In The Balance of Meaning Thord Svensson investigates how to possibly make sense of a recognition-transcendent meaning of religious and existentially important words. That is, can the semantic meaning of words like ‘life’, ‘God’, ‘knowledge’ or ‘justice’ extend beyond what their competent user recognize it to be? In the course of exploring this matter several important questions are addressed: Is the reason for our failure to present an adequate definition of ‘life’ the fact that it refers to an unknown natural kind? If we try to make explicit what is implicit in our use of many religious words, can intuition-driven conceptual analysis aid us in this endeavour? And to what extent can religious people refer to the object of worship while being mistaken about its true nature? The author concludes that the meaning of religious and existentially important terms can be recognition-transcendent and this in more than one sense.
