The purpose of a writing class is to develop a meaningful thesis, direct or implied, that will generate a compelling essay. Most importantly, a meaningful thesis will have a strong emotional connection between you and the material. In fact, if you don’t have a “fire in your belly” to write the paper, your essay will be nothing more than a limp document, a perfunctory exercise in futility. A successful thesis will also be intellectually challenging and afford a complexity worthy of college-level writing. Thirdly, the successful thesis will be demonstrable, which means it can be supported by examples and illustrations in a recognizable organizational design.
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One. Using the Toulmin model, write an essay that supports, refutes, or complicates the assertion that the evil witnessed in Elie Wiesel's Night eradicates the philosophical notion of theodicy (the reconciliation of an all-loving, all-powerful God to the existence of evil).
For an argumentative paper such as this one, refer to the Chapters on writing arguments in How to Write Anything, pages 66-95.
Two. Using the Toulmin model, write an essay that supports, refutes, or complicates the assertion that the evil witnessed in Night bears moral witness to the truth and points to "freedom from the prison" and this moral agency gives Night its redeeming value.
In other words, we must have accounts that bear witness to evil in order that we don't make the error of denying evil and history and to insure accountability for those responsible. Otherwise, we will rewrite history and these revisionists histories are false.
Some however would argue that the evil evident in the book serves no purpose other than for us to embrace a nihilistic worldview; therefore, they would argue, the book has no redeeming value.
In the above essay prompt, you would be well served to evaluate the book's redeeming value by looking at its value in terms of using a criteria. We see how to apply a criteria or standard on pages 112-114 in How to Write Anything.
Here's a sample criteria or standard I would apply to the above essay prompt:
1. Is the book true?
2. Is the book moral?
3. Does the book contain a moral lesson we can use to better our lives?
4. Does the book connect with a wide audience by appealing to universal concerns?
Three. Related to the above essay prompt, some might argue that the fate of the people in Elie's town was that they suffered from a "failure of imagination." Or more specifically when presented with the evil of the Nazis, they could not believe or comprehend such evil. Therefore, they could not prepare for it.
In this context, write a cause and effect analysis of the way we tend to deny evil and how this capacity for denial results in our destruction. You might compare the evil rendered in Night with the denial that preceded the 9/11 attacks. Or you could use another example.
Four. In the context of Night, develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the question if Hitler and his minions were crazy sociopaths or sane evil, manipulating agents. Or both. Explain.
It might help for you recognize that a sociopath is not delusional but does evil without any pangs of conscience while a psychopath is delusional. Must a person be one or the other? Can a person be both?
Five. Write a literary analysis of Night by showing how the book uses literary motifs (night or darkness, fire as hell, fear, and corpses as the walking dead) to develop the narrative structure. For help with this prompt, you might refer to the chapter on literary analysis in How to Write Anything on pages 184-212.
Your guidelines for your essay are as follows:
This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.
You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
The paper should not over-rely on one main source for most of the information. Rather, it should use multiple sources and synthesize the information found in them.
This paper will be approximately 1,000 words in length (about 4 typed, double-spaced pages), not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
Theme in Night: Denial and Acclimation to Evil
1. Denial and acclimation to evil; as we get comfortable with a certain level of evil, it creeps toward us in greater and greater amounts slowly robbing us of our freedom.
This process creates the term "evil creep"; we acclimate to evil as it rises (creeping) slowly and slowly until it's too late; humans tend toward denial because reality is too inconvenient to deal with.
Here are examples of denials that "speak" inside people's heads:
I don't need to work on my relationship even though my girlfriend and I barely speak anymore. That's normal.
I don't need a colonoscopy even though there's a family history of colon cancer. I'll accept fate for what it is.
I'm not fat. I've got reserves in case I get sick in the hospital. See the 1,200-pound man on Oprah.
I don't have a spending problem. I need my new car and iPhone payments; otherwise, I won't be able to find a girlfriend.
I study too hard. I need more balance in my life. I need to go out and play more often.
I know my husband beats me once a week, but at least he doesn't beat me every day like some women I know.
Silence and Indifference Empower Evil
Danger of silence; silence makes us complicit in evil; we tend to keep our mouth shut because we fear we'll get into trouble or people will say we're crazy for speaking out or both.
Another danger of silence and apathy is "Evil Creep."We see this evil creep when Moshe the Beadle tries to warn his friends of the coming evil but he's dismissed as a madman.
What is it about the human tendency toward denial and acclimation to evil, AKA "Evil Creep"?
The short answer is that we don't want to be inconvenienced by the truth. We love our delusions too much and often at our own peril.
Silence as a theological event in an article by Naomi Seidman. God must now be questioned in the face of the Holocaust in new ways. And in doing so, we don't necessarily lose our faith; we reconstruct it in light of the Holocaust.
Theodicy:
The problem of reconciling evil to an all-powerful, all-loving God. There are many parallels to Job, which is a book that struggles with theodicy.
Theodicy asks:
How can God stand silent in the face of evil?
How do we say God is all-powerful and all-loving when time and time again he does not intervene in horrific acts of cruelty from man or nature against man?
Every few seconds a child somewhere in the world dies of starvation and God does nothing. During the Holocaust live babies were thrown into flickering ovens and God did nothing. As you can see, theodicy is a very emotional subject.
What is the struggle between nihilism and meaning, faith and theodicy?
An essay that addresses theodicy could be divided into two parts: How theodicy fails in the context of the book, but how we cannot look at failed theodicy as a justification for hedonism and nihilism in the context of Night.
Even if we can no longer believe in an all-powerful God, we have to ask ourselves what is the option to losing belief? Is it nihilism (nothing matters), hedonism (the relentless pursuit of pleasure because it's seen as the highest good)?
Enduring suffering is comparable to Job; how do we react to the suffering; do we become bitter and imitate our oppressors or do we find purpose from our suffering? This theme is rendered with brilliance in an Anthony Payne film starring George Clooney called The Descendants.
Memory
An important theme in Night is remembering what happened and keeping vigilant; we must take responsibility for our apathy and indifference to what happened in the past or the past will repeat itself.
Those who write history, those who portray the mainstream version of history to others, are the ones who have the power.
For example, some people honor the "history" that champions the values of the Confederate Flag; others have contempt for the Confederate history because the "values" embody the diseased religion of White Supremacy, a time of aggrandizing one race and exploiting another.
Which "history" we believe in affects our values and the leaders we choose to champion our values.
There are many "histories" but some versions are more credible than others.
Dehumanization and scapegoating throughout history.
Since the Inquisition, those in power gain more power by demonizing the helpless or some bogus "enemy." Demonizing and scapegoating the innocent has been an evil tool to gain power used since the beginning of time.
There is also self-imposed dehumanization: What is the dehumanization process? The loss of will: From the Japanese series Fist of the North Star: "A man who gives up the will is not a human being anymore." Wiesel saw many in the camps who lost their will long before they physically died.
Loss of innocence:
You lose your faith in the world as you once knew it. God will not or cannot protect you from evil. Nor can your parents. Before his experience in the concentration camp, Elie assumed these two propositions were true.
You lose your orientation to the world as you once knew it. The boundaries of common decency that keep evil in check do not exist.
You lose the image of yourself you once valued. You no longer believe in the common decency of humanity and recognizing the human capacity for evil you change so radically that you can not even recognize your old self.
You are overcome with the fear that God does not exist and fear that without a god anything--no matter how vile--is permissible. "If God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted," is taken from the Brothers Karmazov by Dostoyevsky.
Are People Evil Or Crazy Or Both?
Is there real evil in the world or are people crazy and as a result are misguided in their beliefs such as the belief that the world would be a better place if we exterminated the Jews?
Can evil be explained by science and sociology or is it part of a more inexplicable, spiritual realm? Consult Explaining Hitler by Ron Rosenbaum.
How do civilized, decent people become complicit with evil and engage in blind obedience?
Major Theme from First 3 Chapters: Denial and Acclimation to Evil (pertains to prompts 2 and 3)
As Elie Wiesel, just a 12-year-old boy, gets off the train and watches babies and others thrown alive into furnaces of fire, he is overcome with the question:
How could this be happening and how could the whole world be silent in the face of this evil?
In fact, genocide, the killing of masses of people based on their religion or ethnicity, had happened before in history. Just about 30 years earlier, the world was silent when from 1915-1923, the Turks killed 1.5 to 2 million Armenians, a fact that the Turkish government still denies today.
Hitler said he was emboldened by the world's indifference of the Armenian genocide to commit the same atrocity against the Jews.
So the question remains, why is the human beast prone to denial of evil even in the face of overwhelming evidence that evil is coming right at us?
Why Do We Deny Evil?
1. Laziness is partly true, but it's an oversimplification. We are addicted to our routines and we don't want to change. We are hard-wired to inertia. So when the Jews in Elie's village hear about the Nazis rounding up their people and all the other bad things, the townspeople don't want to be disturbed.
2. Often evil is beyond the imagination of the innocent and the good. In other words, good people cannot believe or even comprehend that the kind of evil described in Night could exist.
Some have said, that we weren't prepared for 9/11 in spite of evidence that it was going to happen because of a failure of the imagination.
3. We often don't trust the messenger, especially when we don't like the message. For example, the beloved Moshe the Beadle is taken away as a "foreigner" and survives a slaughter and comes back to town to warn his friends, but people dismiss him as a madman.
Study the Templates of Argumentation
While the author’s arguments for meaning are convincing, she fails to consider . . .
While the authors' supports make convincing arguments, they must also consider . . .
These arguments, rather than being convincing, instead prove . . .
While these authors agree with Writer A on point X, in my opinion . . .
Although it is often true that . . .
While I concede that my opponents make a compelling case for point X, their main argument collapses underneath a barrage of . . .
While I see many good points in my opponent’s essay, I am underwhelmed by his . . .
While my opponent makes some cogent points regarding A, B, and C, his overall argument fails to convince when we consider X, Y, and Z.
My opponent makes many provocative and intriguing points. However, his arguments must be dismissed as fallacious when we take into account W, X, Y, and Z.
While the author’s points first appear glib and fatuous, a closer look at his polemic reveals a convincing argument that . . .
Qualities of an Effective Thesis
A good thesis is a complete sentence that defines your argument.
A good thesis addresses your opponents’ views in a concession clause.
A good thesis often has mapping components or mapping statements that outline your body paragraphs.
A good thesis avoids the obvious and instead struggles to grapple with difficult and complex ideas.
A good thesis embraces complexity and sophistication but is expressed with clarity.
A good thesis is a demonstrable opinion or argument about a topic; it is not a statement of fact.
Sample Thesis Statements: Evaluate How Effective the Following Theses Are and Explain
Night is about the loss of innocence.
Night is about dehumanization.
Night helps us realize how important it is to remember the Holocaust.
Night makes us focus on the the problems of faith in the context of theodicy.
Night is a warning about being silent in the face of evil.
Night is about the dangers of acclimating to evil.
Improved Thesis Statements
Night delves into the darkness of the human heart but in the end is a life-affirming memoir because it __________, _________, ___________, and ______________.
While Elie Wiesel struggles with nihilism and the ultimate rejection of God, his book struggles to achieve, successfully, a moral force for good. This goodness is born from the book's warning that we must never forget the evil of the Holocaust; that we must condemn the oppressors and the indifferent alike; that we must be warned of the dangers of acclimating to evil; that we must be warned of the dangers of cowardice and that dehumanization that results.
Elie Wiesel's struggle to recover his faith in both God and humanity and God has many parallels with Job, which affirms a Moral Code in the face of nihilism. These parallels include _________________, ______________, ____________________, and _____________________.
While McMahon tries to salvage some meaning and goodness from Night, I'm sorry to say that this masterful memoir provides us with overwhelming evidence for converting to atheism and nihilism. The most compelling reasons for rejecting God and meaning as a farce are contained in this gem of a book and these compelling reasons include ____________________, _________________, __________________, and ___________________.
