Meaning (existential)

Short description: Description (rather than prescription) of the significance of life

Meaning in existentialism is descriptive; therefore it is unlike typical, prescriptive conceptions of "the meaning of life".[citation needed] Due to the methods of existentialism, prescriptive or declarative statements about meaning are unjustified[citation needed]. The root of the word "meaning" is "mean", which is the way someone or something is conveyed, interpreted, or represented. Each individual has his or her own form of unique perspective; meaning is, therefore, purely subjective. Meaning is the way something is understood by an individual; in turn, this subjective meaning is also how the individual may identify it. Meaning is the personal significance of something physical or abstract. This would include the assigning of value(s) to such significance. [1][failed verification]

## Contents

* 1 Kierkegaard
* 2 Sartre
* 3 Frankl
* 4 See also
* 5 References

## Kierkegaard

Main article: Philosophy:Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard

> What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die. (...) I certainly do not deny that I still accept an imperative of knowledge and that through it men may be influenced, but then it must come alive in me, and this is what I now recognize as the most important of all.

— Søren Kierkegaard[2]

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.[3][citation needed]

## Sartre

Main article: Philosophy:Existence precedes essence

"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 person - separate, independent.[4]

## Frankl

Main article: Philosophy:Logotherapy

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".[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.[6]

The following list of tenets represents Frankl's basic principles of Logotherapy:

>   * Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones.
>   * Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.
>   * We have inalienable freedom to find meaning.

— About Logotherapy[7]

We can find meaning in life in three different ways:

>   1. by creating a work or doing a deed;
>   2. by experiencing something or encountering someone;
>   3. by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

— About Logotherapy[7]

Logotherapy was developed by psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.

## See also

* Man's Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl's 1946 book
* Meaning
* Social alienation § Meaninglessness

## References

1. ↑ Crowell, Steven (16 October 2017). Zalta, Edward N.. ed. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/existentialism/. Retrieved 19 July 2021.
2. ↑ Kierkegaard, Søren (1978). Howard V. Hong & Edna H. Hong. ed. Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, Part 1: Autobiographical, 1829–1848. Indiana University Press. p. 34. ISBN 0253182441. https://books.google.com/books?id=XyNryDj1gAYC&q="What+I+really+need+is+to+get+clear+about+what+I+must+do"&pg=PA34. Retrieved 2021-07-19.
3. ↑ Kierkegaard, S. The Essential Kierkegaard, Eds. Howard and Edna Hong. Princeton, 2000. p. 10.
4. ↑ Existentialism is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre, (L'existentialisme est un humanisme) 1946.
5. ↑ Seidner, Stanley S. (June 10, 2009) "A Trojan Horse: Logotherapeutic Transcendence and its Secular Implications for Theology" . Mater Dei Institute. p. 5.
6. ↑ "Tenets". Logotherapy Institute. .
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Viktor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy". http://www.logotherapyinstitute.org/About_Logotherapy.html.

* v
* t
* e

Existentialism

Concepts|

* Abandonment
* Absurdism
* Angst
* Authenticity
* Bad faith
* Being in itself
* Existence precedes essence
* Existential crisis
* Facticity
* Meaning
* Nihilism
* Other

Thinkers|

* Nicola Abbagnano
* Hannah Arendt
* Abdel Rahman Badawi
* Hazel Barnes
* Karl Barth
* Nikolai Berdyaev
* Steve Biko
* Martin Buber
* Rudolf Bultmann
* Dino Buzzati
* Albert Camus
* Jane Welsh Carlyle
* Thomas Carlyle
* Emil Cioran
* Walter A. Davis
* Simone de Beauvoir
* Fyodor Dostoevsky
* William A. Earle
* Ralph Ellison
* Frantz Fanon
* Vilém Flusser
* Benjamin Fondane
* James Anthony Froude
* Alberto Giacometti
* Juozas Girnius
* Lewis Gordon
* Martin Heidegger
* Edmund Husserl
* Eugène Ionesco
* Nae Ionescu
* William James
* Karl Jaspers
* Franz Kafka
* Walter Kaufmann
* Søren Kierkegaard
* Ladislav Klíma
* Emmanuel Levinas
* Ash Lieb
* John Macquarrie
* Naguib Mahfouz
* Gabriel Marcel
* Vytautas Mačernis
* Maurice Merleau-Ponty
* Friedrich Nietzsche
* José Ortega y Gasset
* Viktor Petrov
* Franz Rosenzweig
* Jean-Paul Sartre
* Aous Shakra
* Lev Shestov
* Joseph B. Soloveitchik
* Paul Tillich
* Rick Turner
* Miguel de Unamuno
* John Daniel Wild
* Colin Wilson
* Richard Wright
* Peter Wessel Zapffe

Related|

* Phenomenology (philosophy)
* Continental philosophy
* Transcendentalism
* German idealism
* Western Marxism
* Existentialist anarchism
* Existential nihilism
* Atheistic existentialism

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