Is it too paradoxical to claim an absence of meaning as a source of meaning?
Pihlstrom concludes by pointing out that perhaps our inability to answer the question of meaning might very well be an actual source of meaning. So, I suppose, technically, he is not claiming an absence of meaning is the source; he is contending that our perpetual struggle to find meaning might be a source thereof.
While this seems rather odd, almost contradictory (I myself uncritically dismissed it on my first read), there may be merit in such an idea. Striving to know an answer to a question, even a question that I can recognize will not have a satisfactory answer, can be a great source of motivation and drive. But I am wondering at the potential for a deeper paradox:
If the struggle to find meaning is the source of meaning, then we would succeed and finally find that meaning. If we found meaning then we would no longer need to struggle to find it and then, absent the struggle, we would lose that meaning as there is no longer the source.
Is this a trivial reading of the idea, or are there conceptual difficulties with this notion of struggling to find meaning as a source of meaning?
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