The above writer's contention that we should reject God and become nihilists performs a mockery of Elie Wiesel's masterpiece. In truth, the problem of nihilism is a very tempting one for Wiesel, but we see that he rejects nihilism in favor of a strong moral code evidenced by __________________, ___________________, ___________________, and ___________________.
Hitler and his Nazi minions cannot be called crazy because such a label absolves them of their guilt. In fact, a close examination of Hitler and his close assistants give us a remarkable window into pure evil evidenced by ___________, ____________, _____________, and _______________.
Night is compelling evidence that theodicy, the attempt to reconcile an all loving, all powerful God with the world's evil, is a flimsy philosophy that cannot support any meaningful belief in God. In fact, a close look at Night is a refutation of theodicy evidenced by ____________, ____________, _____________, and ________________.
Study Questions
1. What does no one want to hear about?
According to Robert McAfee Brown, who writes the Preface to the book for the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition, no one wants to confront the fact that a “cultured people,” the Germans, turned to genocide, as a “solution” to their problems while the rest of the world remained silent in the face of this genocide. This means anyone can turn to evil; anyone can join an "Inquisition" in whatever form it takes place.
In a similar fashion, people are less disturbed when Islamic extremists are illiterate and from the underclass. But what of those who are educated and become radicalized? There is the terrifying truth few want to face.
2. What is the greatest indignity we can inflict upon those who suffered the Holocaust?
To tell the victims and their families that their suffering was not real but the product of their illusions or "exaggerations." These people are called Holocaust deniers and history revisionists. Related to the above, are those who either forget or are indifferent to such suffering.
3. What are Wiesel’s motives for telling this true story?
To make people believe what happened and to make people care about what happened so the Holocaust will never happen again. In other words, to bear witness to evil and hold those accountable for their crimes against humanity.
4. Why is Night confused with fiction when in fact it is a work of nonfiction?
Because it has a narrative that is so compelling that people think they are reading a novel but in fact they are reading an autobiography. Also Wiesel wrote the memoir twice, first in an angry tone, then in a melancholy, sad one.
5. What significance is it that the narrator describes his father as having high esteem in the community?
Loss of innocence entails seeing your great father figure reduced to helplessness. Early in the book Wiesel sees his father weep for the first time ever. He also sees his father beaten in the camps for asking to use the bathroom. The humiliation is worse than the blow itself. Some say the loss of his physical father parallels the loss of his spiritual father, his Patriarchal God.
6. How does the narrator introduce the sigh of resignation when Moshe is taken away?And what does this sigh signify?
People spin badness into a better reality because they don’t want to make the necessary changes to adapt to evil.
7. What has happened to Moshe that has changed him forever?
8. How do the townspeople react to Moshe’s witness to the atrocities he saw and suffered?
Get away. You’re disturbing and inconveniencing me. Many don’t believe Moshe, including the narrator. No one listens to him, at their peril. And they ignore the rumors that Hitler wants to kill the Jews in mass, that is commit genocide against them. They keep intoxicating themselves with misguided optimism.
9. How does misguided optimism meet every turn of worse news?
The Germans invade Hungary. Jews are beaten. Jewish shops closed. Nazis occupy Jewish homes. Synagogues close. Leaders of Jewish community are arrested. Jews can’t leave their homes or they’ll be shot. Jews are forced to hand their valuables to Hungarian police. Jews must wear a yellow star on their sleeve. Jews forced to move to ghettos. “It will be okay. The war will be over. The Red Army will arrive and we will be free and everything will be like it was once before.” The human capacity for denial and self-delusion is infinite. But wait. More bad news. Deportation. Trains. Stuffed in them like cattle. Why are we going? It’s a secret. Apparently it’s to get farther away from the front lines of the war. Another delusion. And once they start moving on the trains yet another delusion. Nothing can be worse than being packed in the trains and thirsty and overheated. An illusion. About 12 stages of delusions.
10. What is the point of no return?
By the time they understand they are in the clutches of evil, it’s too late. As we read in the untitled Chapter 1, “We were on our way.” And in the second chapter, “Our eyes were opened, but too late.”
11. What vision afflicts Madame Schachter and how does her situation parallel Moshe the Beadle’s?
After trying to ignore here repeatedly, the train stops to the smell of burning bodies, a “foul odor.” Dead bodies will be thrown into a fiery crematorium but also, we shall find in Chapter 3, will be live babies tossed into the flames.
12. Why do the experienced prisoners spit so much venomous hatred toward the new prisoners at the start of Chapter 3?
They resent their willed ignorance in part and also they have become snarling animals having lost a large part of their humanity as they now exist in “survival mode.” To become mean and heartless becomes a way to numb ourselves from the horrors.
13. What is Wiesel’s “nightmare” in Chapter 3?
Not just the evil, but that the evil, burning adults and children, was ignored and that people were also ignorant of it; in some cases people were willfully ignorant, that is, silent about abominations taking place.
14. How is the theme of nihilism introduced in Chapter 3? No more humanity. “Today anything is possible, even those crematories.” There is a famous quote by Dostoevski: "If God does not exist, everything is permitted."
15. Why does Elie question prayer in Chapter 3?
God was silent in the face of the Holocaust. His God was murdered and so was his desire to live. He would never forget (page 32, my edition). Perhaps the only spark that kept him alive was his desire to bear truth to the evil he witnessed.
16. What is the process of dehumanization in Chapter 3?
See the Stanford Study, discussed in Chocolate War lectures. In many studies, we find that the oppressor begins to see the captives as subhuman and the abuses grow worse and worse over time.
17. How does Elie Wiesel relate to Job in Chapter 3?
He does not question God's existence or power, but he questions God's justice. Someone says God is testing them with this trial as an act of love. Page 42, my version.
Theodicy Introduction
Theodicy is the belief that we can have faith in an all-good, all-powerful God in the presence of the world's evil.
That God appears to intervene is some instances and not others is an impediment for many.
Defenders of theodicy often argue that God has to allow evil to happen because God gave us free will. If no evil existed, the argument goes, we would be robots.
Many, like Bart Ehrman cannot believe in theodicy and such an inability results in the loss of Ehrman's faith.
In 500 words, explain the story of "Death in Tehran" on page 56 (most commonly used edition) by placing this story in the larger context of Man's Search for Meaning.
At the bottom of Meaning Mountain is the bottom-dwelling realm, the land of the sloths, miscreants, narcissists, predatory hedonists, fops, dandies, pathological liars, impostors, grifters, mountebanks, snake oil salesmen, and other members of the Moral Dissolution Club. No fair-minded or decent human aspires to exist in this loathsome realm.
Traveling north up Meaning Mountain, we arrive at the middle realm, the land most people aspire to. Middle Mountain, as it's often called, hosts the world's decent people who do their work, fulfill their responsibilities, remain faithful to their partner and seek a life of security and comfort according to society's social contract.
These individuals seek the 8 Essential Needs, which we will peruse below. The people are "nice" but they tend to be invisible and rarely achieve anything "groundshaking" pertaining to the progress of the planet. For them meaning takes a back seat to comfort and security. They don't "make waves"; they simply get cozy in their cave and put their life on auto-pilot. But they fall short of Frankl because they avoid tension and conflict (105).
Between the middle and the top realm are the creative producers, those who flourish in their passion. They may not pursue Frankl's edict of self-sacrifice, but they do not settle for the mediocrity that pervades the people just below them. Often these people change society with their scientific breakthroughs and innovations. Think Apple and Steve Jobs. More generally, think about comedians, entertainers, actors, writers, musicians, artists, etc. These people cannot bear living without the torment of a struggle to better their work and art. To quit working would be, for them, a death.
Climbing past the cumulus clouds and then the misty shroud, we are now at Realm Four, the peak of Meaning Mountain. We are now in the presence of a rarefied breed of people, those disciples of Full-Potency Frankl. These are brave souls who cast away comfort and comformity to pursue Frankl's edict to take their cross and give up their life for the sake of others, to embrace suffering, theirs and the world's, and to seek what Life demands of them. For the Full-Potency Frankl acolytes, comfort and security take a back seat to meaning, sacrifice, and public service. Most people who change the world for the better come from this hard-to-reach mountain peak.
Man’s Search for Meaning Essay Assignment
Viktor Frankl argues in Man’s Search for Meaning that in the face of suffering (the dominant feature of existence), we must use our free will to choose the appropriate attitude toward that suffering. We can either see suffering as cause to be angry animals, looking at life as little more than a place of senseless futility that justifies an attitude of nihilism so that our life is little more than unleashing our beastly, hedonistic passions and live a life of alienated selfishness. Or in the face of suffering we can elevate our humanity by adopting an attitude that says we must find courage, conviction, and moral righteousness through a Higher Purpose or Meaning.
Viktor Frankl witnessed both attitudes in the concentration camps. He observed people either descended into moral dissolution, becoming dehumanized animals who lived a day-to-day existence without purpose, or they found a purpose that preserved and even elevated their humanity. His mission in Man’s Search for Meaning is to persuade us to become Destiny Seekers, people who becoming morally righteous by finding meaning.
However, there is a camp of thinking that is skeptical of the idea of meaning for four reasons.
The first reason that meaning is so subjective, varying from person to person, that to discuss it as an essential life force therefore is absurd.
Secondly, the skeptic will argue that people don’t have any objective meaning. Rather, they pursue some illusion or other that gives them a sense of purpose—perhaps a false one—that gives them motivation. In other words, people motivate themselves by making up all sorts of incentives, but these incentives could be less about “meaning” and more about chimeras.
A third point of skepticism is that there are people who find meaning in very disturbing ways, most notably by being brainwashed and manipulated such as a person who converts to a religious cult or perhaps to some extremist ideology.
The skeptic’s fourth point of contention is that she will argue that we cannot choose meaning because we are not agents of free will; rather, we are agents beholden to forces we cannot control, namely, determinism, the philosophy that states our biology and environment affect our behavior and that “choices” are just an illusion. We say we “chose” to do something after the fact, but in truth, we were hard-wired to act in such a way.
Addressing the skeptic’s points above, support, refute, or complicate Frankl’s argument that we are responsible to be Destiny Seekers and find our own meaning in order that we make the appropriate response to a life of suffering and that failure to find meaning will doom us to the hell of the “existential vacuum.”
Suggested Structure:
Introduction: Frame the debate or write a compelling anecdote that transitions to your thesis.
Thesis
Paragraphs Address Each of the Skeptic’s Points
One or two paragraphs address the idea that meaning is too individual and subjective.
One or two paragraphs that address the idea that meaning is an illusion we use to motivate ourselves.
One or two paragraphs that address the idea that “meaning” or a found purpose can be the result of brainwashing and manipulation.
One or two paragraphs that address the idea that we don’t choose meaning; some of us may have a sense of meaning, but only because we are hard-wired to. In contrast, some of us are hardwired to NOT have a sense of meaning and be okay with that.
Two counterargument-refutation paragraphs that address your opponents’ views.
Important Note
If you're refuting the skeptics point by point, the counterargument section is not necessary because your WHOLE essay is a refutation.
Conclusion
Conclusion is a more emotional (pathos) restatement of your thesis.
Skeptic’s First Argument:
Meaning is too subject, varying from individual to individual, so we cannot speak about meaning. If everything is meaning, then nothing is meaning. Meaning must be distinct from all the motivations people claim to be meaning.
Counterargument
Frankl would agree that meaning must be distinct from greed, ambition, consumerism, and all the other false meanings people claim to be meaning. He would argue that there are common characteristics of real meaning.
Some of those common characteristics are maturity, improved priorities, less egotism, moral integrity, empathy, and acting on social justice. Perhaps most importantly, our individual life experience makes meaning different for all of us.
For example, a young man who was abused in the foster parent system grows up to counsel people who were abused by adults.
