What is the meaning of existence?
To address existence in terms of meaning means to address existence in terms of experience. There can be no meaning without experience, yet there can be no experience without existence, so we at least indirectly care about existence insofar as it makes possible what we immediately care about—namely, our experience.
If we look at the etymology of the word existence, we see that it's related to the notion of "standing forth" (from [L] ex "forth" + sistere "cause to stand"). Existence, then, is just what we call the domain in which it's possible for things to stand forth into meaningful presence—that is, experience. Existence is the domain making experience possible. To care about what existence means, then, is to care about possible experiences. We all can't help but care about what experiences are possible for ourselves—at least insofar as we anticipate the future, understanding that what we're experiencing now will soon give way to a different experience—but to care about the meaning of existence itself is to place oneself in a relationship with the field of any and all possible experiences. We do this when we experience wonder.
Wonder is what an infant witnesses when she gazes out at a world she doesn't yet understand; it's what an adolescent experiences as he embarks upon the task of creating a life for himself, unable to imagine what's ahead; it's what we experience when we witness the vastness of a landscape spread between us and the setting sun. Wonder is an encounter with something that opens us up to a domain of meaning much greater than the one we understand, awakening in us a sense of awe that can inspire and terrify.
Both Plato and Aristotle wrote that philosophy begins with wonder, by which they didn't just mean that it starts there then gets left behind once we move on. The wonder they spoke of is a sustaining wonder. It's always present when we seek wisdom. Yet it can be present in at least a couple different ways: as astonishment and as curiosity.
This Project's central question—what is the meaning of existence?—can't be answered. We can't get outside existence, look back at it, characterize it with words, and by so characterizing it say what it means. We'll never understand what existence means in that way. The closest we can get to understanding what existence means is to directly experience the wonder of it—to be astonished. This involves a radical openness to an utterly unknowable. It's the type of wonder that applies to "the whole."
When we consider parts of existence, it's then that we shift from wonder as astonishment, or awe, to wonder as curiosity. Curiosity is implicit in any understanding, and we usually experience this curiosity as care. We always already care about the perennial issues addressed by this Project, even if we rarely make those issues into explicit questions. The care we experience is our openness toward that which we care about—an openness analogous to an existential question. The articulation of those tacit, open questions is what we do under tab 1 (ask). Here, under tab 0, it's enough to begin to notice constellations of tacit questions out of which might precipitate an articulation.
