Meaning as the Good

The veneer of goodness haunts meaning. It comes from Plato of course- The idea that true knowledge is ought with Go holy light - so that knowing it makes you good- it does good. a good that is external to us all - a good that sweeps us up and along, and makes things happen this way or that. The idea appears to be then that knowledge has a beneficial external life to that which knows - such that the very act of knowing allows the knower to act and think different.
It is at the bedrock of meaning that it allows a mind freedom: A bedrock that defines means peculiar place as the pivot to thought. fid an meaning and you can make thoughts spin around that meaning - setting many things aright or recasting them- making them anew. To think - to find meaning is to step into a warm if corrosive baths beyond your own thoughts.
and yet vitally this bath is collective. We philosophers can jump into together- together we may swim. Meaning is then never owned by any one of us; it is a collective freedom. a freedom that in finding we share - and want to share. Freedom is therefore always ours - always an open invitation for others to join and meaning reflects that fact.
At which point Plato adds an extra beautiful twist. the Good as meaning is open ended. it is seen only in the light of the knowledge it produces. It is the refracted light of thought in all our eyes. As such it dazzles when we first enter a new kingdom- a dazzling that might shock and might overwhelm. But also It is open ended - you cant top the light illuminating this world o us. To see allow its rays is then to see many things, but to also it is to be able to see more and yet more ad infinituum. Knowledge is therefore open ended- as light illumines. The good the emerges is then a freedom that actually knows no bounds- or better in which every light leads on to new thoughts, new lights and so on. Moreover the actual source for this light is of course hidden in what it shows. We see merely how it refracts, and the open ended freedom of that refraction. The source- the meaning of meaning if you like is invisible and must be so for the vivid light to operate as it does. the mind is therefore free insofar as it cannot see the source of its freedom, and cannot simply gravitate towards it. It must rather revel in the open nature of what that light and knowledge that freedom creates and shows.
The very fact then that meaning ought to lie beyond the thinkers nature- sets it up is a position to beneficially challenge that nature. It is the point beyond our nature that challenges us to think anew an so set our mind free from its chains of supposing, and to share that thought and that thinking. to share and to be free and to think are then all tied to the ought shown by good- the light that gives meaning of a world while of itself remaining hidden in what it shows; a light whose actual nature is only deduced in the concord and freedom it creates.
The threefold yardsick of truth is then- that the good involves: A hidden but open ended revealer ; A freedom as pivot; knowledge as collective. no thought can ever be truly finished, and no description of the world is ever simply over and done with. indeed the external world of meaning keeping its otherness throughout. no description however subtle can then finish the picture. ere is always other things to be said, other possible freedoms for thought. The looking to think is therefore open as lights power is to show us new things.
The direct contrast between such a domain and the one in which we live. that s the domain of shadows and refracted occluded light. a word were the impetus is finish with ideas and even more so to attempt to own them outright. This is my feeling my idea- so there runs the mantra. Or worse than that a word where knowledge's own light footed nature becomes dangerous and unstable: We endelessly lurch between new ideas each we feel we own outright and yet do so without an stability or constancy for thought. Finally the collective nature of thought becomes itself a power. it is then not that we are sweeps way by what lies just beyond us all, so much as the actually act of sharing becomes the power. a mob moves this way or that, thinks with a power of its own will and dynamic. worse than that a mob is easily whipped into a hysteria by a some orator, who takes the place of the light - introducing new current to the mob- currents the mob then collective owns and immediately acts upon.
The very elements of the yardstick of meaning become difficult and dangerous when removed fro the light and its power. that is when knowledge ceases to actually address the external world- a world necessarily beyond all humanity, and become rather merely about what humans generate as group or individual together- it becomes difficult and dangerous. Here one needs of course so much care (care Plato at least has). Care to tell apart the freedom of a mob to act or even to create of itself (or have created) and endless profusion of images or dreams or demands, and the freedom of thought itself. the point of the latter freedom is that it is always at every point a pivot. It is then always a question of where the thought stream comes from. I it the question runs a pivot founded in a land beyond us all- a land that cannot be mastered or is merely in the clouds we together create? This Plato actually poses as a question. The point is that conceptually these are different things- and yet and yet it is of course very difficult to tell them apart - as it is difficult to tell Thrasmachylus apart form Socrates in the end: both after all think the powerful should rule, it is just that Thrasmachylus does not have a Good definition of power(and so confuses the mob with the king with the philosopher), while Socrates is very clear that true knowledge and its freedom are real power.
meaning then poses a paradox- it itself it creates an opened kingdom we can all share in - and an idea that sometimes we might be sharing in that ;and, but always have top be aware that we might allow be deluding ourselves - and merely be part of a mob. the differences between the two are rather elusive and subtle if real - and it is of course only the true lover of thought that is likely to bother to tell them apart.
Meaning as the good is therefore at once an allegory of opened modest thought - but also a problem of keeping good and so keeping it creative.