MEANING is much in demand, and no end of agents are on hand, purporting to provide it. Giving meaning to life could serve as a summary of many a mission statement — and how many utterances now begin with an obligatory but redundant “I mean”? So, the topic is ripe for this informed if rather irreverent overview.
The opening chapters describe how words for “meaning” in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin referred to what things around us, or words in, for example, scripture, signified. This held sway until the Age of Enlightenment and the arrival of the modern scientific world-view, when “meanings” (of things now subject to objective explanation) gave way to “Meaning” in the singular as “a mysterious essence lurking behind appearances in the world”. So it was that “The Meaning of Life” emerges as a kind of Holy Grail much sought after by the high priests of Idealism and Romanticism.
It is to the meaning of “meaning” in “The Meaning of Life” that Cassedy devotes chapters embracing a pretty comprehensive survey of theological, philosophical, and social movements deploying and developing the term in ways that now affect Church and society perhaps more than ever.
A crucial issue is to do with how words for “meaning” in German, French, and Russian have been translated into English from key texts by Kant, Schleiermacher, Novalis, Tillich, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky — all identified here as key contributors to “The Meaning of Life” safari.
While those other European languages majored on “meaning” as a noun referring to, for example, “purpose”, “value”, “significance”, “explanation”, etc., English derived “meaning” directly from a verb, “to mean”. This gives specific agency to whatever or whoever possesses it. So, in English, “The Meaning of Life” can refer to a goal or sense of purpose for which we seek, as in those European languages, but it can also refer to an agent such as God who confers Meaning, or perhaps to life itself as a Meaning-giver.
It was this Anglophone emphasis that Cassedy sees invoked in the so-called Age of Anxiety, with the growth of psychotherapy, self-help movements, survival strategies (Viktor Frankl in German death camps, for instance), and post-traumatic disorders.
Significantly, Cassedy draws attention to ways in which organised religion has latched on to these modern trends, as successive popes, evangelists, and rabbis have invoked “The Meaning of Life” to win friends and influence people in a secular age.
He argues that, although “meaning” has become ubiquitous in the modern world — and especially the developed world — it is the word’s colourful history, ambiguity, and polyvalency that have proved serviceable to those for whom established religious and philosophical nostrums have lost their appeal. A chapter devoted to “meaning” as bridging secular and sacred points of view makes a positive contribution to current debates between religion and atheism.
Overall, Cassedy displays an extraordinary breadth of acquaintance with numerous disciplines, from semantics to psychotherapy. But he cannot disguise his suspicion of any language that defies precise definition, and people of faith who are at ease with mystery and provisionality as integral to religious and theological discourse, and who may well feel unduly patronised.
The Rt Revd Dr John Saxbee is a former Bishop of Lincoln.
What Do We Mean When We Talk About Meaning?
Steven Cassedy
OUP £19.99
(978-0-19-093690-7)
Church Times Bookshop £17.99