MEANING AS CONSTITUTIVE OF COMMUNICATION AND COMMUNION: LONERGAN

Today seeking meaning in life is a common phenomenon that we all come across. Now it is sought in things, gadgets, celebrities, movies, sports, drinks, music, business and what not. Thus we have reached a state where meaning is to be found very instantly and immediately. The picture aptly depicts the attitude of today’s new generation where meaning is to be found totally out side the self and end up terribly disappointed, discouraged and disgusted. Some prominent examples can be that of Michael Jackson, Whiney Houston, Marilyn Monroe and Tiger Woods etc. What was missing in their life? What could be the reason why they failed to strike the balance between life/career and meaning? In this multimedia era finding meaning is very crucial and challenging. In this context Victor Frankel is one person who inspires me with his life; in spite of struggles he lived his life with a purpose. In this regard there are so many others like, Hellen Keller, Mother Teresa, John Paul II, Steve Jobbs, Buffet, Bekham, Lionnel Messi, Abdul Kalam etc. In this context I have personally consulted two special people to know what is meaning and how can we find meaning in life from their perspective.

Fr Tony: Life is to be lived and looked from two dimensions: to live for the other and the society. To realize the spiritual dimension that is deep with in all. The task is to make the youth realize this.

Cl Mylin: Stop seeking instant success, have a sense of humor/ optimism, genuine friendship rather than lax relationships, above all seeking proper guidance is prerequisite to making life worth living.

After having seen what is the meaning of life from two persons’ perspective, let us delve now what Bernard Lonergan says of Meaning. In 1965 lectures at Marquette University, Lonergan lays out some of the ideas as a major shift from Insight to Method in Theology. He stresses a lot on meaning, culture poetry and other symbolic aspects. He distinguishes four realms of meaning: Common sense is where meaning is expressed in everyday or ordinary language.  Theory is where meaning is expressed in technical language. Interiority is where meaning rests upon self-appropriation, attending not only to objects but also attending subjects. Transcendence is where meaning emerges through the language of prayer and relation to divinity.  

Lonergan discovers meaning through common sense makes a difference in the real lives of individuals and cultures by discovering the realms of interiority and theory. Therefore, meaning sums up in insight, understanding and judgment which is communicated and mediated through the carriers of meaning inter-subjectivity, art, symbols, linguistic and incarnate. To derive an authentic meaning in life one must be attentive to what goes on within oneself, the feelgs and images that form within. Because feelings are like links to express and discover mind, body and heart. The symbols are channels between mind, body and heart which help to communicate and perceive meaning. Thus one goes beyond mere symbols/images and takes the linguistic meaning.  

INTER-SUBJECTIVITY: ‘We’ that result from the mutual love of an “I” and a “thou”, there is the “we” that precedes the distinction of subjects. This prior “we” is vital and functional as inter-subjectivity. This becomes much clearer, when a person spontaneously raises one’s hand to save from a blow, one reaches out to a child found with a knife, when a person sees a child on the road s/he naturally saves the child from the stream of vehicles. Thus inter-subjectivity is not only spontaneously mutual but also in some of the ways through which feelings are communicated in community and fellow-feeling like sorrow felt by both parents for their dead child and the fellow feeling felt by a third party moved by the sorrow.  Examples of this are Prayerful attitude of the others, grief/laugh/sickness of one.   

INTERSUBJECTIVE MEANING: Lonergan explains this by an image of a smile. Smile is not a combination of movements of lips, facial muscles and the eyes but a combination with a meaning. This meaning is different from the meaning of a frown, stare, glare and a laugh. We don’t smile at all whom we see on the streets. Smile is highly perceptible and has orientation and selects a meaning. Eg. One can converse with a friend on a noisy street.  Both the meaning of a smile and the act of smiling are natural and spontaneous. The meaning of a smile is made on our own and this does not change from the culture to culture like the meaning of the gestures. For example removing the hat is contextual in British culture but in India it has no referential meaning at all.  

ART: is defined as the objectification of a purely experiential pattern. Now the pattern of the perceived is also the pattern of the perceiving and the pattern of the perceiving is an experiential pattern. For example at the red signal light the brake goes on and at the green light the accelerator is pressed down. Thus our senses can function in the service of scientific intelligence. The meaning lies within the consciousness of the artist but, at first, it is only implicit, folded up, veiled, unrevealed. The process of objectifying involves detachment, distinction, separation from experience. While a smile or frown expresses inter-subjectively and artistic composition recollects emotion in tranquility.

