Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor Frankl, one of the leading psychiatrists of the 20th century, explains the principles of logotherapy, which he founded, in Man’s Search for Meaning, a book translated into over thirty languages and sold to more than 12 million people worldwide, alongside his experiences in a concentration camp during World War II. Readers will discover that the concentration camp described by Frankl becomes a vivid metaphor that allows us to conceive of the world as a larger prison. Drawing on the ideas we are familiar with from Gasset, Heidegger, and Sartre, Frankl, who describes the process that will help us discover “meaning” in the harsh conditions of existence, also attempts to answer the question, “What makes us human?” … “What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We needed to learn that what we expect from life is not really important, but rather that what matters is what life expects from us, and moreover, we needed to teach this to people who had lost hope. We needed to stop asking questions about the meaning of life and instead think of ourselves as people who are questioned by life every day, every hour. Our answer needed to consist not of speech or meditation, but of right action and a right way of living. Ultimately, life means finding the right solutions to problems and taking responsibility for fulfilling the duties that life continuously imposes on every individual.”