Introduction
My previous statement may have seemed like naive foolishness. But I assure you — it was a mature philosophical position, which I had tried to present accessibly, using familiar imagery. Today, I will lay it out in full, leaving no room for irony. Philosophy departments, take note.
Truth is not invented. It emerges from the very structure of life — from how we are built, what constrains us, and what lays claim to us.
We live in a state of suspension — between collapsed modernity and exhausted postmodernity. Metamodernism offers no ontological ground, only oscillation between irony and hope. In such a vacuum, Plato becomes necessary again. Not as an author, but as a principle of distinction: between what is grounded and what is not. This text continues his trajectory — a return to truth through structure, in which body, reason, and lineage are unified.
Some may call me an evolutionist. Or an essentialist. Others — a dogmatist who rejects relativism. But I deliberately reject the idea that meaning is an individual project. I believe life has a structure, and meaning arises not from fantasy, but from alignment with that structure.
Meaning as Form
The meaning of life is neither a subjective feeling nor the result of personal choice. It arises at the point of proportionality — between who you are and what the structure of life demands.
A human being is not just consciousness. We are a body with limited resources, a biological species with an evolutionary vector, and a bearer of reason capable of self-reflection. These three levels — bodily, species-level, and rational — are not options, but conditions. They do not compete; they define the field within which meaningful existence becomes possible.
Plato called this participation in the Idea1 — the human being does not invent meaning but enters into an already existing order. In contemporary terms: to live is to conform to a form that demands two things — reproduction and understanding.
From an evolutionary point of view, life has only one mechanism of verification: selection. That which produces no offspring disappears. That which does not adapt is displaced. Species are not merciful; they select for resilience2. This is a harsh filter: not everything that exists is entitled to continue. Hence the first criterion of meaning — effectiveness: the capacity to transmit life further, not necessarily biologically, but always through a form that can withstand competition.
The second criterion comes from reason: the path of understanding. We pursue knowledge not because it’s useful, but because we are compelled to. Consciousness seeks totality, structure, truth3. It requires not just action, but reflection on action. Meaning, therefore, is not exhausted by reproduction — it demands orientation: where, why, and in what order.
The problem of present lies in the disconnection of these two vectors. We live as if reason could be separated from the body, and intellect from the constraints of survival. But meaning arises not in either direction alone, but in their alignment. This is what form is: a stable configuration of life in which the species does not go extinct and reason does not stagnate.
Truth, in this framework, is not an abstract idea. It is the point of convergence between biological necessity, cognitive capacity, and ontological proportion. Everything that fails under selection is eliminated. Everything that defies explanation is rejected by reason. Everything that falls outside of order is excluded from meaning4.
We are used to thinking of meaning as a space of freedom. But perhaps it is a space of precision — of accurate placement within one’s role, measure, and lineage. Meaning does not lie in self-expression, but in alignment with the structure we are given. We do not create the world — we respond to it. And only in that response do we become truly ourselves.
To live as a human being does not mean to be heroic or to be happy. It means: to accept the form of a human — its limits, its capacity for knowledge, its embeddedness in lineage — and to fulfill it with dignity. Not for reward. Not for eternity. But because there is no other way to be. ■
Previously on this theme:
Plato, Republic, Book VI: The Idea of the Good — the highest form, which makes knowledge and existence possible.
Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is (2001) — natural selection as the central mechanism of evolution; species that fail to adapt go extinct.
Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) — reason as the drive toward structured understanding of being.
Gilbert Simondon, L’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information (1958) — form as the relationship between internal structure and external environmental pressure.