A drug addict goes to college to become a counselor for drug addicts.
In the examples above, the meanings are different, but they have common qualities.
Skeptic’s Rebuttal to the Above Counterargument
Even if we concede that all the different “meanings” people discover have commonality in the realm of morality and helping others, we still have the problem of motive.
For example, a mother adopts babies whose mothers are drug addicts. These babies have enormous needs and impose enormous stress on the woman’s two biological children. The biological children condemn their mother as having a martyr’s complex. Her ego hungers for suffering to define herself as a martyr and she enjoys others seeing her in this dramatic role. The children claim that egotism, not empathy and compassion, is the driving force. So the woman’s “meaning” is a false one.
Frankl Defender’s Counterargument to Skeptic’s Rebuttal
I concede that the mother and people like her may have bad motivations for doing meaningful things. I might even go so far to admit that the majority of people use the wrong motivations to define their meaning and purpose. But these bad examples fail to negate that there are truly good people out there, Viktor Frankl included, who do good deeds that match their good motivations.
If we heed the skeptic’s cynicism, we will be blind to those truly good people who have both good motivations and a higher purpose. These good people are our role models and heroes. The cynic is blind to their deeds and he appears to eager to make us as blind as he is.
Skeptic’s Second Argument:
What we call meaning is simply an illusion. People have all sorts of “meaning,” but they merely create illusions or chimeras to chase and then they call these illusions their “meaning.”
Counterargument
Frankl would concede that there are many people pursuing false meaning, but that fact does not negate that there is real meaning.
Frankl is a moral absolutist who believes in right and wrong and two races of people: decent and indecent. Clearly, if someone’s “meaning” doesn’t have a moral outcome, then Frankl would be the first to admit that that person has not found real meaning at all but is pursuing an illusion.
But like in the first argument, if 95% of people are chasing a false meaning, that doesn’t mean a real meaning does not exist.
It appears that arguments 1 and 2 are very close and in fact may intersect at many levels. I’ll leave it to the students to decide if they should fuse arguments 1 and 2 into one argument or keep them separate.
Skeptic’s Rebuttal
Who is Frankl to be the arbiter to what is real and false meaning? He gives us no ultimate guide in his book. Further, people could pursue a false meaning with a moral outcome.
For example, a man who lives a reckless life as a bachelor, may drink the “let’s get married in the suburbs” Kool-Aid and settle down in some suburban neighborhood.
Clearly, this suburbanite’s existence is morally superior to that of his reckless bachelor days, but he is now simply a sedated, mindless consumer of the middle class, a zombie who’s disappeared into his domestic cave where he watches Netflix and obeys his wife’s commands.
Frankl Defender’s Counterargument to the Skeptic’s Rebuttal
Frankl would concede that this tamed suburban husband leads an empty life. While slightly more moral than his bachelor version of himself, he is still someone who falls short of meaning.
This suburban man needs to find a Higher Purpose.
Skeptic’s Rebuttal
This married man is too extended, barely treading water to make ends meet in a brutal economy. Feeding his wife and children is an almost insurmountable task. The married man does not have the luxury to ponder meaning. When we exert all our energy to make ends meet, we don’t have the time or energy to about things like meaning. We live one day at a time as we try to make ends meet for our family.
I’ll concede that some people, like Viktor Frankl and drug and abuse counselors find some kind of meaning, but Frankl’s book is not universal.
For working stiffs who are barely making it, life is provisional and day to day and all about survival. And it’s NOTHING about meaning and higher purpose.
That’s my problem with Frankl’s book. It’s applicable to some people but not all people. It’s not universal.
A lot of us, through no fault of our own, get in a rut, and there’s no free will that can change that. Life is a treadmill and when the time is up we die.
Sorry, Frankl cheerleaders of the world, I’m a Meaning Skeptic.
Frankl Defender’s Rebuttal to the Above
Frankl would disagree with you. His thesis is that no matter what your circumstances you have the freedom to choose your attitude.
If you’re a working stiff, as you say, barely making it, you have little right to complain in the context of Frankl surviving in the concentration camp.
Therefore, your problem is that you are a whiner. Blame yourself, not Frankl.
Skeptic’s Third Argument
A lot of people find meaning but only through brainwashing and manipulation. What do we say of the cult follower who leads an extremist life as they slave for the abusive cult personality? They found “meaning,” but they were brainwashed and manipulated.
Hitler and his followers found “meaning,” but they were evil, psychotic, or both.
Counterargument
Frankl would concede that brainwashing is not meaning. But remember, the meaning Frankl found was not through brainwashing but blood, sweat, and tears.
Let us not use bad examples, to dismiss a legitimate idea. That is a logical fallacy. For every brainwashed person there is a person who found real meaning on his or her own terms.
Skeptic’s Fourth Argument
We don’t choose meaning. We don’t even have free will. We are bound to determinism, the principle that biology and environment govern our actions. Free will is an illusion.
Counterargument
We can concede that biology and environment do indeed hard-wire us to behave in a certain way. But when we find meaning, we transcend our deterministic limitations. Viktor Frankl is the embodiment of this principle.
We can choose our attitude to find meaning in suffering or turn to hedonism and nihilism, which are false balms for the inevitable suffering life throws at us.
Skeptic’s Rebuttal
Frankl had no free will. He was born a good person and his goodness was reinforced by his upbringing. His “choices” were simply the behavior of a man programmed to be good.
Frankl Defender’s Rebuttal
You are wrong, Mr. Skeptic. Free will is a muscle that can be developed. The more you resist temptation and exercise discipline, the stronger your free will becomes. The empirical evidence shows this to be true.
When you choose to eat right, exercise, study, show kindness to others, to name a few examples, you will find rewards that reinforce that good behavior.
Both determinism and free will exist simultaneously.
Skeptic’s Fifth Argument
I know people who don’t have meaning. They’ve never read Viktor Frankl or any religious polemic. They have no religion. They have no “meaning.” However, they lead fulfilled lives because they live in the present and they experience connection with their family, friends, community, and the world at large.
I don’t believe you need meaning, as Frankl defines it, but you do need connection.
Counterargument
I’ll concede that there are people out there who are hard-wired or predetermined to be happy. They are at peace with themselves. They live in the present. They are connected to others.
However, their lives have not been tested. Frankl warns us that everything can be taken from us at any time.
Yes, some of us seem to live a life that appears like “smooth sailing,” but that never lasts forever. Be prepared. Find a higher purpose before it’s too late.
Skeptic’s Sixth Argument
I’ll concede that some meaning exists for some people. However, meaning is not universal. And motivations behind meaning are too complicated. While Frankl is a good man who found meaning, his book fails to be a universal “one size fits all” self-help book.
The book succeeds as a book of inspirational literature in which we can admire the rare man Frankl, a truly exceptional hero.
But his claim that we can all find meaning and choose our attitude toward suffering, is too general and doesn’t fit with all the complexities I’ve described.
Meaning is not either/or. You don’t have meaning or not have it.
Rather, meaning is relative. You have some meaning some of the time, more meaning some of the time, less meaning some of the time, and no meaning some of the time. That’s the human condition for many of us.
Skeptic’s Thesis
While I admire Frankl and concede that many can benefit from heeding the lessons in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, his thesis, that all of us must find meaning as the solution to human suffering, fails to persuade in light of the many good people who simply don’t have the time or energy to find meaning, the unfathomable motivations that drive people’s alleged “meaning,” the deterministic factors, not free will, that determine if we find meaning or not, and some people are simply “connected” and do not need “meaning.”
Frankl Defender’s Thesis
While I concede that Frankl’s book has some flaws that are correctly exposed by his skeptics, the empirical evidence compels us to use our free will to elevate ourselves in the face of suffering and to seek a higher purpose that goes beyond blind consumerism and nihilistic despair.
Establishing Credibility in Your Argument (with your readers and your professors)
Acknowledge weaknesses, exceptions, and complexities in your argument.
Example
Although meaning is not absolute or guaranteed in even people of the highest character, the pursuit of meaning as defined by Viktor Frankl is necessary to combat the potential pitfalls of the human condition evidenced by ____________, ___________, ___________________, and ________________.
Use personal experience when appropriate.
As someone who lived in a car for two years while barely living due to various addictions, I can speak firsthand about how essential Frankl’s brand of logotherapy is for combatting the self-destruction that ensues from living inside the existential vacuum.
As someone who worked twenty years in a hospital ward with special needs babies and toddlers whose mothers were drug addicts, I am convinced that there is a lot of suffering in this world that, contrary to Frankl’s claim, is senseless, absurd, and meaningless.
Mention the qualifications of any sources as a way to boost your own credibility.
According to Harold S. Kushner, best-selling author and noted rabbi, a life serving the public as shown him the truth of Frankl’s spiritual insights, especially in four key points: ____________, _____________, ________________, and _______________.
Acknowledge concession to your opponents’ views to show you’ve entertained both sides of a debatable claim thoroughly.
While Writer X makes a compelling case that there is much suffering in this world that is senseless, our acknowledging this fact actually strengthens my conviction that we are well served to follow Frankl’s path of logotherapy evidenced by ____________, __________, ____________, and _______________.
Show your readers you are considerate enough to define important terms that increase understanding of your essay.
We can use definition by synonym.
One way to define meaning is to equate it with having an “ideal” or a “higher purpose.” While synonym is usually inadequate for a rigorous definition, it is a good place to start.
We can define by example.
A second way to define something is to point to an example (called ostensive definition, from Latin ostendere, “to show”).
A former wrestler almost lost his life to alcohol and depression, but he started a yoga support group for other former wrestlers. Their goals are sobriety, physical conditioning, and giving each other moral support. This is an example of a type of meaning--being needed by others--that saved a wrestler from dropping into the abyss.
Definition by stipulation
The thing defined must conform to certain characteristics or conditions.
For example, my twins’ and I must agree on a shared definition of a “clean room.”
They want to simply throw their toys and books in their giant toy baskets. I want them to put their bedding on their bed and their books on the bookshelves. I’ve added stipulations to the notion of a “clean room.” And when they get older, vacuuming will be an added stipulation to that definition.
Viktor Frankl stipulates that meaning is not the same for everyone. Nor can someone give meaning to someone else. Frankl stipulates that meaning must come from within, that it must be defined by our own individual life circumstance, and that it must adhere to a moral code. For example, Hitler who found “meaning” with his self-aggrandizement and pathological power quest did not find “meaning” as stipulated by Viktor Frankl.
A formal definition contains the term, the class, and distinguishing characteristics.
Learned helplessness is a mental disease in which people convince themselves that they can’t do things that, objectively speaking, they can actually do.
The existential vacuum, as defined by Viktor Frankl, is the anxiety we suffer from trying to compensate for a living a life that is painfully absent of meaning.
For Frankl, meaning is a human drive that connects with us when we flourish and at the same time suffer in order to pursue a higher purpose that challenges our talents, our character, and our fortitude.
Assumptions
Show you understand underlying assumptions in your argument or the argument you’re evaluating.
Assumptions are stated or unstated beliefs that we use to create another set of beliefs or premises.
For example, in the abortion debate, some people assume the fetus is not yet human and they tend to be pro-choice. On the other hand, some people assume the fetus is indeed human and they tend to be anti-abortion.
If you argue in support of Viktor Frankl, you assume meaning is a good thing.
But those who refute Frankl’s argument might assume that meaning, the thing that gets people out of bed in the morning (this thing people think is meaning), is not necessarily good. After all, there is a huge laundry list of purposes and meanings out there. There are power quests that drive dictators and their followers. There are bizarre religious cults that abuse and brainwash their followers.
And there are those who equate all religions with bizarre cults and the list of unsavory notions attached to “meaning” is endless. Therefore, we have to be careful about assignming assumptions to meaning when we argue about its worth in the context of VF.
Show logic by using premises and syllogisms.
