The search for the origins of meaning is a productive, and not merely reflective or descriptive, activity. Such an activity does not entail the quest for universal essences, but rather the investigation of the very texture of our lives, of the style of our situatedness in the world. Merleau-Ponty's quest for the origins of meaning was a radicalization of Husserl's philosophical exhortation, "To the things themselves!" Merleau-Ponty attempted to discover how things are significantly and corporeally intertwined with our existence, and not how things may be transformed by an essentializing thought into abstract schemes.