Meaning in existentialism concerns how people make sense of and give meaning to their existence. Existentialists conceive of the self not as a substance or thing with a pre-given nature, or "essence", but as a situated activity or way of being in which people are always in the process of making or creating who they are. They examine how people "struggle to make sense of and give meaning to" their existence. This view is expressed in the phrase "existence precedes essence", which Kevin Aho calls "arguably the unifying principle of existentialism". In the philosophical literature on the meaning of life, subjectivism is one of the major approaches to the question of what makes a person's life meaningful. Subjectivist theories hold, broadly, that meaning is grounded in what people find meaningful or what they want out of their lives, although such theories have been challenged by arguments for objective and hybrid accounts of meaning.
Thinkers associated with existentialism disagree about the source of meaning. Søren Kierkegaard connected meaning with a personal relationship to God and Christian faith. Albert Camus argued that there is no answer to the question of the meaning of existence: the natural world, the universe and human activity do not provide an overarching purpose or meaning. Viktor Frankl, whose work influenced existential approaches to psychotherapy, argued that meaning is something to be discovered through engagement with life and the world rather than simply created within the individual.
Kierkegaard
For Kierkegaard, meaning does not equal knowledge, although both are important. Meaning, for Kierkegaard, is a lived experience, a quest to find one's values, beliefs, and purpose in a meaningless world. As a Christian, Kierkegaard finds his meaning in the Word of God, but for those who are not Christian, Kierkegaard wishes them well in their search.Kierkegaard, S. The Essential Kierkegaard, Eds. Howard and Edna Hong. Princeton, 2000. p. 10.
Sartre
"Existence precedes essence" means that humans exist first before they have meaning in life. Meaning is not given, and must be achieved. With objects—say, a knife, for example—there is some creator who conceives of an idea or purpose of an object, and then creates it with the essence of the object already present. The essence of what the knife will be exists before the actual knife itself. Sartre, who was an atheist, believed that if there is no God to have conceived of our essence or nature, then we must come into existence first, and then create our own essence out of interaction with our surroundings and ourselves. With this come serious implications of self-responsibility over who we are and what our lives mean. For this reason, meaning is something without representation or bearing in anything or anyone else. It is something truly unique to each personseparate, independent.Existentialism is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre, (L'existentialisme est un humanisme) 1946.
Frankl
Logotherapy is a type of psychological analysis that focuses on a will to meaning as opposed to a Nietzschean/Adlerian doctrine of "will to power" or Freud's "will to pleasure".Seidner, Stanley S. (June 10, 2009) "A Trojan Horse: Logotherapeutic Transcendence and its Secular Implications for Theology" . Mater Dei Institute. p. 5. Frankl also noted the barriers to humanity's quest for meaning in life. He warns against "...affluence, hedonism, [and] materialism..." in the search for meaning."Tenets". Logotherapy Institute. .
The following list of tenets represents Frankl's basic principles of Logotherapy:
We can find meaning in life in three different ways:
Logotherapy was developed by psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.
See also Man's Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl's 1946 book Meaning (philosophy)
References