Premises are stated assumptions used as reasons in an argument. A premise is a statement set down before the argument begins.
The joining of two premises—two statements taken to be true—to produce a conclusion, a third statement, is called a syllogism.
Major premise: All human beings are mortal.
Minor premise: Socrates is a human being.
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.
The process of moving from a general statement to a more specific one is called deduction.
Deductive reasoning starts with general premises and ends in specific conclusions. This process is expressed in a syllogism: major premise, minor premise, and conclusion.
Major Premise: All bald men should wear extra sunscreen on their bald head.
Minor Premise: Mr. X is a bald man.
Conclusion: Therefore, Mr. X should apply extra sunscreen.
A sound syllogism, one that is valid and true, must follow logically from the facts and be based on premises that are based on facts.
Major Premise: All state universities must accommodate disabled students.
Minor Premise: UCLA is a state university.
Conclusion: Therefore, UCLA must accommodate disabled students.
A syllogism can be valid without being true as we see in this example from Robert Cormier’s novel The Chocolate War:
Bailey earns straight A’s.
Straight A’s are a sign of perfection.
But only God is perfect.
Can Bailey be God? Of course not.
Therefore, Bailey is a cheater and a liar.
In the above example it’s not true that the perfection of God is equivalent to the perfection of a straight-A student (faulty comparison, a logical fallacy). So while the syllogism is valid, following logically from one point to the next, it’s based on a deception or a falsehood (faulty comparison); therefore, it is not true.
When appropriate, use nonrational appeals like satire, irony, sarcasm, and humor.
Jonathan Swift is famous for “A Modest Proposal,” an essay in which he argues ostensibly that the way to cure hunger is to feed the landlords babies. In fact, his real agenda was to write a scathing indictment of the cruel landlords by equating their oppressive policies with the eating of children. Swift used satire to get his message across.
Checklist for Analyzing an Argument (your own or a reading you’re evaluating)
What is the claim or thesis?
What evidence is given, if any?
What assumptions are being made—and are they acceptable?
Are important terms clearly defined?
What support or evidence is offered on behalf of the claim?
Are the examples relevant, and are they convincing?
Are the statistics (if any) relevant, accurate, and complete?
Do the statistics allow only the interpretation that is offered in the argument?
If authorities and experts are cited, are they indeed authorities on this topic, and can they be regarded as impartial?
Is the logic—deductive and inductive—valid?
Is there an appeal to emotion—for instance, if satire is used to ridicule the opposing view—is this appeal acceptable?
Does the writer seem to you to be fair?
Are the counterarguments adequately considered?
Is there any evidence of dishonesty or of a discreditable attempt to manipulate the reader?
How does the writer establish the image of himself or herself that we sense in the essay? What is the writer’s tone, and is it appropriate?
President Barack Obama and his feminist friends have been trotting out their tiresome slogan that women are paid only 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. Every reputable scholar who has commented has proved that this is a notorious falsehood that anyone should be embarrassed to use.
U.S. law calls for equal pay for equal work, but the feminist slogan is not based on equal work. Women work fewer hours per day, per week, per year. They spend fewer years as full-time workers outside the home, avoid jobs that require overtime, and choose jobs with flexibility to take time off for personal reasons. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, men are twice as likely as women to work more than 40 hours a week.
Women place a much higher value on pleasant working conditions: a clean, comfortable, air-conditioned office with congenial co-workers. Men, on the other hand, are more willing to endure unpleasant working conditions to earn higher pay, doing dirty, dangerous outside work. In 2012, men suffered 92 percent of work-related deaths.
If a man is supporting his family, at the peak of his career, he often works longer hours to maximize his earnings. By contrast, a successful woman who reaches a high rank in her career is more likely to reduce her working hours.
All these reasons for women voluntarily choosing lower pay are now beyond dispute among those who have looked at the facts. But even those explanations for the alleged pay "gap" are still only part of the story.
Perhaps an even more important reason for women's lower pay is the choices women make in their personal lives, such as having children. Women with children earn less, but childless women earn about the same as men.
Another fact is the influence of hypergamy, which means that women typically choose a mate (husband or boyfriend) who earns more than she does. Men don't have the same preference for a higher-earning mate.
While women prefer to HAVE a higher-earning partner, men generally prefer to BE the higher-earning partner in a relationship. This simple but profound difference between the sexes has powerful consequences for the so-called pay gap.
Suppose the pay gap between men and women were magically eliminated. If that happened, simple arithmetic suggests that half of women would be unable to find what they regard as a suitable mate.
Obviously, I'm not saying women won't date or marry a lower-earning men, only that they probably prefer not to. If a higher-earning man is not available, many women are more likely not to marry at all.
In colleges, there are no gender separations in courses of study, and students can freely choose their majors. There are no male and female math classes. But women generally choose college courses that pay less in the labor market.
Those are the choices that women themselves make. Those choices contribute to the pay gap, just as much as the choice of a job with flexible hours and pleasant working conditions.
The pay gap between men and women is not all bad because it helps to promote and sustain marriages. Since husband and wife generally pool their incomes into a single economic unit, what really matters is the combined family income, not the pay gap between them.
In two segments of our population, the pay gap has virtually ceased to exist. In the African-American community and in the millennial generation (ages 18 to 32), women earn about the same as men, if not more.
It just so happens that those are the two segments of our population in which the rate of marriage has fallen the most. Fifty years ago, about 80 percent of Americans were married by age 30; today, less than 50 percent are.
Just a coincidence? I think not. The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap.
The real economic story of the past 30 years is that women's pay has effectively risen to virtual parity, but men's pay has stagnated and thousands of well-paid blue-collar jobs have been shipped to low-wage countries. Nobody should be surprised that the marriage rate has fallen, the age of first marriage has risen, and marriage, in general, has become unstable.
To read critically, we have to do the following:
One. Comprehend the author's purpose and meaning, which is expressed in the claim or thesis
Two. Examine the evidence, if any, that is used
Three. Find emotional appeals, if any, that are used
Four. Identify analogies and comparisons and analyze their legitimacy
Five. Look at the topic sentences to see how the author is building his or her claim
Six. Look for the appeals the author uses be they logic (logos), emotions (pathos), or authority (ethos).
Man’s Search for Meaning Essay Assignment(Expanded)
Viktor Frankl argues in Man’s Search for Meaning that in the face of suffering (the dominant feature of existence), we must use our free will to choose the appropriate attitude toward that suffering. We can either see suffering as cause to be angry animals, looking at life as little more than a place of senseless futility that justifies an attitude of nihilism so that our life is little more than unleashing our beastly, hedonistic passions and live a life of alienated selfishness. Or in the face of suffering we can elevate our humanity by adopting an attitude that says we must find courage, conviction, and moral righteousness through a Higher Purpose or Meaning.
Viktor Frankl witnessed both attitudes in the concentration camps. He observed people either descended into moral dissolution, becoming dehumanized animals who lived a day-to-day existence without purpose, or they found a purpose that preserved and even elevated their humanity. His mission in Man’s Search for Meaning is to persuade us to become Destiny Seekers, people who becoming morally righteous by finding meaning.
However, there is a camp of thinking that is skeptical of the idea of meaning for four reasons.
The first reason that meaning is so subjective, varying from person to person, that to discuss it as an essential life force therefore is absurd.
Secondly, the skeptic will argue that people don’t have any objective meaning. Rather, they pursue some illusion or other that gives them a sense of purpose—perhaps a false one—that gives them motivation. In other words, people motivate themselves by making up all sorts of incentives, but these incentives could be less about “meaning” and more about chimeras.
A third point of skepticism is that there are people who find meaning in very disturbing ways, most notably by being brainwashed and manipulated such as a person who converts to a religious cult or perhaps to some extremist ideology.
The skeptic’s fourth point of contention is that she will argue that we cannot choose meaning because we are not agents of free will; rather, we are agents beholden to forces we cannot control, namely, determinism, the philosophy that states our biology and environment affect our behavior and that “choices” are just an illusion. We say we “chose” to do something after the fact, but in truth, we were hard-wired to act in such a way.
Addressing the skeptic’s points above, support, refute, or complicate Frankl’s argument that we are responsible to be Destiny Seekers and find our own meaning in order that we make the appropriate response to a life of suffering and that failure to find meaning will doom us to the hell of the “existential vacuum.”
Suggested Structure:
Introduction: Frame the debate or write a compelling anecdote that transitions to your thesis.
Thesis
Paragraphs Address Each of the Skeptic’s Points
One or two paragraphs address the idea that meaning is too individual and subjective.
One or two paragraphs that address the idea that meaning is an illusion we use to motivate ourselves.
One or two paragraphs that address the idea that “meaning” or a found purpose can be the result of brainwashing and manipulation.
One or two paragraphs that address the idea that we don’t choose meaning; some of us may have a sense of meaning, but only because we are hard-wired to. In contrast, some of us are hardwired to NOT have a sense of meaning and be okay with that.
Two counterargument-refutation paragraphs that address your opponents’ views.
Important Note
If you're refuting the skeptics point by point, the counterargument section is not necessary because your WHOLE essay is a refutation.
Conclusion
Conclusion is a more emotional (pathos) restatement of your thesis.
1. There is not always a "why" except on Frankl's misreading of Nietzsche.
2. The Holocaust represents a new order of reality that defies meaning and this is affirmed by other survivors who don't have a "meaning agenda."
3. Frankl does not "plumb the depths of evil" in the Holocaust because to do so would not support his thesis that meaning can be found in all circumstances.
4. Being worthy or not of one's suffering is an irrelevant point when one is being sent to the gas chamber.
5. The Holocaust is too extreme and too unusual to make Frankl's message applicable to the common reader.
Writing a Thesis for Your Essay
Qualities of an Effective Thesis
One. One sentence that declares or asserts a position that can be demonstrated with examples.
Two. The examples can be expressed in mapping statements or mapping components.
Three. Avoids being self-evident or obvious but creates new insights.
Four. A good thesis is visceral, from the gut, meaning you have an immediate emotional connection to it. The intellect comes later.
Five. A good thesis has a dependent clause that is the concession clause addressing the opposing condition. Examples:
While there is much to admire in Writer X's principle of the Noble Slacker, his argument fails when we consider ___________, ____________, ______________, and _____________.
While I can appreciate many of the fine and brilliant points Author X makes in her critique of Viktor Frankl, her overall thesis fails to be persuasive because _____________, ____________, _______________, and ________________.
There is much to be admired in Writer X's support of the Utilitarian Argument, but his supports fail to convince in light of ___________, _____________, ______________, and ___________________.
Class Exercise
Work on a thesis with a concession clause
Frankl Lite is a degraded or compromised meaning, but not the kind of "ultimate meaning" described in the book:
You don't need "meaning" so much as you need the basic human needs:
One. We need to believe in something larger than ourselves so we don't become crushed by the weight of our inclination for self-centeredness and narcisissism.
We can't believe in just anything. There's a huge caveat or condition: This "thing" we believe in should be good, conducive to our maturity and dignity and the dignity and respect of others.We can't, for example, believe in killing others to achieve some political goal motivated by a lust for power. Then we are monsters like Pol Pot and Stalin and Hitler.
If this thing is good, it doesn't necessarily create meaning. For example, if we develop an interest in martial arts, math, chess, bicycling, swimming, etc., all these things are good and help us get the focus of our self, but they aren't the Holy Grail of Meaning.
Two. We need self-awareness, AKA the Third Eye or metacognition so that we can make more intelligent and moral choices rather than being dragged down by the reptilian, primitive, irrational part of our brain. But this too falls short of meaning.
Three. We need humility to learn from our mistakes so we can become stronger and wiser. Again, humility is great, but not the same as meaning.
Four. We need a good job that uses our skills and makes us feel needed and pays us so we can buy stuff we want and feel secure and comfortable. This is good, too, but it isn't meaning.
