Rethinking the Crisis of Meaning, in Light of the Connection between Robert Salomon's Theory of the Meaning of Life and Lakoff and Johnson's Theory of Conceptual Metaphors

The crisis of meaning in the present era is considered one of the most important challenges of human and social life, and paying attention to it from various angles can make a significant contribution to solving many of the individual and social problems of today's humanity. Therefore, in this article, with an interdisciplinary approach in philosophy and cognitive linguistics, and with a descriptive-analytical method, we examine and rethink the issue of the crisis of meaning. From Salmon's perspective in philosophy, the question of the meaning of life requires a metaphor, in which man sees himself as having a specific role, this perspective is the determining factor of human life. On the other hand, Lakoff and Johnson believe that conceptual metaphors, beyond a linguistic tool, shape the structure of thought, perception, and action. The connection of these two theories caused us to examine and review the issue of the crisis of meaning from the perspective of the crisis in the dominant metaphors in life. From this perspective, the crisis of meaning is the inability of dominant metaphors to organize the experience of the world, when previous metaphors are unable to make sense of suffering, death, hope, the future, or moral action. Therefore, overcoming the crisis requires the creation or revival of new metaphors that can make new experiences understandable. This requires examining the context of the crisis of meaning in dominant metaphors, and the prevalence of dark metaphors, and then considering the requirements for overcoming this crisis with new metaphors.