# Man's Search for Meaning  ## Metadata - Author: [[Viktor E. Frankl]] - Full Title: Man's Search for Meaning - Category: #books ## Highlights - Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it. ([Location 28](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=28)) - Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you. ([Location 35](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=35)) - “Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.” ([Location 80](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=80)) - The prisoner of Auschwitz, in the first phase of shock, did not fear death. Even the gas chambers lost their horrors for him after the first few days—after all, they spared him the act of committing suicide. ([Location 288](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=288)) - If you want to stay alive, there is only one way: look fit for work. ([Location 298](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=298)) - Note: Manufactured "survival of the fittest" - is not the physical pain which hurts the most (and this applies to adults as much as to punished children); it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all. ([Location 350](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=350)) - Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. ([Location 532](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=532)) - No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same. ([Location 645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=645)) - It is well known that an enforced community life, in which attention is paid to everything one does at all times, may result in an irresistible urge to get away, at least for a short while. ([Location 684](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=684)) - One literally became a number: dead or alive—that was unimportant; the life of a “number” was completely irrelevant. What stood behind that number and that life mattered even less: the fate, the history, the name of the man. ([Location 705](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=705)) - The prisoner would have preferred to let fate make the choice for him. This escape from commitment was most apparent when a prisoner had to make the decision for or against an escape attempt. In those minutes in which he had to make up his mind—and it was always a question of minutes—he suffered the tortures of Hell. Should he make the attempt to flee? Should he take the risk? ([Location 754](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=754)) - Note: Kiekegaard's conception of anxiety - 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. ([Location 862](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=862)) - It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful. ([Location 874](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=874)) - An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. ([Location 875](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=875)) - in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. ([Location 878](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=878)) - Note: Three things meaningful in life: enjoyment, creativenes, and morality (attained in suffering) - If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. ([Location 879](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=879)) - the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not. ([Location 883](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=883)) - A man who could not see the end of his “provisional existence” was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life. He ceased living for the future, in contrast to a man in normal life. ([Location 918](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=918)) - Note: When the future is uncertain, it might not be n easy thing to even try to seek truth…. Only what is real - Instead of taking the camp’s difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless. ([Location 939](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=939)) - Any attempt at fighting the camp’s psychopathological influence on the prisoner by psychotherapeutic or psychohygienic methods had to aim at giving him inner strength by pointing out to him a future goal to which he could look forward. ([Location 946](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=946)) - It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future—sub specie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task. ([Location 949](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=949)) - Note: And the certainty of a future that gives hope lies in the promises of God. Heaven is an eternal hope. - What does Spinoza say in his Ethics? —“Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam.” Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. ([Location 962](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=962)) - We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. ([Location 997](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=997)) - We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. ([Location 998](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=998)) - 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. ([Location 1000](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1000)) - When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden. ([Location 1009](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1009)) - After all, we still had all our bones intact. Whatever we had gone through could still be an asset to us in the future. And I quoted from Nietzsche: “Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.” (That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.) ([Location 1058](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1058)) - They must not lose hope but should keep their courage in the certainty that the hopelessness of our struggle did not detract from its dignity and its meaning. I said that someone looks down on each of us in difficult hours—a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a God—and he would not expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly—not miserably—knowing how to die. ([Location 1073](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1073)) - The boundaries between groups overlapped and we must not try to simplify matters by saying that these men were angels and those were devils. ([Location 1105](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1105)) - there are two races of men in this world, but only these two—the “race” of the decent man and the “race” of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. ([Location 1111](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1111)) - Psychologically, what was happening to the liberated prisoners could be called “depersonalization.” Everything appeared unreal, unlikely, as in a dream. ([Location 1132](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1132)) - During this psychological phase one observed that people with natures of a more primitive kind could not escape the influences of the brutality which had surrounded them in camp life. ([Location 1155](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1155)) - Note: Frankl is attributing the phenomenon I see so often of people becoming oppressors after coming out of oppression to the 'primitive nature' of such men. - there were two other fundamental experiences which threatened to damage the character of the liberated prisoner: bitterness and disillusionment when he returned to his former life. ([Location 1167](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1167)) - We were not hoping for happiness—it was not that which gave us courage and gave meaning to our suffering, our sacrifices and our dying. And yet we were not prepared for unhappiness. ([Location 1182](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1182)) - The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear any more—except his God. ([Location 1188](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1188)) - I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to the pleasure principle (or, as we could also term it, the will to pleasure) on which Freudian psychoanalysis is centered, as well as in contrast to the will to power on which Adlerian psychology, using the term “striving for superiority,” is focused. ([Location 1222](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1222)) - Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a “secondary rationalization” of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning. ([Location 1225](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1225)) - Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. ([Location 1264](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1264)) - suffering is not always a pathological phenomenon; rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of existential frustration. ([Location 1265](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1265)) - What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. ([Location 1295](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1295)) - Note: Another way to see this is that man needs tension, but from the right pair of opposites. Jordan Peterson would suggest order and chaos as a worthy contender. - Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism). ([Location 1311](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1311)) - Note: Consequece of the dying of traditon that teaches what man ought to do. - everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it. ([Location 1340](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1340)) - Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. ([Location 1342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1342)) - The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. ([Location 1362](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1362)) - 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. ([Location 1383](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1383)) - suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. ([Location 1390](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1390)) - Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy.” ([Location 1400](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1400)) - Note: Problem of happiness as goal. - life’s meaning is an unconditional one, for it even includes the potential meaning of unavoidable suffering. ([Location 1407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1407)) - Note: Somewhat represented in story of Jesus - What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic. ([Location 1454](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1454)) - having been is the surest kind of being. ([Location 1485](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1485)) - “paradoxical intention” on the twofold fact that fear brings about that which one is afraid of, and that hyper-intention makes impossible what one wishes. ([Location 1516](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1516)) - there is a danger inherent in the teaching of man’s “nothingbutness,” the theory that man is nothing but the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment. ([Location 1585](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1585)) - Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. ([Location 1617](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1617)) - freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. ([Location 1617](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1617)) - A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. ([Location 1630](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1630)) - Note: Man does not get to define himself, but gets to choose himself. - Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions. ([Location 1633](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1633)) - Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips. ([Location 1634](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1634)) - a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, ([Location 1685](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009U9S6FI&location=1685))