Five. We need reproductive success. This means finding a mate whom we find desirable and attractive and a complement to our existence. This is great, but it isn't meaning.
Six. We need a sense of belonging and meaningful friendships. This too is great, but it is not meaning.
Seven. We need free time to play and enjoy recreation as a counterbalance to our hard work. Again, this is a need, but it isn't meaning.
Eight. We need moral character, the kind that compels us to have respect for others and ourselves and to have a reverence for life. In fact, we don't find meaning outside of ourselves. Meaning is born from our moral character.
We can have all these 8 things and achieve a certain satisfaction in our growth, maturity, and success and still not have meaning or at least not the heroic kind evidenced by Viktor Frankl in his book.
As a result, we can have the 8 Essential Things and go through life happy enough without having meaning. Our life is full enough based on our moral growth, our work, our love life, our friendships, and our human connections that we don't seek any meaning beyond this.
However, some of us can attain the 8 Essential Things and still suffer, to some degree or other, the existential vacuum, the sense of emptiness and restlessness that "life is good but there must be something More."There is a sense of the Beyond, of Mystery, and Enchantment.
Some people seek this More in religion.
Others seek this More in creativity, such as writing or the arts.
Others seek this More with drugs, LSD, mushrooms, marijuana, etc.
Others say there is no More, that we are biological creatures who can be reduced to sexual and survival instincts.
Viktor Frankl says there is meaning in terms of our moral position, which is that we must fight to help others at the expense of our own safety and convenience. This is a morality rooted at the heart of his religion.
His religion states that we must fight to help others at the expense of our safety and convenience; otherwise, we will become self-preservational animals, losing our souls to our most primitive urges. The consequence of not following the moral dictate described by Frankl in his book is that we will suffer moral dissolution and the existential vacuum.
The challenge is that throughout human history something like less than 1 percent of the human race have chosen to live as heroically as Viktor Frankl.
Most of us pacify ourselves sufficiently with the 8 Essential Things but fall short of Meaning as described by Viktor Frankl. For Frankl, meaning is an absolute. For most people meaning is relative to the 8 Essential Things.
Full Potency Frankl goes further:
It's about sacrificing personal comforts and material success to serve others with a joyful attitude. Some would argue you can't serve two masters. You can't serve material success on one hand and meaning, as defined by Frankl, on the other. But that is a debatable claim, one worth addressing in your essay.
To sum up, Frankl Lite refers to a life of comfort by achieving the basic needs; Full Potency Frankl refers to a life of sacrifice to help others with no regard for creature comforts.
According to Frankl, the search for meaning is affirmation of respect of self and reverence for life.
Failure to live a life of meaning, according to Frankl, is a sign of self-contempt. How do we tot despise our lives?
Does Frankl gives us a specific guide in his book?
One. We often treat our lives with contempt without even knowing it. Reckless self-indulgence. Self-admonishment is at times appropriate.
Two. Taking Self-Admonishment Too Far.
Viktor Frankl argues that we are responsible for our attitude in the face of tough circumstances, that we are not helpless pawns, that our decisions have consequences, and that we should not despise our lives or at the very least we should not treat ourselves with contempt. But I see that most of us do just that. I’ll resolve to stick to healthy diet, for example, and then go to a family event where I’ll eat three slices of pumpkin cheesecake and overall consume five hundred percent more calories than I had allocated myself. Or I’ll buy a scintillating watch I don’t need because “it’s so damn cheap I can’t afford not to buy it.” Other times I’ll condemn myself for road-raging after I had promised myself I’d be “chill on the road.” Or I’ll berate myself for using ill-advised language in front of my young children right after promising myself I would not contaminate their ears with my salty sailor tongue and then suffer the embarrassment of them repeating my words in front of others.
Three. Self-pity is a form of self-contempt. To a degree there is something normal about the way we admonish ourselves for it is natural that we will consistently fall short of our standards and ideals. But take some more extreme examples that go beyond self-admonishment. My Shakespeare professor once told the class about a wealthy surgeon he knew whose wife had left him. The wife let the surgeon keep the house, but she took all the furniture. When my professor visited the doctor three years after the divorce, he said he was surprised to find the doctor in a tattered robe and his house was empty, still unfurnished. As my professor tried to offer words of counsel to the doctor, the still grieving man, with dried saliva in his beard, was holding a calculator and whispering the cost of the furniture to himself over and over. My professor said, “The doctor was dead and there wasn’t a shrink big enough in this world who could help him.”
This doctor must have hated himself for not being able to shake himself loose from the sense of betrayal and self-pity that consumed him after his wife divorced him. Clearly, his reaction to the divorce was worse than the divorce itself.
Another example: My wife told me about a radio advice show in which a man called in and said upon driving home he could not go inside his house. He would park his car in the driveway and drink from a flask of whiskey while listening to the commotion between his wife and children inside. Only after being sufficiently brain-numbed from the alcohol could he muster the nerve to go inside his own house.
Clearly, in both examples, the two men hate their life. They despise themselves and they see themselves as enslaved men, shackled to demons they are convinced they cannot conquer. Furthermore, they see their suffering and life as completely meaningless and therefore they despise their lives.
Four. Feeling trapped and having lost control of our lives in the extremes rendered above, we hate who we are and who we’ve become. There are other, equally compelling, reasons for coming to a point of self-loathing.
Example. Often we see ourselves as helpless to an addiction that is ruining our life. Or we hate ourselves for screwing up at a job interview because of anxieties.
Five.Childish view of success, all or nothing, which tells us we must ascend to an extravagant level of wealth and fame; otherwise we are merely ciphers unworthy of the esteem of others, including our own.
Six. Frankl argues we are never totally helpless. No matter what the scenario, we are challenged in Man’s Search for Meaning to not surrender to these forces that would cause us to despise ourselves. It is one of Frankl’s major tenets that we must reject the idea that we are completely helpless, lacking in self-control, and being subject to forces outside ourselves. We must not, he says, submit to powers that will steal our inner freedom. One of the dangerous consequences of submitting to those powers is that we will despise ourselves and come to believe, in error, that our lives are of no consequence. And why wouldn’t we come to this conclusion? Overcome with powerlessness and the sense of being a nonentity, what other emotions are there but ones of despair and self-hatred?
Seven. Frankl makes it clear that self-loathing is no option. In fact, we must live a dignified life, the very opposite of one full of self-hatred. For Frankl, the way out of self-hatred is not self-introspection but by finding a higher purpose, a way to fill the void with meaning. Only by working toward a higher purpose can we change our fundamental character and eventually become worthy of our suffering.
Part Five. Logotherapy: An attempt to find purpose as a way of eradicating self-loathing.
One. Meaning is not handed down to us on a silver platter. Rather, we struggle through logotherapy to arrive at meaning based on our individual circumstances. As Frankl writes:
Logotherapy is neither teaching nor preaching. It is as far removed from logical reasoning as it is from moral exhortation. To put it figuratively, the role played by a logotherapist is that of an eye specialist rather than that of a painter. A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it; an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is. The logotherapist’s role consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of potential meaning becomes conscious and visible to him.
How do we see the world as it really is when we are blinded by disgust, self-loathing, and self-pity? Frankl explains that one way of seeing is having a sense of doing something meaningful in our future. As an example, Frankl writes about his weariness in the camps, struggling day to day, and reaching a point where he had hit a wall, as it were, at the point of giving up:
I became disgusted with the state of affairs which compelled me, daily and hourly, to think of only such trivial things. I forced my thoughts to turn to another subject. Suddenly I saw myself standing on the platform of a well-lit, warm and pleasant lecture room. In front of me sat an attentive audience on comfortable upholstered seats. I was giving a lecture on the psychology of the concentration camp! All that oppressed me at that moment became objective, seen and described from the remote viewpoint of science. By this method I succeeded somehow in rising above the situation, above the sufferings of the moment, and I observed them as if they were already of the past. Both I and my troubles became the object of an interesting psychoscientific study undertaken by myself. What does Spinoza say in his Ethics?—“Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distintam formamus ideam.” Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
Two. What about the aforementioned doctor walking around his empty house in his robe as if he were living in a tomb? And what about the husband who needs to get drink before entering his house? How can these men get a “clear and precise picture” of their emotions? If they did have an objective grasp of not only their emotional state but how they were contributing to it, wouldn’t they then change? I don’t know. As a cynical person, I find it a difficult challenge to get an objective grasp of my own emotions, for it is the habit of a cynic to indulge in the masochistic pleasure in one’s despair and self-loathing. There is a huge amount of egotism in this kind of indulgence. Further, this ego-generated self-loathing is a compulsion and a habit, a very hard habit to break.
Three. Frankl didn’t just teach logotherapy; he lived what he said about suffering: “When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.”
Four. The opposite of Frankl’s tragic optimism: Being overwhelmed and enervated by the Sisyphean nature of life is not the orientation Viktor Frankl wants us to have. We are, Frankl says, to joyfully embrace suffering when we know it’s committed to our higher purpose, such as raising children.
But Frankl’s orientation toward suffering presents a challenge to me since my hardwiring evidences that I’m entrenched in the Sisyphean or Futility worldview. For example, I was sixteen in the summer of 1978. The past few months had been tough. My parents separated, and eventually divorced, and my grandmother had just died of leukemia at the age of sixty-four. It was decided I’d spend the summer with my grandfather in San Pedro. He was working for his friend, Forbes, in Carson. Forbes owned a machine shop and my grandfather and I would load and deliver parts in a flatbed truck to industrial centers and ports around Los Angeles. I hated the work. Long back-busting days starting at six and ending around four after which I’d drag myself to the YMCA to workout. I’d come home and go straight to sleep, knowing the monotony would be repeated all over again. I remember one night in particular as I tossed and turned on the pull-out couch, I thought to myself: “So this is what’s it’s going to be like after I get out of school. A full-time job. Misery day in and day out. And for what? So I can go home, catch a workout, steal a little dinner before bedtime, and go to sleep so I’ll have enough energy to drag myself through the same drudgery the next day? And for what? Nothing, that’s what. Life is shit.” In my mind, all jobs were the same, more or less. You had to show up, you had responsibilities, and you were essentially doing something you didn’t want to do. So at the age of sixteen I had found the truth of existence: Life is shit.
And here I am many years later trying to teach Man’s Search for Meaning, but at my very core I am, and always have been, a cynic and a nihilist. What does this make me, a vegetarian butcher?
The "Proper Life" Leads to a Meaningless Life
How Can We Avoid the Proper Life?
By proper, we mean common and ordinary, that which is acceptable by the mainstream.
One. According to Tolstoy, most proper people live a life of fakery. In other words, for most people are frauds or charlatans. Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich opens its second chapter with the famous line: “Ivan Ilyich’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”
One of the novella’s themes is that most of us embrace the common, “ordinary” life and sad to say such a life is one of fraud and self-deception.
Two. A phony life is not perceived as an evil life because it is mainstream: The catastrophic fakery is not the product of evil people living on the fringe. Rather, it is the common lot of the mainstream who languish through a life of meaninglessness and charlatanism, clinging to this fake life as if it were the highest pursuit imaginable. And even worse, most people don’t even know they’re living this “proper,” that is, “horrible,” life.
Reading the novella, we see over and over that Ivan Ilyich lived a “proper” and “correct” life and it is precisely this conformity to that which is “proper” and “correct” that perpetrates a fraud and the existential vacuum discussed in Man’s Search for Meaning.
Three. A definition of the “proper” life: It is a life that emphasizes power, vanity, and selfish ambition dressed up behind the flowery garments of middle-class niceties and proprieties. When we live the proper life, we give implicit encouragement to power-mongering, vanity, and selfish ambition by praising others for their “achievements” and “success” while putting up an affront of piety, claiming to admire the more noble virtues, loyalty, courage, sacrifice, humility, etc. But these latter qualities are only important to us as a show, not as real substance.
