Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything

by Viktor E. Frankl

no one has the right to judge another person’s life as meaningless, or to deem another as unworthy of the right to life.

“logotherapy,” which treats psychological problems by helping people find meaning in their lives.

How we deal with the tough parts of our lives, he observes, “shows who we are.” If we can’t change our fate, at least we can accept it, adapt, and possibly undergo inner growth even in the midst of troubles.

our unique strengths and weaknesses make each of us uniquely irreplaceable.

everything has its value, but man has his dignity—a human being should never become a means to an end. But already in the economic system of the last few decades, most working people had been turned into mere means, degraded to become mere tools for economic life. It was no longer work that was the means to an end, a means for life or indeed a food for life—rather it was a man and his life, his vital energy, his “man power,” that became this means to an end.

Once I had to give the court a psychiatric report on an adolescent boy, who—in the midst of an extremely desperate situation—had stolen a loaf of bread; the court concerned had asked the precise question of whether the boy was “inferior” or not. In my report I had to admit that, from a psychiatric point of view, he could not be considered inferior in any way. But I did not do this without, at the same time, explaining that in his specific situation he would have had to have been “superior” in order to withstand temptation in the face of such hunger! It is not only through our actions that we can give life meaning—insofar as we can answer life’s specific questions responsibly—we can fulfill the demands of existence not only as active agents but also as loving human beings: in our loving dedication to the beautiful, the great, the good.

If we now summarize what we said about the “meaning” of life, we can conclude: life itself means being questioned, means answering; each person must be responsible for their own existence. Life no longer appears to us as a given, but as something given over to us, it is a task in every moment. This therefore means that it can only become more meaningful the more difficult it becomes.