Eline Arisse shared a link.
I’ve read ‘Man’s search for meaning’ by Viktor E. Frankl, and I’m totally amazed by the clarity of his theories and the explanation of them. I’ve made some notes of the most important quotes (for me) and will add some thoughts about it as well.
Frankl was so aware of what happened to him and others on a physical, emotional and collective level in the concentration camp. It’s really extraordinary. He managed to comfort people spiritually on occassion while he was really weak himself.
Also here a link to Peterson’s lecture about Frankl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zooE5GE81TU
p.85: Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfil the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way.
(…)
No man and no destiny can be compared to with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response. Sometimes the situation in which a man finds himself may require him to shape his own fate by action. At other times it is more advantageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contemplation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man may be requested simply to accept fate, to bear it cross.
p.86: But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.
p.87: This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and give meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love. When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the ‘why’ for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any ‘how’.
p.144: I explain to somehow who’s prone to suicide that patients have repeatedly told me how happy they were that the suicide attempt had not been succesful; weeks, months, years later, they told me, it turned out there was a solution to their problem, an answer to their question, a meaning to their life. Even if things only take such a good turn in one of a thousand cases, my explanation continues, who can guarantee that in your case it will not happen one day, sooner or later? But in the first place, you have to live to see that day dawn, and from now on the responsibility for survival does not leave you.
p.146: As logotherapy teaches, there are three main avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life. The first is by creating a work of doing a deed. The second is by experiencing something or encountering someone; in other words, meaning can be found not only in work but also in love. Edith Weisskopf-Joelson observed in this context that the logotherapeutic notion that experiencing can be as valuable as achieving is therapeutic because it compensates for our one-sided emphasis on the external world of achievement at the expense of the internal world of experience. Thirdly even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself. He may turn a personal tragedy in a triumph. But being proud of your suffering is given very little opportunity if you are expected to not be unhappy and if you are to be ashamed of it (most relevant in the USA this last point).
Also his concepts of the existential vaccuum, the super-meaning, meaning of life, meaning of love, and meaning of suffering are really worthwhile. I didn’t like all of his examples of logodrama, which offer sometimes real easy solutions for very complex pain or mourning people go through, which were given a certain meaning by Frankl which he put on their situation, to give them an answer for their suffering, the why of their experiences. I really like his theories, but this felt too easy, because it should be in accordance with the inner decision to see this meaning by people themselves… And they understood what he was saying, and agreed, but people are mostly very vulnerable and need an answer badly. It can be dangerous to give this answer instead of letting people formulate it themselves…
From the lecture: Existentialists, like Frankl, are drawn to authenticity and truth.
The individuals who created mass murders in the Sovjet Union and Nazi Germany were psychopathological individuals.
The whole state is pathological because of incongruent individuals. Especially willful blindness.
The psychopathological traits people develop stem from psychopathological conditions of existence itself.
Cleaning your phenomenological space is the first step because it’s something you can do in your reach, and to be able to find solutions for bigger and bigger problems.
2nd: Evil is unnecessary tragedy.
See you stop to do things you bully yourself with. Don’t undermine yourself building your competences for example.
– You can’t run from immorality.
Listen the rest for yourselves. Really interesting
2014 Personality Lecture 11: Existentialism: Viktor Frankl
“Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way.”
Great content, but this seems to be worded in a self-contradictory manner. Frankl says it’s “impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way,” but two sentences prior he presents the general definition that “life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.” Regardless, he says that because each person is ultimately unique and in unique circumstances, the meaning of one’s life is going to be unique, given his general definition. That seems rather agreeable, and I’m thankful that you shared that.
However, this is only to address the meaning of life from a personal side. The meaning of life as a metaphysical concern is still left untouched, which I’d argue, from an objectivist perspective (life has objective, metaphysical meaning), is infinitely more important. Unless existence itself is value-laden and has objective meaning, personal meaning is nothing more than the engagement in a sort of narcissistic delusion. Now, I haven’t read Frankl’s book, and I’ve yet to watch the Peterson lecture. Does Frankl engage with the meaning of life from a metaphysical perspective at all?
Thanks for sharing your sharp thoughts. You read closely, so contradictions become clear. Nice!
I can’t describe all of Frankl’s thoughts, because it’s written in such a compact way you could share whole pages of the book and talk about it for a while
I agree with the self-contradictory way it’s described. I’ll see if I can find something about it.
This ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man; in logotherapy, we speak in this context of a super-meaning. What is demanded of man, is not as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear this incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic.
(page 122)
But we can change any moment through our freedom (of choice). Therefore we can predict the future by conducting statistical research concerning a whole group, within a larger framework. ‘The individual personality, however, stays unpredictable. (…) The basis for any predictions would be represented by biological, psychological or sociological conditions. Yet, one of the main features of human existence is the capacity to rise above such conditions, to grow beyond them. Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better, if necessary.’
