Having Significance, or Being Significant?: An Examination of Dooyeweerdâs Positing of Meaning not Existence as the Fundamental Property of Things

Having Significance, or Being Significant?: An Examination of Dooyeweerd’s Positing of Meaning not Existence as the Fundamental Property of Things\nThe search for meaning has been, and continues to be, a perennial problem in human life. This problem has also been addressed throughout the history of philosophy, but without coming to any firm conclusions. The hopes that came with the Enlightenment, and the ‘Existential’ movement of the 20th Century, seem to have come and gone, and yet there is still a sense that something is missing. To find meaning and significance in human life, there are some fundamental questions that must be wrestled with: Is meaning something that we have? Something that is added on to our being? Or, is meaning what we are fundamentally? Is meaning our existence?\nThe proposed paper will explore these questions by examining the notions of essence and existence, meaning and significance, and monistic versus dualistic approaches to understanding the world. By pointing out some of the inconsistencies that occur in a dualist framework with regards to meaning as something additional to being, this paper will show that the unity within a monist paradigm secures meaning as inherent to human being, not something added to it, and so endorses a more robust understanding of meaning. This move highlights the contingency, and not self-sufficiency, of human beings and all created things as meaning as being points to something beyond created things.\nThe main support for this paper will come from the Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977), as well as from other philosophers working in the neo-Calvinist tradition, such as Alvin Plantinga. Using Dooyeweerd’s dictum that ‘Meaning is the being of all creaturely things’ as our starting point, I will endeavour to show that the fullest form of meaning and significance is not something added on to human being, but is the essence of human being. This paper will argue that meaning as being points to the necessary contingencies of human nature. As, like Charles Taylor opines, there is a felt sense of loss and malaise with the eclipse of transcendence, Dooyeweerd’s position shows that meaning as being is rooted in a contingent reliance of humanity on the transcendent. However, a return to some form of transcendence may be the answer for the questions of meaning that continue to plague humanity.\nMark F. NovakStudent, MA in Philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies (Toronto) E-Mail: mnovak@icscanada.edu Cell: 403-481-7004\nKeywords: meaning, being, Dooyeweerd, contingency, transcendent

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