Rediscovering the Meaning of Man and the World——Reading McDowell’s Mind and World

Abstract

Mind and World was compiled based on McDowell’s lectures and divided into six chapters. Each chapter is independent of each other. This article assumes that McDowell wants to explain this core theme in these six chapters. Breaking the original isolation between people and the world (mind and world) through “meaning,” allowing the two to reconnect in “meaning.” This “meaning” originates from human subjective consciousness, but its carrier is the world object. Therefore, the world’s objectivity constitutes the carrier and content of the formality of meaning, and human subjective consciousness adds the meaningful form of will to the world’s objects. Because of the existence of “meaning,” the relationship between people and the world is no longer divided into “subject-object” and “form-content” but is spliced into one through the thread of “meaning.” This article attempts to summarize the logical thread of McDowell’s entire book around how McDowell returns “meaning” by overcoming methodological dualities.