the single existing thing in respect to its ob-
      jective meaning, by articulating it with the spatio-temporal
      order, the causal order, and the order of thing and property.


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    Through this ordering, it takes on a specific directional
    meaning – a vector, as it were, pointing to a determinate
    goal (Cassirer 1957: 203).


    Under the influence of Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics and post-
Kantian thinkers like Lotze, Rickert, Lask, and Cassirer, meaning took
center stage in the hermeneutic school opened by Dilthey’s philoso-
phy of life. Like Lotze, Dilthey conceived of meaning in holistic terms.
Focusing on life’s meaning, he interpreted it as a parts-whole relation
after the model of a phrase’s meaning that emerges from the connec-
tion between words and sentences:


    The particular events that constitute the life-course as it un-
    folds in the sensible world have a relationship to something
    that they mean, like the words of a sentence. Through this
    relationship, each particular lived experience is gathered to-
    gether for its meaning on the basis of some whole. As the
    words in a sentence are connected into its intelligibility, so
    the togetherness of these lived experiences produces the
    meaning of a life-course (Dilthey 2002: 255).


    Thus conceived, life’s meaning represents the value and purpose
of life events (Erlebnisse) as they fit into the value and purpose of
life’s whole. Unlike Lotze, Dilthey was merely interested in the ethical
shape of life and disregarded what Lotze called “the universal cosmic
meaning”.
    Heidegger’s philosophy was the decisive step in establishing
meaning as a universal hermeneutic notion applicable to all things.
Heidegger’s account of meaning was the converging point of Schlei-
ermacher’s hermeneutics, Neo-Kantianism, Dilthey’s philosophy of
life, and Husserl’s phenomenology of meaning. Heidegger followed his


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Mirela Oliva, Realist Meaning




teacher Husserl’s application of meaning to all objects of knowledge.
Husserl explicitly advanced a universal notion of meaning that moved
from the linguistic sphere to the sphere of intentionality (Ales Bello
2013; Crowell 2001). For Husserl, meaning (Sinn) represents the
content of an intentional act of consciousness:


      In other words, to have a sense [of something] or ‘to have
      something in mind’ is the basic character of all conscious-
      ness that for that reason is not only any experience at all,
      but a ‘noetic’ experience, one having a sense (Husserl 2014:
      178).


      While Heidegger preserved Husserl’s meaning universalism, he
put emphasis not on intentionality but on the integration of things in-
to a larger context which is already available to us in pre-
understanding:


      Meaning [Sinn] is that wherein the intelligibility [Verständ-
      lichkeit] of something maintains itself. The concept of mean-
      ing embraces the formal existential framework of what nec-
      essarily belongs to that which an understanding interpreta-
      tion articulates. Meaning is the ‘upon-which’ of a projection
      in terms of which something becomes intelligible as some-
      thing; it gets its structure from a fore-having, a fore-sight,
      and a fore-conception. In so far as understanding and inter-
      pretation make up the existential state of Being of the
      ‘there’,    ‘meaning’     must   be   conceived   as   the   formal-
      existential framework of the disclosedness which belongs to
      understanding (Heidegger 2008: 193).




220
                                             Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)




    Heidegger’s notion of meaning has two main characteristics that
testify to the influence of previous thinkers. As in Biblical hermeneu-
tics and Dilthey’s philosophy of life, meaning has an existential di-
mension. Although it applies to all objects, meaning emerges from
human beings’ pragmatic involvement with the objects they encoun-
ter. Thus, Heidegger stresses that meaning is an existential category
of Dasein, not a property attaching to entities. Things have meaning
only in relationship with the Dasein, and the world disclosed to the
Dasein:


    Entities within-the-world generally are projected upon the
    world – that is, upon a whole of significance, to whose ref-
    erence-relations concern, as Being-in-the-world, has been
    tied up in advance. When entities-within-the-world are dis-
    covered along with the Being of Dasein – that is, when they
    have come to be understood – we say that they have mean-
    ing [Sinn] (192).


