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This comes from Religion and Culture: Essays in Honor of Bernard Lonergan, S. J. by Bernard J. F. Lonergan:

For Frankl's conception of the will to meaning as correlated questioning and answering allows one to perceive the two essential characteristics of the will to meaning as intentional: The will to meaning is the basic orientation, similar to Lonergan's notion of value, to question any value in order to each individual meanings. When conceived in this manner the will to meaning can be said to set up a horizon of unlimited possible answers that can be intended by an unlimited number of questions. The free choices which a person makes from the manifold values encountered intend and therewith constitute the specific world of freedom of the person.

I often see therewith with a word preceding it as in "in conjunction therewith" which roughly means "in conjunction with (that)", but in this example, I am not sure what it means.

I suppose it means "and constitute with that the specific world of freedom of the person", but what does "that" refer to? The subject is "The free choices", so I am a bit perplexed. Roughly, it should translate to "The free choices which a person makes from the manifold values encountered constitute with that the specific world of freedom of the person", but I have still no idea what "that" means.

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Here, the following are essentially equivalent:

intend and thereby constitute
intend and, with that, constitute
intend and thereupon constitute

The latter two synonyms are mentioned specifically in Merriam-Webster's definition of therewith:

1 : with that
2 : THEREUPON, FORTHWITH

In the context of this particular passage, forthwith would not be a good synonym.


All of these words are mostly nonessential. The following on its own would convey the same effective meaning:

intend and constitute

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