The difference between meaninglessness and purposelessness is precisely where the concept your Spinoziana studies may begin to wobble.
Meaninglessness concerns interpretation. It is about the absence of sense, coherence, or intelligibility. To say something is meaningless is to say that no concept or value makes it understandable. It is an epistemic void, a gap in understanding.
Purposelessness, on the other hand, concerns teleology. The absence of end, aim, or intention. To say existence is purposeless is to say it does not aim at anything. It’s not trying to get somewhere. This is an ontological statement, not an epistemic one.
We often tend to collapse the two. When we say “it’s all meaningless,” we mix both claims, one, that reality lacks purpose (which is Spinozistic that nature isn’t aiming at an external goal), and that therefore it lacks meaning (which doesn’t follow, because understanding can still find structure, intelligibility, necessity).
Spinoza’s universe has no purpose, but it is full of meaning in the structural sense. Everything can be understood through its cause; every organism or body expresses the divine substance necessarily. Understanding that necessity is meaning is what he calls the third kind of knowledge.
Such nihilistic turn confuses absence of divine will with absence of order. We say “no purpose” and think “no significance.” Spinoza hears “no purpose” and thinks “perfect coherence.”
When we say “because there’s no meaning, nothing matters,” it reveals a trace of resentment, the wish that there should be purpose, and when it isn’t found, we conclude futility. Spinoza would call that a passive affect, an imaginative reaction to the loss of anthropocentric teleology.
Meanwhile, the formulation “I am wanting to live; this wanting is meaning”. The striving to persist, is meaning in action. It’s not projected; it’s the very structure of existing. Purposelessness belongs to the universe; meaning belongs to understanding. Mixing them creates despair. Distinguishing them restores lucidity.
