Helen Kant On The Meaning Of Meaning

Often we ask one another, “What do you mean?” in an effort to understand something more clearly, whether it be a comment, joke, language, even a word, or in many cases objects, encounters, experiences, and sometimes other people, that are difficult to understand. All together creating meaning helps with understanding and making meaning of one another. On the other hand, language also has meaning; It has meaning that is attached to by the application of a certain group or culture. Most importantly, there is the meaning as the individual and what he/she has meaning for. Individuals have meaning for things and their personal importance; however, I also think that there are many meanings that are attached to the individual as there are different …show more content…
From the actuality and the possibility a symbol is made. However, in the Cassier hand out Kant expresses that “[. . .] the difference between actuality and possibility also becomes uncertain” it is through this uncertainty that imagination surfaces and through this congregation a symbol arises, which in turn through the subconscious, maybe, meaning is created (Cassier). It is through the imagination that, I think Helen Keller was able to survive throughout her life. Our culture and peers give us their meaning for us to use to give meaning to our external world. In other words what is meaningful to us is out of the creation from the imagination of others that have been conditioned. Therefore, I would state that the mind and the subconscious are very important for creating meaning for the external and internal world, but it is only through experience that not only do we analyze the meaning that is given but allows for one to create their own meaning. In the class handout on Romanticism it states that Blake and Coleridge who were also “idealist” because for them the mind is the jewel of importance; however, they also believed that the governing work of the mind is imagination (Romanticism, 293). In this sense imagination is vital for creating meaning for oneself and of that of what is “out there.” However, I do disagree with the standpoint of “Each (Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats who) confined not only that the imagination was (the) most precious possession but it was somehow concerned with a supernatural order” and instead I think that it is the order of the individual him and herself and their experiences, which is to say that meaning does not come from mystical place but instead from individuals themselves. (Romantics handout, 293). Hence, imagination and that of others helps with understanding meaning while the experience permits for the