    A clear-cut account of realist meaning would need to amend this
overly pragmatic framework and make room for real features of
things.
    Second, meaning has a global, holistic dimension (Steinmann
2008: 294), previously highlighted by Lotze. The meaning (Sinn) of
something indicates its relationship to a totality. Heidegger uses other
two terms, Bedeutung and Beudeutsamkeit. Bedeutung applies to an
individual object, whereas Bedeutsamkeit indicates a totality of rela-
tionships. Sinn is, thus, the broadest notion, as it refers to a global
intelligibility that includes Bedeutung and Bedeutsamkeit. This global
dimension distinguishes Heidegger’s account of meaning from other
accounts that target individual objects, like Husserl’s or Frege’s ac-
counts. Thomas Sheehan notes that, for Heidegger, meaning is nei-


                                                                           221
Mirela Oliva, Realist Meaning




ther an ideal unity of sense independent from the acts that grasp it
(Frege) nor the noema, that is, the intentional content of a noetic act
of consciousness (Husserl). According to Sheehan, this global dimen-
sion comes to the foreground, especially in the inquiry into the mean-
ing of Being, in which meaning is the “horizon within which being ap-
pears as itself intelligible” (Sheehan 2015: XVIII).
      Heidegger’s ontological interest was decisive in molding meaning
into a holistic notion. The investigation into the meaning of Being led
him to interpret the mode of Being of the human being, which is
grounded in its relationship with the entire world. For this reason,
Steven Crowell claims that Heidegger ultimately identifies meaning
with “world” as he moves “from the transcendental logical identifica-
tion of meaning and ‘object’ to the transcendental ontological concep-
tion of meaning as ‘world’” (Crowell 2001: 110). In Crowell’s reading,
this globalism of meaning is not abstract but emerges from human
experience within history. Understanding is never about discovering a
ready-made meaning but rather about grasping things against the
background of one’s personal projected possibilities. These possibili-
ties range from the mere dominion of nature (as it was the case with
the emergence of modern science) to better integration of human be-
ings in the world they inhabit by simply letting things speak to them
(as in the case of the classic model of contemplation). The existential
and global dimensions of meaning are, therefore, intertwined.
      Gadamer, Heidegger’s student, offered a similar existential and
holistic account of meaning. His starting point is the distinction be-
tween the nature of things and the language of things. While the na-
ture of things is a matter of individual essence considered separately
from subjective intentionality or interference with other things, the
language of things expresses their relationship with other things and
their belonging to a world that includes the subject. The second ex-
pression is not a philosophical metaphor but occurs in ordinary Ger-


222
                                             Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)




man. One often says, in German, “Die Dinge sprechen für sich selber”
(“Things speak for themselves”) or “sie führen eine unmissverständli-
che Sprache” (they speak an unmistakable language). Both “the na-
ture of things” and “the language of things” communicate the objec-
tive aspects of something, independent of subjective interests and
biases. However, Gadamer thinks that the notion of “nature of things”
became hostage to modern science’s domination impulse. Pure objec-
tivity is, in this context, just a mask that conceals the human will to
tame and subordinate nature. We should turn, instead, to the genuine
relationship between humans and things that comes to the fore in the
language of things. This language is not given through a special kind
of revelation but pertains to everyday experiences: “the language of
things in which the primordial correspondence of soul and being is so
exhibited that finite consciousness too can know of it” (Gadamer
1977: 76).
    The existential thrust of the meaning conveyed by the language
of things differs from the constructivist intended meaning. When we
experience something, finding the right word to describe it relies on
the intrinsic properties of the object, not on bestowing an intended
meaning. “It is the right word, and not the subjectivity of the act of
meaning, that expresses its meaning” (80). The anticipation of mean-
ing that guides understanding rests on the subject’s embedding in a
world that provides already meaningful connections, not on the arbi-
trariness of human consciousness. This anticipation regards the exist-
ence and unity of meaning. We anticipate that something has mean-
ing and that its meaning is unitary, concerning all its parts. We can
even anticipate, to a certain degree, the type of meaning involved. If
we see a vase of flowers on the crossing, we either think it got there
by mistake (for instance, it fell off a truck transporting flower vases)
or somebody intentionally put it there. Still, we cannot anticipate the
full meaning of that vase’s presence on the street.


