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Man's Search for Meaning; Please weigh in
pegembara
Veteran
Viktor Frankl's 1946 book Man's Search for Meaning chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate
“An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature.
But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces.
A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him.
But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful.
If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.
Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death.
Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.”
The key to this passage is in understanding the metaphor Viktor Frankl is laying out.
First he portrays the obvious span between active creative living as opposed to passive enjoyment of life.
He says that each of these two aspects have certain inherent and assumed sets of value that, though different, provide equal access to meaning and purpose.
Where meaning and purpose are the necessary ingredients of fulfillment which are necessary to a worthwhile life.
Then Viktor Frankl introduces a third extreme in this metaphoric structure, suffering, which he implies has previously been assumed to be effectively barren of any ingredients for worth in life, or for “high moral behavior” as he puts it.
Making his point he asserts authoritatively that meaning is not the exclusive province of just the two extremes of creativity and enjoyment.
His concept is that life is an empty container in which meaning and purpose reside.
He is saying that meaning and purpose are pervasive throughout the container of life, therefore, as a consequence of simply being within the container of life, suffering also has meaning and purpose.
Contrary to popular belief, he asserts, suffering cannot negate nor restrict access to meaning and purpose.
Viktor Frankl is saying that we have a generally accepted idea that life is inherently meaningful except for the areas of life in which suffering occurs.
When you observe a person in a state of suffering you get the impression that meaning and purpose are absent or that the suffering person is prevented from accessing them.
Viktor Frankl assumes that life is inherently meaningful, so he points out how suffering must also be meaningful because of the fact that it is part of life, ipso facto.
Since life is inherently meaningful then any assumption that is made about the inherent meaninglessness or purposelessness of suffering is false, an illusion.
Other Quotations
"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
"Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!"
"We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering."
"Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment."
"When we are no longer able to change a situation - just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer - we are challenged to change ourselves. "
“An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature.
But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces.
A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him.
But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful.
If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.
Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death.
Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.”
The key to this passage is in understanding the metaphor Viktor Frankl is laying out.
First he portrays the obvious span between active creative living as opposed to passive enjoyment of life.
He says that each of these two aspects have certain inherent and assumed sets of value that, though different, provide equal access to meaning and purpose.
Where meaning and purpose are the necessary ingredients of fulfillment which are necessary to a worthwhile life.
Then Viktor Frankl introduces a third extreme in this metaphoric structure, suffering, which he implies has previously been assumed to be effectively barren of any ingredients for worth in life, or for “high moral behavior” as he puts it.
Making his point he asserts authoritatively that meaning is not the exclusive province of just the two extremes of creativity and enjoyment.
His concept is that life is an empty container in which meaning and purpose reside.
He is saying that meaning and purpose are pervasive throughout the container of life, therefore, as a consequence of simply being within the container of life, suffering also has meaning and purpose.
Contrary to popular belief, he asserts, suffering cannot negate nor restrict access to meaning and purpose.
Viktor Frankl is saying that we have a generally accepted idea that life is inherently meaningful except for the areas of life in which suffering occurs.
When you observe a person in a state of suffering you get the impression that meaning and purpose are absent or that the suffering person is prevented from accessing them.
Viktor Frankl assumes that life is inherently meaningful, so he points out how suffering must also be meaningful because of the fact that it is part of life, ipso facto.
Since life is inherently meaningful then any assumption that is made about the inherent meaninglessness or purposelessness of suffering is false, an illusion.
Other Quotations
"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
"Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!"
"We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering."
"Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment."
"When we are no longer able to change a situation - just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer - we are challenged to change ourselves. "
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Comments
That having been said, I have now realised that there is a step beyond than finding a meaning to one's life: it is to live a life of meaning.