Self -Transcendence: The Will-to-Meaning

from Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy, Viktor Frankl, 1963

We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accom­panying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neigh­bor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding hismouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slip­ping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and on­ward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasion­ally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wis­dom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may con­sist in enduring his sufferings in the right way —an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfill­ment. …

By declaring that man is a responsible crea­ture and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true mean­ing of life is to be found in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. By the same token, the real aim of human existence cannot be found in what is called self-actualization. Human ex­istence is essentially self-transcendence rather than self-actualization. Self-actualization is not a possible aim at all, for the simple reason that the more a man would strive for it, the more he would miss it. For only to the extent to which man commits himself to the fulfillment of his life's meaning, to this extent he also ac­tualizes himself. In other words, self-actualiza­tion cannot be attained if it is made an end in itself, but only as a side effect of self-tran­scendence.

Commentary: Viktor Frankl, relative to the search for meaning, places the individual squarely in the world. He later asserts there are three ways of experiencing meaning: by doing a deed, by experiencing a value, and by suffering. Originally his narrative had the title From Death Camp to Existentialism. His ethic of the will-to-meaning is conditioned by being not separate from, but being embedded in the world. In this regard each individual has her or his unique vocation or mission to fulfill. It is in fulfillment of this unique and personal task that meaning with a measure of transcendence is realized.

Search yourself: In your experience how have you realized meaning and self- transcendence? (Remember Frankl's three ways: doing a deed, experiencing a value such as love, or by suffering.) Do you agree that self-actualization is a futile quest, whereas it is achieved through self-transcendence?