A Convincing Case for Tragic Optimism
Viktor Emil Frankl is a fascinating man. He was a psychiatrist, holocaust survivor, and the founder of logotherapy. Man's Search for Meaning is an account of his experiences in surviving several Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. It is also an introduction to logotherapy, an approach to living one's life through finding meaning at every moment of existence - even in the most desperate, hopeless of situations. It was this thinking that helped Frankl survive the horrors of the concentration camps, as he was able to find meaning despite his starvation, ill health, exhaustion, mental anguish, and suffering, as well as the death of those around him. It's an amazing, heartrending account of the pure evil of man's inhumanity to his fellow man, perhaps perfectly manifested in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.
Logotherapy is, I think, an interesting and positive approach to life. My reading this book probably would have actually helped me a lot a couple years ago; it reinforces to a degree my increasingly optimistic worldview. Frankl presents his case for what he calls a "tragic optimism" - despite the fact that life has the inevitable negativities of guilt, pain, and death (in my mind simply mental and physical anguish) - one is always able to decide what one's attitude will be in any given situation. It's a decidedly sunny outlook on life. Frankl states that life's very transitoriness "challenges us to make the best possible use of each moment of our lives." Here he presents his imperative for living one's life: Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.
Frankl's theory is ultimately about freedom - man's self-determination - and with this freedom, responsibility. Man has potentialities due to influencing factors such as his environment, but in the end it is every individual who chooses which of these potentialities will be realized. In part an educative text, in part a memoir, and in part a cautionary tale, Man's Search for Meaning is an important work.
Frankl ends his Introduction to Logotherapy section with the frustrating duality of man's nature: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.
I highly recommend this for anyone. It's short and written in clear language. If you happen to be having an existential crisis of sorts or are looking to combat a bout of pessimism, read Man's Search for Meaning.
(Props to Anne for lending me the book.)
9 comments:
I find it ironic that you posted this on the day I was reading an article about high school girls. This was mentioned as one of their books for class.
As it should be.
Right, but the point was that you are at least, what, 2-3 years out of high school?
I see you are trying to make a call at me. Doesn't really work in this case.
I mean, the book, although fairly simply written, is not a "high schooler's" book. I would have benefitted from reading it in high school, I think, although I would not have appreciated it until sometime during my college years up until the present.
Frankl's book has moved into the ranks of "beyond Classic." It is the second most published book on the Earth, superseded only by The Holy Bible. Some achievement!
I am ThGdDktr-Hoo? and both a wise and follish ole owl.
Just the fact that you commented twice in a row, without any comment from another source, amuses me to no end. You didn't obsess over this all day did you?
No, I just felt that your ridiculous commentary deserved some more response.
Listen to the Good Doc!
Right....
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