For example, in the novella it is explained that when no one was looking Ivan Ilyich, a judge, was cruel and obnoxious to his underlings, but when his dealings with his subordinates were under the banner of “official business,” that is, those dealings would be seen and scrutinized by others, Ivan Ilyich’s behavior was “fair” and “decent.” We also read that he loved to withhold his power and authority, not out of humility, buy by showing others how remarkably restrained he was.
Four. The “ordinary” life, then, is one in which we want to be perceived as good, just, and generous even though we could care less if we our character is really worthy of being those things.
Again, we can look at Pascal’s observation of this hypocrisy to better see the ordinary life of fraud and self-deception:
We are not satisfied with the life we have in ourselves and our own being. We want to lead an imaginary life in the eyes of others, and so we try to make an impression. We strive constantly to embellish and preserve our imaginary being, and neglect the real one. And if we are calm, or generous, or loyal, we are anxious to have it known so that we can attach these virtues to our other existence; we prefer to detach them from our real self so as to unite them with the other. We would cheerfully be cowards if that would acquire us a reputation for bravery. How clear a sign of the nullity of our own being that we are not satisfied with the one without the other and often exchange for the other!
Pascal’s description is of the ordinary human condition. And indeed it is a terrible one in part because such a morally bankrupts life is perceived as normal when it is lived by the majority and as such is “ordinary.”
Five. According to Frankl, conforming to this immoral and meaningless way of life creates the existential vacuum.
This imitation is not instinct but a learned behavior. As Frankl explains:
At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal’s behavior is imbedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like Paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).
In the case of Ivan Ilyich, he entire “proper” life was a conformity to a life he did not really want. It was an idea of a life that had been presented to him as a way of winning the approval of others and he did not realize he despised this life he had chosen until he was dying away in a home where he was held in contempt by his own family for imposing the rude inconvenience of becoming fatally ill. It is only as he endures a terrible, slow death and as he sees his own grave that he begins to ask himself, “What if my whole life had been wrong?” It’s sad that he does not ask this question until lying on his death bed.
Six. Like Ivan Ilyich, we are too distracted by all his diversions.
As philosopher Thomas V. Morris would tell us, we don’t face life’s important questions until death is knocking on his door. Morris explains this procrastination in Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life:
“How many of us would think about going to a gas station only after the car stalled for lack of gas? And yet too many of us never stop to reflect on what is needful for a good life until is too late.”
All the diversions Ivan Ilyich relied on to stave away the question that his whole life was a lie are explained as a universal problem by Morris in this way: “Our lives are empty. We cannot face the vacuum. So we fill our lives up with junk, with trash, with refuse.”
Explaining what the philosopher Pascal really meant when he explained what we fill our hearts with, Morris says it more bluntly: We fill our hearts with “crap.” Our lives of diversion and deception, the life that caused Ivan Ilyich to ask himself if his whole life had been wrong only when he was faced with his own mortality, made realize that his life was complete fakery.
Seven. Mutual deception becomes the common life, a life of fakery:
When we reach the point, like Ivan Ilyich, that our lives are full of fakery, we tend toward nihilism, the belief that there is no meaning.
Ilyich’s life was one rife with pretentiousness and ornamentation, a façade, a deception, or, if we want to cut to the bone, complete fakery. Not until he was dying, horribly alone without any love from his own family and “friends,” does he contemplate that his whole life was built on a sham.
Eight. The common condition: We desire things because others desire them, not because we do.
Ivan Ilyich has fallen into the trap of lusting over things, not for their own sake, but because he perceives they are desired by others. A job position that he wants is increased in desire when he sees that others want it and when the job is denied him he becomes bitter and obsessed, childishly so.
Upon losing the promotion, he goes into a sullen rage and the narrator explains “that what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a quite ordinary occurrence.” Feeling victimized, Ivan Ilyich languishes in a condition of “ennui,” chronic depression and boredom with life. Throughout his adult life, his mood oscillates between elation and self-pity depending on his fortune. This is the way most of us are and this is the common life.
Nine. One of the dangers of the “ordinary” and “terrible” life:
Cynics see these lives as the true human condition and as such the cynic embraces a life that rejects the possibility of meaning, that is, a life of nihilism.
Ten. To reject the ordinary life and to pursue meaning is to join a small tribe of people. The percentage who go on a meaning quest is so small that some argue this quest is religious. Is Man’s Search for Meaning a religion?
Is Man’s Search for Meaning a Religion?And if so, what is the nature of this "religion"?
One. We crave meaning over power. This is a religious idea, some say. The rabbi Harold S. Kushner writes in the 2006 edition Foreword that Man’s Search for Meaning is indeed a profoundly religious book. It’s a book, he writes, that has the power to change lives. It’s a book that demands we find a higher purpose. It’s a book, he writes, that dismisses Freud’s insistence that life is primarily the drive for pleasure and equally dismisses Alfred Adler’s theory that life is foremost a quest for power. These sensual and vain things must take the back seat to First Things, and one such thing is the search for meaning.
Two. Another argument in Man’s Search for Meaning that many might consider religious is Frankl’s rejection of determinism and the responsibility we have toward our own free will.
For Frankl and many religious writers, the doctrine of determinism, that we are the product of environmental and biological forces we cannot control, contributes to a degraded image of humanity and as such it lowers expectations and diminishes the human spirit. As Frankl writes about the dangers of “pan-determinism”:
By that I mean the view of man which disregards his capacity to take a stand toward any conditions whatsoever. Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.
Man’s decision to shape who he becomes makes him accountable and this, according to Christian apologist and Catholic writer Peter Kreeft, is an idea rooted in his faith, an idea that uplifts humankind. Yes, we are accountable for our actions, Kreeft writes, and this accountability and this judgment of us a sinners renders a higher view of man than saying we are helpless pawns to determinism and have no accountability for our actions.
Three. Peter Kreeft, a Christian, and Viktor Frankl, a Jew, also share another important idea about meaning that has a strongly religious component: We cannot find meaning until we have been stripped to our bare existence. Frankl observed prisoners, and himself, finding their strongest spiritual reservoirs when subject to the most excruciating conditions in the concentration camps. Being stripped of everything, according to Frankl and Kreeft, makes us find life’s Higher Purpose.
Four. Another idea about meaning that Frankl and Kreeft share is that meaning requires radical self-transformation and this transformation requires a suffering that we must embrace. Frankl argues we must change so that we become worthy of our suffering.
Five. Frankl believes in the soul, a religious idea. Can Viktor Frankl’s view of the soul, which can either flourish and blossom or whither and decay, be discussed only in religious terms? For Frankl, the matter of the soul is a very real thing. He saw spiritual death in the eyes of too many captives in the camps. His concern for the soul goes far beyond theories and abstractions. He call us urgently to “save” our souls by making the right choices. For many, including Rabbi Kushner, Frankl’s message is a religious one. Kushner writes in the Foreword that we must use our freedom to find meaning. Otherwise, we will succumb to spiritual death. Kushner writes: “I have known successful businessmen who, upon retirement, lost all zest for life. Their work had given their lives meaning. Often it was the only thing that had given their lives meaning and, without, they spend day after day sitting at home, depressed, ‘with nothing to do.’”
Six. The sick soul must be healed by meaning.
Kushner writes that Frankl’s doctrine of logotherapy cures the soul “by leading it to find meaning in life.” As a process, logotherapy isn’t necessarily religious. But the context of logotherapy, one that Kushner and others would argue, is very religious because it concerns the sickness of the soul, the concern chiefly of theologians and the clergy, and adhering to the moral absolutes that determine the soul’s development or retardation. We might say a soul without meaning is trapped in ennui, existential boredom, or worse, acedia, the spiritual enervation, listlessness, and torpor resulting from an absence of purpose.
A soul without a purpose is a soul in a vacuum and in this empty state the soul, the theologians inform us, grabs on to misguided forms of happiness: consumerism, sensuality, power-mongering, etc., when in fact what the soul really craves, we are told, is God.
Seven. Frankl uses meaning therapy or logotherapy:
Unlike psychotherapy, logotherapy does not emphasize introspection, regression, and retrospection; instead, as Frankl states in his chapter “Logotherapy in a Nutshell,” logotherapy is a “meaning-centered psychotherapy” that focuses on what the patient can do in the future to find meaning as a cure for the sickness of his soul. Frankl explains that the Greek Logos translates into “meaning” and that logotherapy is the quest to find meaning.
Frankl cannot emphasize this enough: “Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a ‘secondary rationalization’ of instinctual drives.”
Eight. But meaning is not all the same.
Frankl goes on to write that for every person meaning is “unique and specific” and can only be fulfilled by that person alone. The ideals and values generated from meaning are so vital to each person that they represent the most urgent principle of that person’s life. To argue that we and we alone must define what meaning is for ourselves strikes me as more humanistic than religious since we are not reading dogma to finding meaning; rather, we are searching for meaning based on our individual circumstances.
For example, I am a community college instructor and I have certain opportunities for helping people, such as helping students transfer to universities, or becoming a mentor and these roles might not be available to a plumber or carpenter. However, they might have opportunities that I don’t have.
For example, a plumber might help a needy family in a plumbing crisis at a reduced fee or free of charge.
According to Frankl, meaning is dependent on our specific opportunities and skills. If you want to define religion as a moral imperative to find meaning—whatever that meaning may be—then Frankl is professing a sort of religion.
But logotherapy and Frankl’s general philosophy that you must find meaning—without dictating what that meaning should be—doesn’t on the surface seem tied to this or that organized religion. However, I will argue later that there are, at the very least, implicit moral absolutes he presents that provide a criteria for judging the value of one’s meaning and these absolutes have much in common with religion.
Nine. Without meaning, we distract ourselves with acts of self-destruction:
Of course, the world’s religions are concerned with the same crisis Frankl addresses: the crisis of the human condition that results from a lack of meaning. When meaning is frustrated, the person suffers “existential frustration,” which results in all forms of neuroses and extreme forms of behavior. Without meaning, we meander into all sorts of self-destructive projects and obsessions. I think this is the real meaning of the French philosopher Blaise Pascal’s famous aphorism: “All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit quiet in a room alone.” Pascal is looking at man’s restlessness in the face of existential frustration and this restlessness causes man to act in ways that result in his unhappiness. He strays from his room and gets into all sorts of mischief because he is bored and desperate to find something to fill the vacuum.
Ten. Examples of self-destruction in the absence of meaning:
For example, we’ve all heard of couples who fight over trifling things because they are bored and are looking for some drama to fill their superficial existence. Or put another way, experiencing the existential emptiness from a life without meaning compels people to dig themselves in a deep hole so that they can find “meaning”—which in truth is a distraction—from the process of escaping their chasm. One of my favorite opening lines from a novel articulates this self-destructive tendency. I am talking about Jim Harrison’s novella The Beast God Forgot to Invent in which the narrator begins by saying, “The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.” I have a student who wrote an essay about his friend engaged in such a squandered life. This friend spends over twelve hours a day on a famous shoe website that allows you to chat with other fanatics of this shoe brand. The friend in question has a shoe collection worth tens of thousands of dollars, a fine showcase for people who values such things, but this person is in his early thirties, marginally employed, and still living with his parents. It would appear to me that his life could be characterized by existential frustration that compels him to “piss his life away on nonsense.” Such nonsense is in abundance. I’ve heard of people on the social networking website facebook confess to feeling jealous that their “facebook friends” have accumulated more friends than they have. It is rather self-evident that this accumulation of “friends” creates the appearance of popularity and meaningful connection when in truth these facebook members may be rather deluded on these points.
Eleven. Even though Frankl is a Jew and not a Christian, his therapy, called logotherapy, shares the life of sacrifice with Christianity.
