I had a gift token to spend at the only bookshop in town, didn’t see anything I wanted. But then I was drawn to a certain book. I looked at it the first time rather idly, and thought to myself, “No, this is written by a Viennese psychiatrist. I have had enough of them.” I had been attracted to this profession at the beginning of my career, but joined a computer company instead. Then towards the end of my career, around 10 years ago, I started to train in counselling and psychotherapy, according to the ‘person-centred’ methods of Carl Rogers; became disillusioned with the training; got miraculously cured of a chronic illness, trained as a therapist to help others get cured too; got disillusioned with that.
But I came back to the book a second time, and bought it; an instance of serendipity. The book is Man’s Search for Meaning, by . In 1942 Victor Frankl was incarcerated in Auschwitz, and spent the years till the liberation of 1945 in several concentration camps. They took away from him the manuscript of his first book, which had been ready for submission to a publisher, so his work was lost. His parents, siblings and wife all died in the camps. He alone survived, despite getting typhus and enduring daily horrors, whose details he sketches over lightly but adequately. After the war he chose to return to Vienna and continue his psychotherapeutic work, a courageous act. For the perpetrators of the Holocaust still lived there, and most of the surviving victims fled to America, Israel—or anywhere else they could, to get out.
Man’s Search for Meaning answers many questions I’ve been raising & discussing in recent days, but it’s not as if I can offer any particular quotation to illustrate why. I’ve actually quoted from it before, in a piece written long ago, before I knew the book.
All the same, in view of some recent discussions, including Ashok’s recent post on the purpose of life, I would like to summarize Frankl’s attitude to meaning in life. He says that we construct meaning for ourselves, moment to moment. We can’t see an overarching meaning for our life, unless perhaps at the end, when the parts may fall into place, as in some of the best movies. I cannot dictate the meaning of my life, and should not try to, but (as he continues, in his role as psychotherapist),
… conscience (is) a prompter which, if need be, indicates the direction on which we have to move in a given life situation. In order to carry out such a task, conscience must apply a measuring stick to the situation one is confronted with, and this situation has to be evaluated in the light of one’s hierarchy of values. These values, however, cannot be espoused and adopted by us on a conscious level—they are something that we are. They have crystallized in the course of the evolution of our species; they are founded on our biological past and are rooted in our biological depth. Konrad Lorenz might have had something similar in mind when he developed the concept of a biological a priori, and when both of us recently discussed my own view on the biological foundation of the valuing process, he enthusiastically expressed his accord.
Yes! The biological. I must not finish without mentioning another fragment of serendipity. I’ve got into the late-night habit of Kindle-reading while my beloved is asleep. The thing has its own tiny light, and when I’m too tired to take in the words, I go shopping at the Kindle Store. That’s when I downloaded Charles Darwin’s seminal book On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection. I found that Chapters 1, “Variation under Domestication”, and 2, “Variation under Nature”, address very precisely some of the issues raised in the previous post. But still there are mysteries, and these are what I shall hope to address later.
a wayfarer’s notes 
Yes, yes and yes!
Now add Kant's Categorical Imperative and you've got most, if not all of the ingredients for wisdom, or “the good life”. 🙂
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“These values, however, cannot be espoused and adopted by us on a conscious level——they are something that we are. They have crystallized in the course of the evolution of our species; they are founded on our biological past and are rooted in our biological depth.”
How true.
It is as I was saying in my post in plain speak, some human values are rooted in their chimpanze past. Some appear to be closer to that past.
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“I was trying to avoid wisdom and the good life!”
Now, that me smile.
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Francis, I was trying to avoid wisdom and the good life! And as for the categorical imperative, it can stay on its shelf.
(Comment reinstated – published before Bryan's)
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I’ve deleted some comments here, starting with my own, which deserves an apology to Ashok.
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Ashok, I agree with you that some human values are inherited from our non-human ancestors. We still have them because they still serve a purpose. But as I think we all agree – you, me and Frankl – there is a hierarchy of values:
“conscience must apply a measuring stick to the situation one is confronted with, and this situation has to be evaluated in the light of one’s hierarchy of values.”
So, as Frankl illustrates in his book, there are those who are able to respond to extreme suffering, for example, to the point of sometimes sacrificing their own immediate survival needs for the sake of someone else, or merely for the sake of their own well-developed sense of dignity or nobility.
However, Frankl is at pains to show that what we might consider a distinction— good versus evil, or animal versus highly-evolved human—is not fixed. It is constantly in flux. Our behaviour is not determined by our level of moral evolution, he implies, but—at least to some degree—by choice.
Thus he gives the example of Dr J, whom he calls a ‘satanic figure’ and who was commonly known as ‘the mass murderer of Steinhof’. Steinhof was a large mental hospital in Vienna and Dr J enthusiastically carried out a euthanasia programme of all the psychotic patients, as encouraged by the Nazis. When the war ended he was imprisoned by the Russians in the Lubianka. Someone who met him there told Frankl, “Before he died … he showed himself to be the best comrade you can imagine! He gave consolation to everybody. He lived up to the highest conceivable moral standard. He was the best friend I ever met during my long years in prison.”
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Vincent thanks for very appropriate changes/deletions.
Your latest comment is very well written and something I am completely in agreement with.
We are faced with choices at all moments and these are based on many factors, our moral values being just one of them.
There are many examples throughout history of persons having a change of heart from good to evil and vice- versa.
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Actually, I used my homemade future seeing device to quote you from the future.
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Hi Vincent
I just checked my email box and found your email.I have sent a reply. I am really glad you deleted those comments. There are times one can make an error and write something that deserves to be deleted. It is only the blog owner who can do that in blogger (except for the most recent unresponded comment) unlike facebook where much older comments can be deleted by the person who has posted them.
Since this post is about humans one might mention that to err is human and when an error is made in speech it disappears on its own with time. However, a written comment remains on record permanently unless erased intentionally. It should be done whenever it is felt necessary.
Hoping to read more thought provoking stuff from you.
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I'm afraid I'm not much up to Frankl these days. Nor, in fact, to much philosophizing of any sort. But I'm grateful for this wonderful tidbit about the three princes of Serendip! That pulled me right back into the delightful fantasies in which I am wallowing of late.
Thank you for yet another of your characteristic bursts of erudition!
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