Greetings Readers,
A quick note before we begin:
What is Love? If you’re available this evening (23 Feb at 3:00 pm PST), I invite you to join a live discussion with Sharon Lebell, Simon Drew, and myself on the meaning of love (Register for free). The conversation is a continuation of a recent discussion on the theological virtues — Faith, Hope, and Love. I hope to see you there!
Reading & the Good Life
Join the conversation; every Friday at Noon EST (Register here), Perennial Meditations readers are welcome to gather for casual conversations on the art of living. This Friday is our last meetup exploring selected passages from the classic Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
***Next month’s theme is Love is the Practice. We will be exploring selected passages from The Art of Loving by the psychoanalyst and social philosopher Erich Fromm (1900-1980).
Reading & the Good Life is a space for connection, contemplation, and conversations on the art of living.
This Week’s Selected Passages:
But let me make it perfectly clear that in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning. I only insist that meaning is possible even in spite of suffering—provided, certainly, that the suffering is unavoidable. If it were avoidable, however, the meaningful thing to do would be to remove its cause, be it psychological, biological or political. To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic. […]
— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
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In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end. In other words, life’s meaning is an unconditional one, for it even includes the potential meaning of unavoidable suffering. […]
— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
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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. […]
— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
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Man constantly makes his choice concerning the mass of present potentialities; which of these will be condemned to nonbeing and which will be actualized? Which choice will be made an actuality once and forever, an immortal “footprint in the sands of time”? At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence. […]
— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Who is Viktor Frankl?
Viktor Frankl (born March 26, 1905, Vienna, Austria—died September 2, 1997, Vienna), Austrian psychiatrist and psychotherapist who developed the psychological approach known as logotherapy, widely recognized as the “third school” of Viennese psychotherapy after the “first school” of Sigmund Freud and the “second school” of Alfred Adler. The basis of Frankl’s theory was that an individual's primary motivation is the search for meaning in life and that the primary purpose of psychotherapy should be to help the individual find that meaning.
After earning a doctorate in medicine in 1930, Frankl joined the Am Steinhof psychiatric hospital staff in Vienna, where he headed the female suicide prevention program from 1933 to 1937. He subsequently established a private practice but, being Jewish, was forced to close it after Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938. He then became chief of neurology at Vienna’s Rothschild Hospital, which served the Jewish population. Anti-Semitism was on the rise, however, and in 1942 Frankl and his family were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where his father perished.
In 1944 the surviving Frankls were taken to Auschwitz, where his mother was exterminated; his wife died later in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. As Frankl observed the brutality and degradation around him, he theorized that those inmates who had some meaning in their lives were more likely to survive; he tried to recreate the manuscript of a book he had written before his capture.
Source: Britannica Encylopedia
If you are available on a Friday (at Noon EST), feel free to drop into one of our Reading & the Good Life meetups (Register here). It’s a highly casual space for connection and conversations on the art of living.
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
P.S. Feel free to comment, ask questions, or suggest future reads!