Teachings of the Catholic Church - Questions     

Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

1. According to Frankl, what is the status of man’s freedom in captivity such as that of the Nazi concentration camps?  Is freedom done away with altogether?  Or not?  And a related question: Pope John Paul II talks a lot about the “dignity of the human person.”  According to Frankl, is it possible to retain one’s dignity as a human person in the conditions of a concentration camp?  In light of this, what, according to Frankl, makes life “meaningful and purposeful”?  Can there be meaning and purpose in a life steeped in suffering, such as the suffering Jews like Frankl experienced at Auschwitz?

2. Given what Frankl says above about life and suffering in the camps, what allowed a man to live through such conditions?  What did a man have to have in order to live?  What was one of the greatest threats to his continued existence?

3. On p. 122 of his text, Frankl suggests that the prisoners had to stop asking about the meaning of life.  Why?  What was necessary instead?  How does this comment serve as a necessary addendum to what Frankl has said above?  Or is he merely contradicting himself?

4. On pp. 131-132 of his text, Frankl says that he told his fellow prisoners that “human life, under  any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death.”  Do you believe that?  Is it true?  Or isn’t it really the case that these were just poor, miserable creatures – dead and gone now – who were essentially no different from cows in a pen huddled together awaiting their fate?

[NB: Let me make clear that I mean no impiety with this last question.  It is my own belief that the Jews who suffered and died in the camps were noble human beings, who possessed an infinite dignity and value.  But my own view is not at issue here.  We must face the question squarely, because the prevalent view in contemporary society would imply that human beings don’t have free will or anything like a soul and that we are not essentially different from, say, cows or sheep or dogs.  If the prevalent view is true, then the question I have asked forces itself upon us, and we must face up to it honestly and forthrightly.  It would be a false and illusory piety that would cause us not to face up to the logical consequences of our own notions of the human person.]
 
 
 

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