2. Sources Of Meaning

When we try to understand where meaning comes from, certain answers suggest themselves almost automatically.

For a long time, religion and metaphysics provided such answers. In many contexts, reason has taken their place.

Together, these approaches define the familiar space within which questions of meaning are usually addressed.

It remains to be seen whether any of them can account for what moments present.

Religion And Metaphysics

Religion and metaphysics were, for a long time, the natural places to turn when questions of absolute meaning arose. They do not hesitate where other approaches do. They speak of ultimates: of God, of the Good, of Being, of a final order that grounds why anything matters at all. In this sense, they are uniquely suited to the task. They do not shy away from absolutes; they promise them.

It is therefore tempting to understand moments through their language. Moments seem to carry a weight that exceeds all relative concerns. They arrive with a seriousness that feels unconditional. Religion and metaphysics appear to offer exactly what is needed here: a framework in which such seriousness has a name, a source, and a place in the structure of reality.

And yet, something does not fit.

Religion and metaphysics explain absolute meaning by locating it elsewhere: in a transcendent order, a divine will, a metaphysical ground. Meaning, on these accounts, comes from above, beyond, or behind the world we inhabit. It is secured by doctrines, principles, or ultimate entities. Moments, however, do not present themselves in this way. They do not announce a doctrine, reveal a law, or disclose a structure of reality. They do not tell you what the absolute is, nor where it resides.

More importantly, they do not bind. They do not command belief, obedience, or allegiance. They do not ask to be integrated into a system of thought or practice. Whatever their force, it is not the force of revelation in the traditional sense. They do not found a religion, nor do they confirm one. When taken seriously, they remain strangely unaligned with dogma.

There is also a more practical tension. Religion and metaphysics aim at shared truth. They make claims that are meant to hold not only for one person, but for all. They seek articulation, transmission, teaching. Moments resist this. They are not objects of agreement or disagreement. They cannot be passed on intact. They remain bound to the life in which they occur, even as they orient and integrate it.

For these reasons, religion and metaphysics feel both too strong and too rigid. They expect more than moments give, and give more than moments ask for. They explain absolute meaning by filling it with content, while moments present absolute meaningfulness without content. What they offer overshoots the phenomenon.

This does not make religion or metaphysics false. It means only that, when it comes to accounting for what moments present, they miss their mark. They explain something else: something more articulate, more stable, more sayable.

There is also a more basic difficulty. Even if religion and metaphysics could explain moments contentually, they can no longer do so formally. They no longer stand as unquestioned sources of meaning.

To explain the meaning of moments by appeal to religion or metaphysics would reverse the order of grounding. It would not be religion or metaphysics that clarify the meaning of moments, but moments that would clarify the meaning of religion or metaphysics. Whatever one thinks of these traditions, this is no longer how explanation can work. Religion and metaphysics no longer carry meaning with that force.

This becomes evident as soon as one tries to carry out such an explanation. Which religion, which metaphysics would one choose, and why? Their plurality does not strengthen their explanatory power. It dissolves it.

Reason

Reason approaches questions of meaning from a very different angle. It does not promise absolutes, and it does not speak of ultimates. Its strength lies elsewhere. Reason is empirical, comparative, and fallible. It explains by relating things to other things: by causes, correlations, functions, and histories. It asks how something came to be, how it works, and under which conditions it can be expected to occur again.

In many contexts, this has made reason the dominant source of orientation. Where religion and metaphysics once offered comprehensive answers, reason offers reliability. It does not claim to tell us what ultimately matters, but it tells us what is the case, what follows from what, and what we can reasonably expect. Its authority is not derived from revelation or doctrine, but from method and success.

At first glance, this seems well suited to moments. Moments occur in the world. They happen to embodied people, at particular times and places. Reason can describe their conditions, their triggers, and their effects. It can speak of psychological states, neurological processes, social contexts, and personal histories. It can explain why such experiences tend to occur in certain situations and not in others.

And yet, here too, something does not fit.

Reason explains by generalization. It seeks patterns, regularities, and repeatable structures. What it explains, it explains as an instance of a type. Moments resist this. They matter precisely as singular. They are not experienced as examples of a class, nor as outcomes of a process that could, in principle, be run again. When treated as such, their character is lost. What reason gains in explanatory power, it pays for by dissolving what made the moment matter in the first place.

More importantly, reason explains by reduction. It accounts for phenomena by relating them to more basic components or more general mechanisms. In doing so, it necessarily shifts attention away from what is immediately given. Moments, however, do not present themselves as composites to be analyzed. They present themselves as wholes. Their meaningfulness is not the sum of contributing factors. Knowing more about their causes does not deepen their meaning. It often does the opposite.

There is also a categorical limit. Reason is, by its own standards, relative. Its claims are always conditional: valid under certain assumptions, within certain models, given certain evidence. This is its virtue. But absolute meaningfulness is not conditional in this way. It does not appear as "meaningful given that...". It appears as meaningful in itself. Reason can describe this appearance, but it cannot underwrite it without stepping beyond its own domain.

Finally, reason is silent on why anything should matter at all. It can tell us how values emerge, how they function, and how they change. It cannot tell us why they should bind us. When applied to moments, this silence becomes audible. Reason can explain that a moment had an impact, and how it reoriented a life. It cannot explain why that reorientation should be taken seriously.

This is not a failure of reason, but a boundary of it. Reason does exactly what it is meant to do. It explains within the world, not the world as meaningful. When confronted with moments, it can clarify, contextualize, and demystify. What it cannot do is account for their absolute meaningfulness without transforming it into something else, without discarding them as what they present themselves to be.