                                                                           223
Mirela Oliva, Realist Meaning




      What Gadamer calls the “commensuratedness of the created
souls with created things” pairs with the relationships of things
among themselves. Like Heidegger, Gadamer associates the existen-
tial and holistic dimensions of meaning. The language of things ex-
presses “the original harmony of all things created” (81). Understand-
ing always involves a totality of meaning (Sinnganze or Ganze von
Sinn) because what is to be understood never stands alone but in re-
lation to other things. For instance, the meaning of personal history
arises from special events that shape the whole of a person’s life
(Gadamer 1986: 29).


3. What is the meaning of things?
We have seen how the hermeneutic tradition expanded the sphere of
meaning beyond language and envisioned the meaning of things exis-
tentially and holistically. The meaning of a thing engages one or more
relationships that the thing has with other things, projected against
the background of a global intelligibility accessible to us as beings
who have a world. Contemporary everyday language accommodates
this meaning inquiring into the meaning of situations, actions, life,
history, the universe, artificial intelligence, climate change, and so on.
We now zoom in on a more precise determination of the meaning of
things. What are the relationships that constitute meaning? Why is
our belonging to the world relevant for the meaning of things? We
still need more clarity about what meaning is. In their book The
Meaning of Meaning, first published in 1923, C.K. Ogden and I.A.
Richards lament the vagueness of philosophical accounts of meaning:


      A study of the utterances of Philosophers suggests that they
      are not to be trusted in their dealings with Meaning. [...] In
      two ways it has been easy and natural for philosophers to
      hypostatize their definiendum; either by inventing a peculiar


224
                                             Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)




    stuff, an intrinsic property, and then saying let everything
    which possesses this be said to possess meaning, or by in-
    venting a special unanalysable relation, and saying let eve-
    rything related by this relation to something else be said to
    have a meaning (Ogden and Richards 1989: 185).


    Hundred years later, we are still scrambling to define meaning,
especially regarding the meaning of things. While debates about lin-
guistic meaning have animated most of the 20th century, there are no
substantial debates about the meaning of things. Compared to the
centuries-long history of linguistic meaning, the history of the mean-
ing of things is more recent and thus needs more time to settle and
bear fruit. One notable exception is the meaning of life, whose study
has increased in the last decades, especially in analytic philosophy
(Metz 2013; Landau 2022), thus dispelling the analytic hesitance to
employ “meaning” outside the linguistic sphere (Mawson 2016: 30).
Another possible explanation for the difficulty in finding clarity about
the meaning of things is its polysemy. When applied to things, mean-
ing can have various significations: essence, origin, purpose, cause,
relevance, value, and significance. Bringing all these significations
within a unified account is not simple. For the most prudent among
us, perhaps philosophy should stay away from such a messy concept.
However, the frequency of occurrences in the everyday language
compels philosophy to take charge of this expanded concept (Figal
2009: 149).
    There seem to be several options at this stage. First, we could
reduce meaning to one signification that can be the basis for deriva-
tive significations. Essence could be such baseline signification. Eve-
rything else about a thing derives, more or less, from its properties
or, at least, has some bearing on its properties. This kind of reduction
would also build continuity with linguistic meaning. Linguistic mean-


                                                                           225
Mirela Oliva, Realist Meaning




ing, too, is associated with the essence of the thing that a word signi-
fies, although this is a controversial matter (Putnam 1994: 449). The
word “tree” refers to the class of objects that share a specific es-
sence. In the case of the thing tree, the derivatives of the primary
signification indicate, for instance, in which way the essence of the
tree supports its purpose and place among living things. Alternatively,
they indicate the tree’s origin on the scale of evolution, that is, how
the tree’s properties developed from previous forms of living. One
could eventually standardize such an account as a sort of “historical
essence”, or “contextualized essence”.
      However, this simplified solution does not do justice to the sub-
stantial dependence of these derivatives on matters outside the thing
itself. For example, the importance of the tree for the ecosystem and,
more particularly, the climate of a place and the well-being of those
living in its proximity depends not only on the tree’s properties but
also on the climate, the place, and those living around it. This de-
pendence shows that meaning is not exclusively intrinsic to a thing
but has a relational nature that is as relevant as its essence. The oth-
er significations of meaning – origin, purpose, relevance, cause, and
value – are thus not mere derivatives because they engage primary
importance features. The insistence of hermeneutics on the holistic
dimension of meaning appears, thus, entirely justified.
      The second solution would be to maintain all significations of
meaning, find a common denominator and untangle the metaphysical
and ethical assumptions that underpin the meaning holism. The first
question we might raise here concerns the possible redundancy of
meaning. If the meaning of things means purpose, origin, value, rele-
vance, or cause, why don’t we employ those words directly? Why
don’t we ask about the purpose of trees instead of their meaning? Or
about the origin of the universe instead of its meaning? Why do we
need a new word to express certain aspects for which we already