Another trait that logotherapy shares with religion, or at least Christianity, is that Frankl says “we must bear our cross,” meaning that we must embrace challenge and suffering to pursue our ideals and values. Pursuing a life of challenge, and the stress that comes with it, is in conflict with a lot of feel-good psychotherapy that promises tranquility and a stress-free existence. In contrast, logotherapy sees conflict and stress as natural components of a meaningful, fulfilled life; therefore, the patient doesn’t seek to be “blissed-out”; rather, the patient seeks fulfillment through meaning and he embraces that all the conflict that meaning creates for him. The strength to navigate through conflict and suffering comes from the lucidity of one’s life purpose.
As Frankl quotes the Nietzsche, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” If we don’t have a higher ideal, one that takes us out of our self-centeredness, Frankl says our souls are doomed to atrophy.
Twelve. We need a higher purpose to engage in conflict, which is the essence of life: Frankl gives a specific example from his own life of a purpose that kept him his drive for survival sharp while he suffered in the concentration camps. He wanted to survive so he could rewrite a manuscript that had been confiscated by the Nazis. He writes that his mental health, and that for all of us, is dependent on “the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become.” We need struggle and conflict in our lives, Frankl argues. We need to fight for a “worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” Otherwise, we must face the restlessness and despair resulting from the “existential vacuum.”
Without meaning, Frankl points out, man is fated to try to blend in with society, becoming a conformist, or be obedient to an authority and suffer the lack of development that comes from living in the shadow of totalitarianism. More often than not, the existential vacuum results in boredom and it is in boredom where we get into trouble, devising all sorts of self-destructive schemes to fill the vacuum.
Thirteen. We don’t choose meaning; meaning chooses us. So how do we fill this vacuum with meaning? Frankl argues that we cannot come up with a general definition of meaning: “For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.” He warns us not to turn meaning into an abstraction. Rather, he writes: “Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, as is his specific opportunity to implement it.”
Frankl emphasizes his point further by explaining that we are not even in a position to ask what meaning for our lives is. Meaning is a calling. As he writes: “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of us life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Thus logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of life.”
So it is our responsibility to find out what life demands of us to find meaning whether we are religious or not. And it is our responsibility to define our own specific meaning depending on our own set of circumstances.
In summary, Man’s Search for Meaning is not a proselytizing book about believing in God or embracing one of the world’s religions. However, it shares a lot of the same concerns as religion: The book is intended to make us change our lives, to find a higher purpose, to reject pleasure and power as the primary motivations of life, to acknowledge the strengthening or the withering of the soul, to be cautious of misguided forms of happiness, to be leery of the imaginary happy self we project to others and ourselves, to bear our own cross, to embrace a life of challenge and conflict, and of course to find our own meaning based on our individual circumstances in which only we can decide our meaning’s legitimacy.
Defining our own meaning in this manner doesn’t sound religiously prescriptive to me, but if everyone is defining their own meaning, what if some forms of meaning seem superior to others and what if some forms of meaning seem very inferior and even dangerous? In other words, is all meaning equal and in the context of Man’s Search for Meaning how do we measure the quality of someone’s chosen meaning?
Addressing Someone Else's Arguments Elevates Your Essay's Sophistication
The Reptilian Instinct Vs. the Meaning Quest
Peter Singer's persuasive essay strips us bare of our selfish wants as he equates our tendency to accumulate all the stuff we don’t need with ignoring the plight of drowning children and as such being responsible for the death of those children. We are, Singer convincingly argues, products of our fortunate “social capital”; therefore, we have an obligation to those who do not have a social capital.
Furthermore, because we patronize and live in a state of interdependence on international corporations for our goods and services, we are obliged to help the poor in developing countries. For after all, these countries, led by despots and other unsavory characters, make deals with international corporations, selling raw materials for a higher price than they would by keeping their resources in their own countries. The result is that people living in developing countries starve as their resources are leeched by international corporations.
Now if we follow Singer’s logical moral imperative to its ultimate conclusion, then we are forced to accept that we must renounce our worldly desires and achieve a spiritual condition that is so disdainful of personal comforts and luxuries that we must live only on bare necessities while giving all else to the poor. Anything short of this ideal would be, to use Singer’s analogy, equivalent to being responsible for the deaths of drowning children.
While part of me would like to embrace Singer’s moral imperative and spread Singer’s gospel of uncompromising charity throughout the world, the skeptical part of me questions just how realistic Singer’s ideal is. For what Singer is arguing for is nothing short than a form of spiritual socialism, that is a condition in which human beings renounce their selfish desires for the “finer things in life” in order that they distribute their wealth as evenly as possible. This is a noble, saintly ideal indeed, but it contradicts our reptilian hard-wiring.
I’m sad to say this, but without selfish motivation, most of us will not be creative or innovative. A world in which we all share our things in a communal potluck and don’t aspire to materialistic excellence is a banal and dreary and colorless world without creativity and innovation. Only when we are enticed by technological razzle-dazzle and model dream homes and exquisite clothing glorified by the silky-tongued fashionistas do we find the reptilian sparks in our brains’ creative nerve centers exploding in glorious paroxysms and it is in these nerve explosions that we create and innovate. Sad as it is, my friends, selfishness is high-octane rocket fuel for creativity.
I’m not arguing that we should be selfish pigs in order to encourage our creativity and aspiration. What I am arguing for is a balance. It was Aristotle who wrote about finding the golden mean. If we error too much in selfishness, we’re thoughtless imbeciles, moral gnats, and reptilian subhumans. On the other hand, if we strive to become spiritual socialists, we will become drab, stagnant and bovine. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Forces Against Meaning:
The Reptilian
Moral Relativism
The Cult of Youth
The Cult of Youth Denies That Our Lives Our Finite
Viktor Frankl makes it clear that we must have a sense of our finiteness and our limitations to find meaning. If we live day to day with no ultimate goal in mind, we will find ourselves trapped in a “deformed time” warp and begin to “decay,” our spirits starving from lack of meaning. A word that defines this phenomenon is acedia, the condition of apathy and lethargy resulting from a lack of purpose and focus. I can remember my friend and I, when we were about ten, argued with our mothers who both wanted us to go to summer school. We made our case that we deserved a rest, won the argument, and did not have to attend school during the summer months. For the month of June, we were fine, but as late July set in, we were miserably bored and aching for the school year to begin. Daily watching of Mr. Ed, Kimba the White Lion, and Speed Racer did little to disrupt the agonizing monotony. We were jealous of our friends who went to summer school and listened enviously as they described their projects, guitar lessons, cooking classes, and sports activities. They had what we didn’t have. A daily focus on something that required discipline and commitment. We knew deep down they were getting something out of their summer that we weren’t: an opportunity to learn and grow as human beings.
One of the strongest renderings I’ve seen of the despair of living a provisional day to day existence is Groundhog Day in which Bill Murray plays a misanthrope, Phil Connors, who is fated to live is despairing, empty life over and over, seemingly for eternity, unless he can connect with the human race and grow up beyond his adolescent self-absorption.
Two. The Cult of Youth Leads to stagnation, the centripetal cycle: In Thomas S. Hibbs’ Shows About Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture from The Exorcist to Seinfeld, he contrasts the many films and TV shows that show characters trapped in a cycle of “entrapment” in which the characters never learn freedom and maturity with Phil Connors, who breaks out of his recurring private hell: “Predictably, Murray eventually learns the difference between love and self-gratification and comes to acknowledge the humanity of others.”
The private hell of sloth and stunted emotional growth is indeed a sort of time warp, referred to by both Frankl and Hibbs. This time warp is the direct result of the obsession with youth as the highest ideal, a time for which we must always place ourselves. Obsessing over one phase of life, the time of adolescence, has dangerous consequences that pertain to a failed search for meaning. For one, as explained in Joseph Epstein’s essay, “The Perpetual Adolescent,” we lose a meaningful narrative to our existence. As Epstein writes:
Life in that different day was felt to observe the human equivalent of the Aristotelian unities: to have, like a good drama, a beginning, middle, and end. Each part, it was understood, had its own advantages and detractions, but the middle--adulthood--was the lengthiest and most earnest part, where everything serious happened and much was at stake. To violate the boundaries of any of the three divisions of life was to go against what was natural and thereby to appear unseemly, to put one's world somehow out of joint, to be, let us face it, a touch, and perhaps more than a touch, grotesque.
Epstein argues that is in adulthood where so much is at stake, but we forego the meaning of adulthood if we intractably cocoon ourselves in the attitude and façade of adolescence. This façade is actually encouraged by the majority of advertising. Epstein explains:
All this is reinforced by the play of market forces, which strongly encourage the mythical dream of perpetual youthfulness. The promise behind 95 percent of all advertising is that of recaptured youth, whose deeper promise is lots more sex yet to go. The ads for the $5,000 wristwatch, the $80,000 car, the khakis, the vodka, the pharmaceuticals to regrow hair and recapture ardor, all whisper display me, drive me, wear me, drink me, swallow me, and you stop the clock--youth, Baby, is yours.
Our longings for eternal adolescence, Epstein argues, are reflected not just in our consumer habits but in our favorite TV programs.
Three. Seinfeld is about centripetal time: One of the most popular sitcoms ever, Seinfeld, captures our hunger to live in a time warp where no one grows up, no one assumes responsibility, and no one holds anyone to a high aspirations. If anything, one’s low aspirations become a badge of honor. It is a form of catastrophic self-betrayal to never aspire to anything far-reaching, to capitulate to a slacker mentality, and to veil one’s shortcomings behind a veneer of adolescent youthfulness. As Epstein writes:
The greatest sins, Santayana thought, are those that set out to strangle human nature. This is of course what is being done in cultivating perpetual adolescence, while putting off maturity for as long as possible. Maturity provides a more articulated sense of the ebb and flow, the ups and downs, of life, a more subtly reticulated graph of human possibility. Above all, it values a clear and fit conception of reality. Maturity is ever cognizant that the clock is running, life is finite, and among the greatest mistakes is to believe otherwise. Maturity doesn't exclude playfulness or high humor. Far from it. The mature understand that the bitterest joke of all is that the quickest way to grow old lies in the hopeless attempt to stay forever young.
Epstein and Frankl agree that it is dangerous to blind oneself from the finite and to live perpetually a warped time bubble in which one is trapped in a vacuum.
Four. Centripetal time is about “nothingbutness.” Not so, argues Frankl. He writes “there is a danger inherent in the teaching of man’s ‘nothingbutness,” the theory that man is nothing but the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment. Such a view of man makes a neurotic believe what he is prone to believe anyway, namely, that he is the pawn and victim of outer influences or inner circumstances. This neurotic fatalism is fostered and strengthened by a psychotherapy which denies man is free.”
The appeal of this “nothingbutness,” as Frankl calls it, is that is suggests a life of freedom, freedom to do nothing, which is really no freedom at all. Surrendering to hopelessness and sloth is hardly a worthy definition of freedom. Real freedom, Frankl argues, is our responsibility to find meaning in the face of suffering. However, our freedom is not unlimited. As Frankl explains: “To be sure, a human being is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.”
Five. The cult of adolescence encourages nihilism, the belief that we are helpless and doomed to a life of stagnation, so this cult dismisses the idea of maturity and meaning and to embrace nihilism as one’s core belief.
But is nihilism really a belief, that is, something that someone really believes is real, or is it a rationalization for choosing to take the easy way out? Take the example of a student I had ten years ago or so. Against her father’s wishes, she enrolled in college to become an education major. He didn’t believe in college or education of any kind, both of which he called a “waste of time.” He was an alcoholic, she explained in one of her essays. He’d drink beer and do bench presses in the garage while she got ready in her bedroom to go to sleep. She wrote that sometimes he’d come in with alcohol on his breath, look down at her while she feigned sleep, and shouted, “Think you’re better than me!” Then he’d look up at himself in her mirror, flex his muscles, take a swig of beer, and return to the garage to resume with his chest workout.