SYMBOLS: For Lonergan the image of real or imaginary objects evoke a feeling. Feelings are related to objects as one desires food, fears pain, enjoys a meal, and regrets a friend’s illness or death. Feelings are related to one another through personal relationships: love, gentleness, tenderness and intimacy. In communication symbols display a proper meaning that is not yet objectified as the meaning of the smile prior to a phenomenology of the smile or the meaning in the purely experiential pattern prior to its expression in art. So, to explain the symbols is to go beyond the symbols. It is to effect the transition from an elemental meaning in an image to a linguistic meaning projected in historical monuments and memories  such as the Tajmahal, Cross, Photos, Statues, Relics, Gifts, Awards and Historical Structures.

LINGUISTIC MEANING: Here meaning finds its greatest liberation in language. For example, Helen Kellers’s discovery of the successive touches made on her hands by her teacher conveyed names of the objects. The moment when she first caught on was marked by the expression of profound emotion and bore fruit in an interest signifying the desire to learn. Here we see the new aspect of naming which is important. That conscious intentionality develops and is molded by the mother tongue. It is not merely learn the names of what we see but also we can attend to and talk about things by naming them. Thus language molds and develops our consciousness. 

INCARNATE MEANING: Cor ad cor lonquitur. Here the meaning of a person is found in the way of life, words and deeds. It holds the meaning for one person or for a whole nation, social, cultural and religious tradition like group achievement, Christian martyrs, Religious Life. It can be originated from the whole personality and lifestyle. A person finds meaning in what is accomplished than bothering about what could be done; like that of a farmer who is happy with his work. We have wonderful examples in the Holy Scriptures, Soldiers, Doctors and Mother, who have found meaning in what they loved to do. So, meaning is within and not to be found something out there but within. Thus meaning has an intrinsic element.   

Conclusion: The meaning of life is pretty straightforward to state. Because life is meaningful according to the meaning you give to it when you make room for purpose, values and efficacy in life. In the line of Purpose: is very essential and prerequisite for a meaningful life. This helps to live happily in whatever work that we do and find joy. Thus the meaning in life comes by climbing one’s set goals and beating the challenges by turning them into opportunities. Values: values are formed from the moral structure that distinguishes the right and wrong for the public and common good. Values can be cultivated through education, awareness, religion, family and authentic friends and relationships. Efficacy: when we speak of efficacy what matters is, not how long one lived but rather how well one lived and thus left a legacy for the rest to follow. This is what I would like to call living differently and thinking differently. It’s like Shiv Khera telling in You Can Win “successful people don’t do different things but they do things differently.”  

We find our life meaningful in our family, work, hobbies and other things. Thus meaning plays the fundamental role in human communication mutually mediated by meaning in the community. Thus Lonergan finds meaning in perceiving, appropriating, sharing and receiving by one another in the community and not all alone. Thus meaning is constitutive of human community and communication. It is created and shared in inter-subjectivity. Likewise meaning is constituted in human community and communication. William Stewart writes “meaning is what you understand by a given word.” Although external word refers to an interior meaning; for him meaning is not out there now. 

Meaning must be discovered before it can be shared. Lonergan stresses this discovery of meaning by the subject. The self makes a gesture, the other makes an interpretive response and the self discovers in the response the effective meaning of his gesture. So meaning is something that is interior to a person.  Interiority of meaning is revealed as one passing from an infant’s world of immediacy to the world mediated by meaning. Meaning is socially constructed and socially transmitted from generation to generation. Therefore meaning is very much a prerequisite for a purposeful life. Lack of meaning in life will end fatally and miserably. Therefore to avoid this we must cultivate the above mentioned virtues, qualities and the dispositions proposed by the people who are wise and prudent having experienced life effectively and affectively in the dimensions of spiritual, social and emotional.  If we live with a purpose in mind that entails values and dispositions with effective maturity and behavioral attitude I am sure the dream of Lonergan for meaning as constitutive of communication and communion will be realized in harmonious and purpose full living.