Showing papers on "Meaning of life published in 1968"

What's the Point of History?

Abstract: The question of whether history has any meaning (a question which is so often asked with irritation), is one that is always bound to plunge the historian into the deepest embarrassment. And his embarrassment is all the more hopeless since he himself very rarely takes full account of the hideously confusing ambiguity involved in such a question. This matter of whether history has a meaning is first and foremost a philosophical or a theological question, like the problem of the meaning of life and death, or the struggles and failures of the different generations. A historian is then in exactly the same position as a biologist or a moralist, or indeed any one of us at all who finds a spare moment to inquire into the meaning of his own actions. The particular answer he finds, if indeed he does find one, will scarcely have any reference to his knowledge of history. Yet on the other hand, and particularly so today in the light of school reforms and educational planning, it poses the question of whether it is meaningful at all to concern oneself with history as a subject. The very fact that both questions mingle and overlap, is characteristic of history as a subject; a zoologist, for example, could scarcely be troubled by the corresponding question of whether the animal kingdom 'had a meaning'. In fact science begins at the point where that very objectification is achieved, which is nothing else but an elimination of the philosophical question of meaning. The historian never succeeds in achieving this kind of objectification. History is undoubtedly the only scientific (or allegedly scientific) discipline which has never found a name to distinguish itself as a science from the object of its study. For the idea that the study of history as a subject should itself be called simply History, is really just as absurd as if biology were to be designated simply as Life or jurisprudence as Justice. This naive imprecision in terminology, something which is in many respects so characteristic of history and throws doubt on its

The challenge of logotherapy.

Abstract: "Every age has its own neurosis, and every age needs its own psychotherapy to cope with it." In these words Viktor Frankl strikes the keynote of the new therapy that he brings to the neurotic condition of our time. Dr. Frankl is head of neurol ogy in the Vienna Poliklinic and Professor in the Medical Faculty, University of Vienna. His diagnosis of our age is that many today suffer a loss of the meaning of life. Such a loss results in a profound emptiness and futility, which he calls the "existential vacuum."1 How shall we cope with this loss of meaning, which robs life of its value and purpose? First of all, the remedy must be appropriate to the need. And this is where many remedies fail. One remedy today that is often applied and applauded is psychoanal ysis. Whenever a person is unhappy or perplexed he may be referred to psychoanal ysis. But psychoanalysis is a specific treatment for specific neuroses and not a cure all for every condition. And it is open to misunderstandings that often lead to fallacies, such as the pathetic fallacy that reduces every distress to illness to be treated as a pathology. But loss of meaning is a spiritual problem to be met on its own ground, not to be pushed to the couch or regressed to infantile neuroses. Psychoanalysis has emerged from important discoveries of Freud about the dy namic nature of the unconscious. They are historical, and they are dated. We build on the foundation of the past, even as we are obliged to move beyond it and correct its errors. Freud was a child of nineteenth-century science cast in lines of rigid determinism. This rigid determinism is what the newer science of our time has

Professor Hepburn on Meaning in Life

Abstract: Some people do not find much sense in talk about meaning in life. Some people think that such talk cannot have or express any sense, that those who find sense in it must be under an illusion. Some others think that if one is inclined to think that such talk cannot have any sense that is because one misconstrues its logic. So they set off to show us how it is to be construed if what is said here is to make sense. However, there may not really be anything wrong with what they thus set themselves the task of putting right. Their idea that the logic of discourse on meaning in life has been misconstrued may itself come from limitations in their view of logic and its relation to language, from ‘misunderstandings about the logic of our language’. Therefore, as Professor Hepburn rightly points out, such philosophers, in their attempt to ‘prune and rationalise and redefine the vocabulary’ in question, will merely succeed in misleading themselves in their appreciation of its logic and, worse still, in their understanding of life. In his article (‘Questions about the Meaning of Life’, Religious Studies, vol. I, 1965–66) Hepburn opposes such simplifications and distortions of logic which may confine our understanding of life. I am in sympathy with his programme, with his desire to fight superficiality, his caution in rejecting brashness. What I want to do is to remark on some of its limitations and to open up some new questions—though it is not my intention here to pursue any of them.