What Do We Mean When We Talk about Meaning? (eBook)

A comprehensive journey through the history of "e;meaning,"e; from antiquity to modern day.The word meaning appears often in our daily lives: religious leaders holding out the promise of meaning for their followers, self-help manuals seeking to demonstrate the power of meaning to enrich our lives, and most frequently people questioning the meaning of life. The word carries a multitude of connotations, from "e;purpose"e; to "e;value"e; and "e;essence"e; to "e;mysterious truth"e;, but this diversity of understanding is rarely explored. In What Do We Mean When We Talk About Meaning?, Steven Cassedy tells the story of how a word that began by denoting "e;signifying"e; and "e;intending"e; came to acquire such a broad array of sub-definitions. The book begins with the early Christian thinkers who believed meaning could be "e;read"e; from the world as if it were holy scripture, then moves into the philosophers who adapted this notion and eventually the Romantic-era Germans that coined "e;the meaning of life,"e; a phrase that later traveled to Great Britain, the United States, and Russia. The book also extends into the twentieth century, when "e;meaning"e; acquired its greatest power in the realms of religion, psychotherapy, and self-help, all of which helped it to accumulate the fluidity and ambiguity it still displays today.