Man's Search For Meaning

The meaning of life is to find the meaning of life. Is it not? We all go through each day trying to figure out which road out the infinite amount of paths will lead us in a better direction where happiness is prominent and society is flawless. However, not every single human being is going to fit on that narrow, one-lane highway to success. Bad choices, accidents, fate, family matters, society, temptation, anger, rage, addiction, and loss of hope can all be deciding factors in opting to choose that wrong path to self-destruction. The adverse thing is, once you've traveled so far down the road, you get so discouraged that you feel like you can never turn back or make up for the "lost time."

This will to meaning is the culmination of our developmental process. To cultivate an individual’s capacity to find meaning in their life is the greatest goal, and the source of mankind’s anxiety and neuroses. We all wish to find the meaning within our life, and are unfulfilled when we miss the mark. But according to Frankl, there is always meaning in life, in every single moment, from one to the next we all are capable of making a choice about ourselves, and beyond that, have a responsibility to do so. Even with the transitory nature of our existence and hopelessness in the face of certain death, there is still meaning to be found, there is still freedom to be earned.

What is the meaning of life? According to Chris McCandless living free and not conforming to the natural way of life is the meaning to life, as shown in the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. Similar to Chris McCandless, Ralph Emerson believes that following your dreams and making your own trail is the meaning of life according to his short story “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Emerson. The purpose of man's existence is to avoid conformity and following one's own instincts and ideas.

Susan R. Wolf (born 1952) is a moral philosopher who works extensively on the meaning of human life and is the Edna J. Koury Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Wolf addresses the questions of the meaning of life in hope to distinguish the characteristics and reasoning that gives meaning to life. According to Susan Wolf view about the meaning in life, “I would say that meaningful life are lives of active engagement in projects of worth… two key phrases, ‘active engagement’ and ‘projects of worth’” (Wolf, 205). However, I believe that her proposal leaves out our basic motives and reasoning that’s

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is filled to the brim with rhetorical devices from all three sections of the text. Particularly in his section about logotherapy, Frankl’s practice to find an individual’s meaning of life, he explores the three main meanings of life: accomplishment, love, and suffering. This area uses a plethora of comparison, such as parallelism and metaphor. Recurring themes are used to draw back to Frankl’s three life meanings, like word repetition and alliteration. Frankl’s use of rhetorical devices allows his audience to focus on their individual possibilities and incorporate his ideology into society.

Man’s Search For Meaning details Viktor Frankl’s horrifying experiences in Nazi concentration camps during the holocaust, and during that time he found meaning in his life. And he describes three things that were the most important factors that contributed to his and some prisoners survival: love, work, and suffering. It was because of those three things that they were able to survive. Many found hope in the thought that a love one was waiting , others were so preoccupied with work they were un able to think, and most effective was

Although each individual person has their own unique responses to crises, there are often commonalities in behavior following certain events. On October 1, 2015, a man came onto the campus of my town’s community college, killed nine people, and injured many more. The entire community was stricken with grief; however, it was even worse for those who knew the victims. A close friend of mine named Daniel lost one of his best friends in the shooting, and as he was grieving, his behavior began to reflect the symptoms of the third stage concentration camp prisoners experienced as described in Viktor E. Frankl’s autobiography Man’s Search for Meaning.

In “The Meaning of Lives,” Wolf asserts that the question “What is the Meaning of Life?” is inherently unintelligible because it is uncertain what the question is asking. In other words it is too general because it has no specified context. Wolf then acknowledges, however, that there is value in examining the meaningfulness of a life. This is because she observes people wanting meaning as an unchangeable fact. While there is no grand reason for meaning, she suggests that we can create value through what we do in our life. In her work, Wolf constructs a framework on how to obtain meaning in one’s life. I will examine her view, then critically discuss the positive attributes and the shortcomings. Wolf does a sufficient job to outline a possible way to achieve meaning. However, I will argue that a definition for the meaningful life that does not include morality and happiness is not sufficient. Lastly, I will express the subjective and objective tension that weakens her stance.

The book “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl is a story following Viktor, a psychiatrist, during his time spent in Jewish concentration camps back during WWII. He explains his experiences in a psychological way, explaining feelings and thoughts prisoners had while being held captive. It’s a good insight into the human mind and why life has meaning. The story starts with Viktor explaining the transport and entrance to the camp.

However, Viktor Frankl took it a step further and combine it with logotherapy and his own experiences with suffering. While most people struggling to find meaning in their lives aren't in as serious of a situation as a concentration camp, they are still suffering. Frankl says that "he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how" (Frankl ). He tells people that by finding a reason to get through the suffering, they may find their “pain” is not so painful. Just as prisoners who had reasons to make it to liberation day defeated their suffering. Viktor Frankl said himself “that the meaning of his life, is to help others find the meaning of their’s” (Frankl

In the book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Viktor E. Frankl uses his experience in a concentration camp to write an empowering book about finding an ultimate purpose in life and seeing life as meaningful despite one’s circumstances. I am very fond of this book and there were many parts of the story that impacted me. One particular part of Frankl’s book held great significance. This part came after a burglar was found in the camp stealing potatoes, and some of the prisoners recognized him. When the camp authorities threatened to have the whole camp starve for a day if they didn’t confess who the theft was, the prisoners voted to fast. When the prisoners were in their huts and Frankl began giving them glimpses of hope and motivation, I was truly

In the book What’s It All About? by Julian Baggini discusses philosophy and the meaning of life. This reading was able to bring different perspectives on ideas of the meaning of life that I have thought about before. I was also able to learn about these concerns about life 's meaning or meaninglessness in a philosophical standpoint. Some of the chapters that I found interesting included the chapters titled looking for the blueprint, here to help, and becoming a contender.

Man’s search for meaning is written from Dr. Viktor E. Frankl’s point of view, the book tells of Dr. Frankl’s experiences while being held captive in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Frankl writes about the three psychological reactions which the inmates of the camp experienced which includes the period following admission to the camps, the period of entrenchment, and the period after being released from the camp. Dr. Frankl has multiple points he is trying to prove in the book, one is when he ultimately comes up with the idea that “To live is to suffer; to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.”, which means as long as you living you will suffer and in order for you to survive those sufferings, you will need to find the meaning

In the book What’s It All About? Julian Baggini discusses philosophy and the meaning of life. This reading was able to bring different perspectives on ideas of the meaning of life that I thought about before. I was also able to learn about these concerns about life 's meaning or meaninglessness in a philosophical standpoint. Some of the chapters that I found interesting included the chapters titled looking for the blueprint, here to help, and becoming a contender.

The premise of Frankl’s book is that mankind’s desire for meaning is much stronger than its desire for power or pleasure and that if man can find meaning in life he can survive anything. Frankl introduces this idea [which he calls the theory of logotherapy] throughout his concentration camp experiences in the book’s first section and delves deeper into it in the second section. Referencing Nietzsche, Frankl tells us “Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'” (p. 80). The most important thing to be learned from this statement is that no matter what your circumstances are, you can be happy, or at least survive, if you find a meaning or purpose in life. While in the concentration camp Frankl tells us that in order to maintain his desire to have a meaningful life he focused on three main things: suffering, work, and love. Of sacrifice