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have words and, in philosophy, specific categories? The reasons for
this linguistic overhaul pertain, I believe, to the holistic and existen-
tial nature of meaning. Meaning is an opportunity to rethink funda-
mental questions in a new key and integrate them into a larger pic-
ture that is both coherent and value-oriented. The connections ex-
pressed by meaning and the totality to which they belong carry value,
that is, are governed by principles of order, goodness, and generative
abundance. Meaning plays an integrative role, combining different
philosophical fields in the same way Plato’s Republic weaves ques-
tions about the good and the structure of reality. The existential
thrust of meaning, highlighted by the hermeneutic tradition since the
Biblical exegesis, does not conduce to subjective constructivism, as
John Haldane or Joshua Hochschild fear (Haldane 2008: 140;
Hochschild 2021: 502), but to a value-laden worldview.
    Nozick’s relational account of meaning is helpful in this regard
and remarkably similar to the hermeneutic tradition. On the one
hand, Nozick thinks that hermeneutics and phenomenology failed to
advance a non-reductionist account of human meaning: “Far more
important is the task /.../ of delineating what an illuminating nonre-
ductionist view of man in society would be like. Too often, the so
called ‘interpretative’ social theory, drawing upon the philosophical
literature of the phenomenological school, is merely obscurantist”
(Nozick 1981: 642). On the other hand, Nozick’s account is similar, in
spirit, to the hermeneutic one, as he defines meaning holistically and
axiologically. Nozick is straightforward in defending meaning realism.
Meaning, for him, is a dimension of reality that represents relational
integration (Oliva 2019: 472–475). We ask about the meaning of
something when we need an explanation that surpasses the thing it-
self. As we saw in the example of the meaning of trees, we ask for a
connection that trees have with the ecosystem or the evolution of the
vegetal realm. Similarly, the meaning of a word represents a connec-


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tion that the word has with an object. This definition unifies, thus, the
linguistic meaning and the meaning of things.
       The meaning connection must be of a certain relevance:


      We can understand the question of something’s meaning,
      roughly, as the question of how it connects up to what is
      outside it. Not all ways of connecting need be of interest,
      but for the ways that are, something’s meaning is how it
      connects in these ways with what is external to it /.../ The
      question of the meaning of something is: given what is ex-
      ternal to it, how does it connect (in the preferred ways) with
      that (Nozick 1981: 601).


      Nozick gives two criteria of relevance for the connection. First,
the connection must carry some value: “Meaning cannot be gained by
just any linkage beyond boundaries, for instance, with something that
is completely worthless. [...] Meaning can be gained by linking with
something of value” (Nozick 1989: 167). Second, the connection
must have a particular strength and intensity: “The greater the link,
the closer, the more forceful, the more intense and extensive it is, the
greater the meaning gotten” (168).
      Starting from the uses of “meaning” in everyday language,
Nozick distinguishes between eight kinds of meaning: (1) meaning as
an external causal relationship. Meaning can express (a) causal con-
sequences (for instance, in the sentence “Digging under a neighbor’s
country border means war”, the meaning of the action of digging is
the cause of war); (b) causal antecedents or causal concomitants (for
instance, in the sentence “Smoke means fire”, the meaning of smoke
is to be the effect of fire); (2) meaning as external referential or se-
mantic relation: synonymy (“brother” means “male sibling”), refer-
ence (“the man in the corner” means him), standing for a fact (a


