 
                         20051013.00

     I pay, at least, lip service to the Socratic confession
that all I know is that I know nothing.  A stage further,
never mind the confession, feigned or real, of ignorance,
looms the issue of meaning. To claim ignorance implies, at
minimum that the concept ignorance is meaningful, and
mirrored, the concept knowledge, and that it makes sense to
debate, to discuss the question, what, if anything it is of
which I am ignorant, and what both ignorance and its opposite
might be. One readily penetrates to the question, whether
language and its expression have meaning at all.

     But clearly this question is answer itself, or its
answer is self-evident. For if one is able to ask the
question about the meaning of language, then one has ones
answer, in the affirmative. If the answer were negative, the
question could not even be asked, hence there would be no
answer, to wit, a negative answer is a contradiction in
terms.

     Nonetheless, the circumstance that language itself
implies, certifies and guarantees meaning does not justify
the inference that such meaning is limitless. Meaning is
there for the individual who understands; to the extent that
language is communal, meaning is there for the community for
which that language becomes explicit and objective. However,
beyond the (aggregation of) individuals who understand,
meaning dissipates and disappears.

                          * * * * *
Copyright 2005, Ernst Jochen Meyer
