world of factical life) is neither as easy as transcendental theory of knowledge imagines nor so self-evident and unproblematic as realism believes. From this objective, primary sense of content, we can first determine, in any particular case, the character and sense of existence. actuality, and reality.
Therefore it is not the case that objects are at first present as bare realities. as objects in some son of natural state, and that they then in the course of our experience receive the garb of a value-character, so they do not have to run around naked. This is the case neither in the direction of the experience of the surrounding world nor in the direction of the approach and the sequence of the interpretation, as if the constitution of nature could, even to the smallest extent, supply the foundation for higher types of objects. On the contrary, the objectivity, "nature," first arises out of the basic sense of the Being of the objects of the lived, experienced, encountered world. (Cf. history of the concept, "natura")
For the rest. meaningfulness is to be taken as broadly as possible and not constrained within any determinate domain of objectS. Meaningfulness must not be identified with value. The latter is a category which also, for its part, can be set in relief only through a determinate formation and only out of concrete experience of the world. Then from there it is fixed, rightfully or not, in its own sphere of Being and represented, with regard to its genesis, in analogy with nature, as the basic actuality, the fundamental reality.
We should note that hereby the confusing intrusion of a commonly held theory becomes recognizable for the first time. The overcoming of this theory is a task at the level of principle and must grasp the theory at its roots and judge it on its fundamental claim to be founding and to be the ultimate reference of the problematic. This theory is therefore to be invalidated only from the problematic of philosophy at the level of principle, and philosophically there is nothing yet accomplished by the mere remark that the genesis of sense actually runs in the opposite direction.
It still remains to be heeded: the theory in question is not specific to today; it has its spiritual and historical root, in Greek philosophy. so much so that therein are alive both characteristic themes (original· experiential explication and categorial·theoretical explication). It is simply that one of these was lost in the process of leveling down what is original. (Cf. οὐσία, "possessions," "household goods," "wealth.") At the same time this theory has gone through fundamentally important interweavings in the course of the history of the spirit, and these have left their traces partially in the problematic of today's theory of knowledge as such. Here these references serve merely to keep us from narrowing the sense of meaningfulness and from presuming it is of a founded character. Otherwise, an understanding of the following discussions would be severely hampered.