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white flag means surrender), or symbolizing (the meaning of Yeats’
“rough beast”); (3) meaning as intention or purpose: intending an
action (“What is the meaning of this outburst?”), purpose (“The
workers’ protest is meant to ask for higher salaries”), or intending to
convey something that would show another person one’s intention
(“By that gesture, he meant to insult us.”); (4) meaning as a lesson
(“The Nazi period means that even a most civilized nation can commit
great atrocities”; (5) meaning as personal significance, value, im-
portance, mattering (“You mean a lot to me”); (6) meaning as objec-
tive meaningfulness: importance, significance, meaning (“Helping
others conduces to a meaningful life”); (7) meaning as intrinsic
meaningfulness: objective meaning in itself, apart from connections
to anything else (for instance, the meaning of life in the face of
death); (8) meaning as total resultant meaning: the sum of (1)-(7)
(Nozick 1981: 574).
    The question of life’s meaning integrates all these kinds of mean-
ing because it requires a unified worldview. This is not an anthropo-
centric spin on the structure of reality but rather a way to bridge the
moral and metaphysical realms and recognize the value in the con-
nections that make up the universe. The method proposed by Nozick
is non-reductionist understanding, similar to hermeneutic under-
standing: (1) recognizing valuable traits without reducing them to
something less valuable; (2) reasoning by analogy, discovering simi-
larities and patterns and integrating parts into wholes.


    By its placement of each in relation to the others, the pat-
    terning will straddle the different dimensions, unifying them
    by simultaneously showing the meaning of each, and the
    value (organic unity) of the whole in the largest overall pat-
    terning and so the widest explanatory picture (641).




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Mirela Oliva, Realist Meaning




      This account confirms the holistic and existential character of
meaning. Because meaning is, for Nozick, not just a tool of under-
standing but a dimension of reality, it underpins and unifies all fields
of reality and, thus, all fields of philosophical reflection. The polysemy
of meaning is constitutive of this unifying role. Rather than fearing it,
philosophy might greatly build on it. Meaning could be a liaison be-
tween branches like metaphysics, ethics, and anthropology without
altering their integrity. Hermeneutics has already blended practical
and theoretical philosophy (George 2020; Risser 2012), sometimes
accentuating the first at the latter’s expense (Figal 2010: 17). The
relation between meaning and the metaphysical categories needs
new consideration. We must overcome the opposition that some
thinkers in the hermeneutic tradition and the classic metaphysical
tradition establish between meaning and the metaphysical categories.
For    instance,     the    contrast   that   some   hermeneutic   and   Neo-
Aristotelian authors posit between meaning and causation needs revi-
sion (Oliva 2021b). Hermeneutic scholars like Heidegger and Cooper
claim that meaning arises from our genuine experience, whereas cau-
sation is a construct. In contrast, Neo-Aristotelian scholars claim the
opposite: Causation is a primary phenomenon in reality, whereas
meaning is a construal. But this contrast is less insurmountable than
it seems at first glance. In a previous paper, I attempted to define the
narrative meaning of life as a causal relation, thus associating causa-
tion with existential meaning (Oliva 2021c). I found in Aristotle’s def-
inition of plot in Poetics resources for this identification and developed
a notion of narrative meaning based on the Aristotelian causal model.
Therefore, an account of realist meaning can preserve the continuity
with the classical tradition while innovating according to contempo-
rary questions and conceptuality. To get around the opposition mean-
ing/metaphysical categories, we must examine how the hermeneutics
of the lifeworld can benefit metaphysics (Koch 2016: 175) and how


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metaphysics can enrich the existential approach in hermeneutics
(Fried 2021; Mura 2005).


4. Conclusion
In this paper, I tried to defend a notion of realist meaning that entails
the real properties of things and the connections things have with
other things, human beings, and the universe at large. The extension
of the sphere of meaning from linguistic meaning to the meaning of
things started in medieval Biblical hermeneutics and continued in
modern and contemporary hermeneutics under the influence of the
Kantian legacy and challenges that science posed to philosophy. The
meaning of things represents their origin, purpose, causal connec-
tions with other things, value, relevance, and place within a larger
context. This polysemy should not discourage philosophy in pursuing
a reflection on meaning. It rather constitutes the potential of this no-
tion to unify various fields of reality, as Nozick’s account shows. The
commonalities between hermeneutics and Nozick’s analytic philoso-
phy of meaning testify to the important role that realist meaning
plays in contemporary philosophy.




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