Meaning and Time

One abstraction that Levinas' model of face-to-face experience shares with Russell's Proposition, Wittgenstein's Language-Game, and Searle's Speech Act, is from Temporality.  That is, not only is how an addressee understands a speaker's utterance specific to their relation, it is specific to the occasion, as well.  Or, from another perspective, one's knowing how to enact a verbal formulation is a function of one's past attempts at it, and hence, their understanding of it varies accordingly.  Thus, insofar as the Meaning of an Utterance is, as has been previously proposed, its enactment, it is specific not only to the addressee, but to that moment, as well.  For example, if Neil Armstrong heard "Proceed" at 2:56 on 7/21/69, its Meaning is absolutely singular.