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Originally Posted by Paracelsus  I dont want to sound like a semiotic gorilla but essence is a quality or if you will an attribute of being, meaning is something we generate in the process of our existence, as much as i admire the ethical life i would not define ethics as the function and purpose of being. Ethics provide a moral light house in a sea of absurdity eg the current state of the world.
Being is the state of conscious perception which allows the individual to interact with other sentient beings to engage and experience life. |
If you are saying that for people, being is life, well, yes. But life is different from any other form of being. We have to be made by living beings to have life. Life is not only a quality we have, but one we must share. And in relation to life all things have a value, a meaning in relation to their effect upon life. These things we find meaningful do not have meaning on their own, and we do not generate meaning. We recognize life in what supports life, and hold it highly valuable. We find no meaning in all that does not, in some sense, support life, and we find a negative meaning in that which endangers life. Ethics is one of those qualities concieved only of meaning because as a consideration, ethics support life. Since meaning is insepparable from life, so that one implies the other, I think it is pointless to try to talk of one without the other. Being is meaning, and when the matter of life, our meat, and our motation is removed from us all that is left that is common to all life is meaning. Certainly consciousness as we consider it is not common to all life. And still it has meaning.