Gerald Bivens

Projects

Definitions

'meaning'=df

Wittgenstein's perspicuous quotation from ordinary language is meant to remind the foundational epistemologist that language is not a system of representation matching up words and things, a system whose faults, paradoxes, and rough places might be smoothed away so that a regular structure of representation might be established or, as in deconstruction or skepticism, subverted. Meaning is not a matter of justified representation but of responsible use, of activity. And it is the rough places that allow language to operate, the gear to mesh.1

You know, there are so many things that happen that you don't know the meaning of at the time; they acquire meaning only after a long time. They may acquire meaning after a time.2

It says what it means: it is what it means. The isness of meaning is what the purpose of a line of a poem should be.3

Notes

  1. Jay Cantor, "On Stanley Cavell," in Raritan (City of publication: Publisher, Year published), 48-9.
  2. Robert Penn Warren, "Poetry as a Way of Life," in Talking with Robert Penn Warren (City of publication: Publisher, Year published), 372.
  3. Robert Penn Warren, "A Conversation," in Talking with Robert Penn Warren (City of publication: Publisher, Year published), 400.