Viktor Frankl: Meaning and Hope (A Yes to Life Under Any Circumstance). Some Problems of the Franklean Message in the Shoah

Abstract

Viktor Frankl is the thinker of meaning and hope. He was a Holocaust survivor and lost his parents, his brother and his wife in the Shoah. Frankl never surrendered to hopelessness and committed to optimism despite the tragic triad of life (suffering, guilt and death). His thesis is a yes to life in capital letters: human beings are beings in search of meaning, and life always has meaning, whatever the circumstances. This beautiful thesis is, nevertheless, a bit problematic in a gruesome scenario such as the Shoah. Frankl defines human beings as freedom, responsibility, spirituality and search for meaning. The present paper presents logotherapy from a philosophical perspective, includes a historical-biographical note since the Anschluss until the liberation, reflects on the search for meaning and the meaning of suffering, pondering on how some of Frankl’s thesis may have been useful to some victims in the German concentration camps (never in the extermination camps or in the massacres of the Einsatzgruppen) and how they can be an antidote against despair and suicide.