Did he really believe education was a farce or was he rationalization away his own fear of it and his own lack of discipline? It seems his behavior was guided less by belief and more by self-justification and delusion. And these attributes impeded her father’s search for finding meaning, for maturing, and as such he was jealous of her daughter’s desire to carve a better place in her life.
Six. Maturity, not adolescence, leads to meaning.
My student soon after told me she planned on moving out of her father’s house to escape his constant hostility. Her focus and commitment to her education in the face of her father’s discouragement and hostility attests to her strong character and maturity.
In fact, it is clear that to find meaning, in the sense that Frankl describes it, we must become mature. The more meaning we have, the more mature we are. And vice versa. Therefore, we cannot talk about a Meaning Scale without talking about a Maturity Scale.
Part Two. Nihilism is an obstacle to achieving meaning
One. Nihilism is Anti-Frankl: Generally speaking, nihilism is against everything Viktor Frankl stands for because it is a philosophy that explicitly states there is no meaning, that values are relative, that the way we are is the product of environmental and biological factors and we are helpless in shaping who we are, which is essentially animals, and that since we experience nothing after death, “anything goes.” Additionally, nihilism tells us, “morality” is a middle-class affectation, a cunning invention of the Powers at Be to keep the masses, the peasants, and the dumb, toothy hordes in check. There are variations of this view but it seems there are two major divides of nihilism, disingenuous and sincere. Both forms can impede our search for meaning but the former is the far more pernicious variety while the sincere form, while providing a stumbling block, can actually strengthen our search for meaning.
Two. Nihilism means we have no free will, no freedom: We have no freedom to choose our dignity or a life of high moral purpose. There is no purpose in life except for the maniacal mirages and chimeras that we become obsessed with unless we reasonably accept the “nothingness” of existence. Our lives are of no consequence at all and any our belief in our consequential existence is a sign of phony sanctimony and delusional grandeur.
Three. One cause of nihilism is depersonalization: Viktor Frankl writes about the forces that led to this type of nihilism in the concentration camps. The first cause of nihilism was the loss one’s individuality and self-respect leading to depersonalization. As Frankl writes:
A man’s character became involved to the point that he was caught in a mental turmoil which threatened all the values he held and threw them into doubt. Under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of human life and human dignity, which had robbed man of his will and had made him an object to be exterminated (having planned, however, to make full use of him first—to the last ounce of his physical resources)—under this influence the personal ego finally suffered a loss of values. If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value. He thought of himself then as only a part of an enormous mass of people: his existence descended to the level of animal life. The men were herded—sometimes to one place then to another; sometimes driven together, then apart—like a flock of sheep without a thought or a will of their own. A small but dangerous pack watched them from all sides, well versed in methods of torture and sadism. They drove the herd incessantly, backwards and forwards, with shouts, kicks and blows. And we, the sheep, thought of two things only—how to evade the bad dogs and how to get a little food.
Four. Other causes are fear, loss of faith in the future, and bitterness. The second cause of nihilism is fear, the kind that made camp inmates believe they had no free will but were the pawns of merciless fate. Such feelings led to apathy and helplessness and in this state it was impossible to find any meaning in their suffering.
Nihilism’s third cause is losing faith in the future, which, Frankl says, made the prisoners lose their “spiritual hold.” Once a prisoner gave up any possibility of hope in his future, his system would shut down and he would accelerate his own death. Over and over, Frankl gives examples of prisoners who died shortly after losing hope for their freedom.
Finally, bitterness and disillusionment experienced by the prisoners when they returned to their former life contributed to nihilism. They became bitter when after they returned to their home towns, they met people who, ignorant of the atrocities the prisoners faced, seemed lacking in empathy and the imagination to comprehend the suffering endured by the survivors. And they became disillusioned with their God or life itself when they could not reconcile the amount of cruelty they had witnessed with a life-affirming worldview regarding God, fate, or both.
These prisoners and survivors of the concentration camp put up no pseudo-intellectual façade of nihilism; they had through their experiences become nihilistic to the bone.
Part Three. Consumerism Impedes Our Meaning Quest: No doubt our DNA is coded for self-preservation, the instinct to ferociously pursue and protect our self-interests. But in Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl explains that this coding does not totally define us. In fact, if we ignore our responsibility to find meaning, and the values required to create meaning, our self-interest degrades us into an animal existence stripped of all dignity as we become a corrupt, denigrated version of ourselves. A wise form of self-interest, according to Frankl, focuses on an ultimate goal in life.
Two. Self-Interest Diminishes When We Have a Future Goal:
To define ultimate, Frankl explains the two meanings of the Latin word finis, “the end or the finish, and a goal to reach.” If we cannot reach for a higher goal, a commitment to some higher ideal greater than ourselves, he says, we will be trapped in the cycle of living a day to day “provisional” existence. When existence becomes “provisional,” as Frankl calls it, we live only to survive and kill time as we having nothing to look forward to. In such a state, our lives become consumed by self-interest and apathy as we turn inward, recoiling from the burden of ongoing suffering. Always feeling burdened by overwhelming hardships, we become fatigued and what little energy we have is devoted to placating ourselves and filling the “existential vacuum.”
Three. Filling the Existential Vacuum with Consumerism
The misguided attempts at filling this vacuum are, Frankl writes, forms of “neurotic” behavior, which include all sorts of distractions, the “Sunday drive” phenomenon in which people drive because they are bored and consumer addictions, which have become worse since Man’s Search for Meaning was first published. The danger of being bored and living a provisional day to day existence is that we focus too much on our misery and the selfish attempts to quell our misery backfire and make our condition worse and worse. Selfishness as a reaction to the existential vacuum endangers us by creating a hoarding impulse, other wise known as a consumer addiction; asserting vain displays of Darwinian superiority over others, and exaggerating our suffering to the point that we see our personal distress as especially bad, a type of exceptional pain that compels us to ignore the pain of others and assume the temperament of a petulant malcontent. Selfishness can be about investing all our energy on devoting our thoughts to ourselves.
Four. The Three Stages of Consumerism. In the realm of consumer addiction, it appears there are three stages of the disease. Stage One is the ways we waste our time “researching” sales and rationalizing unnecessary purchases within limits that don’t endanger our finances.
Stage Two is taking the addiction so that our basic needs our sacrificed.
And Stage Three is engaging in outright sociopathic behavior to get what we want.
I appear to be an example of Stage One. I relish in the exhilarating delights of consumerism as much as the next person and as a result I have seen how consumerism can intoxicate and make me behave irrationally, exhibiting behaviors that do not protect my self-interests. I once bought a $300 watch, for example, and swore as was on a watch-buying hiatus, for at least six months, but then a $400 that I had been lusting over suddenly became available for $130. This was too good to be true. I violated my self-sworn hiatus and explained to my wife that by purchasing a watch that I had planned on buying anyway, the cheaper price was in essence giving me $270. It felt like some invisible lever had placed $270 cash in my hand after I bought the watch. Let me repeat that. After paying $130 on a watch I wasn’t supposed to buy at that time, I felt like had been paid money to buy it. When I explained this to my wife, she explained that I suffered from a condition known as “creative budgeting,” a form of self-justifying my compulsive purchases. Fortunately, my family obligations have curbed my appetite for indulging my watch obsession so that I still have money for my nine-month twin girls’ diapers, formula, and organic baby food.
Of course, the more destructive form of selfishness, Stage Two, causes people to undermine their priorities so that they buy the object of their desire but have no money left for basic necessities. I can recall the student essay I read about a young man who was hell-bent on living in the chic condo in Brentwood and leasing a BMW. However, he had no money for food and clothes, so he depended on his siblings’ hand-me-downs and a diet of crackers and sardines. According to Frankl, if this young man had an ultimate purpose in life, he would not be compelled to buy things he cannot afford. His overspending is a misguided attempt to fill the void.
When the void becomes truly aching and the person in question has no scruples whatsoever, we’ve arrived at Stage Three, the level of the sociopath. About twenty years ago, a student wrote an essay about her sister whose fiancé was a struggling auto mechanic. The bride to be cancelled her wedding three times because she wanted her fiancé to have more money to make the wedding more elaborate. But the sociopathic element isn’t evident until we consider that this bride to be was, months before her wedding, already planning on divorcing her fiancé. What she wanted from him was a posh ceremony, nothing more, and she was willing to trick him into believing she cared about him enough to make a marriage commitment if doing so got her what she wanted.
Five. Consumerism as an expression of dominance.
Selfishness isn’t just about hoarding and desire for material things. It’s also about the need to assert dominance over others. We’re talking about the Darwinian instinct gone awry when compounded by the compulsions of the ego. When real meaning is replaced with false meaning, like the striving to be superior to others, these misguided attempts often lead to self-destruction. For example, one of my students had a friend, a man in his early twenties, who bought a very fast car, a Subaru WRX STI, and his obsession with having the fastest car in town compelled him to lighten it by removing the front passenger seat. Where there was once a leather-bound cushion, there was now a metal stub, not a comfortable arrangement for the young man’s girlfriend who, after one insufferable ride, gave him an ultimatum: Put the seat back or I’m gone. She ended up leaving him.
Compromising relationships because of the obsession with power is bad enough, but this obsession can even be fatal as one student explained to the class: He and his father were shopping one summer at a bazaar in Buenos Aires. The temperature was over 105 degrees and there was an old woman wearing a full-length fur coat, presumably for no other reason than to show everyone how rich she was. The father and son noticed she was sweating profusely and her eyes rolled into the back of her head before she collapsed and died of heat stroke.
Six. Consumerism becomes a substitute for meaning.
Most of us don’t die a physical death from consumeristic addiction, but a spiritual death, one in which we substitute real meaning with false meaning, is more prevalent as described by Laurence Shames in The Hunger for More: Searching for Values in an Age of Greed. As he explains:
People look to their goods not just of pleasure but for meaning. They want their stuff to tell them who they are. They ask that inanimate things, mere objects, serve as stand-ins for momentous notions. Not just pretty flowers but a built-in serenity is taken to exist in the pattern of a Laura Ashley wallpaper. Not just style but stateliness of person is presumed to be made manifest by a Ralph Lauren blazer. “Taste” becomes a sort of cult by whose expensive magic such eminently human traits as sensuality, dignity, even humor are transubstantiated into consumer goods; and since those traits are taken to exist in such readily accessible and uncomplicated form on store shelves, there is less reason to search for them in other people or even in oneself. People disappear into their clothes. Their conversation becomes merely a part of the ambience of the restaurants they frequent. The pen they write with is taken to be more revealing than what they might scrawl.
In the throes of consumerism, our soul appears to be leeched away by our shopping obsessions until the soul completely dissipates and is replaced entirely by our arsenal of products, a feeble bastion for warding off the existential vacuum. To drive his point home, Shames uses the example of two shopping fiends:
Shopping, for some, had become a macabre detour in the otherwise unstylish quest to find oneself. Consider the “Sonia Sister”—women who frequented designer Sonia Rykiel’s boutique at Henri Bendel in Manhattan, and who, according to the floor manager there, “gradually . . . bec[a]me obsessed with acquiring all the right pieces” and took on a “spooky resemblance to one another.” For them, the clothes became a sort of exoskeleton, which, as in the case of insects, was the sole protection and support of the gelatinous and trembling critter inside. When you bought “taste,” you bought yourself a personality, and it was that, over and above the much-blabbed-about “quality” of the goods, which justified the price.
Seven. Selfishness becomes an expression of an undeveloped personality.
The hunger for personality, identity, and meaning, and the misdirected ways we try to satisfy that hunger, makes us selfish. Of course, selfishness raises its ugly head in more ways than materialism and dominance. There is the simple lack of consideration for others, which requires all sorts of rules to be imposed where consideration for others is lacking. Take the example of gyms putting 20-minute limits on their cardio machine during peak hours so that some members don’t hog the cardio equipment, doing an exercise for two hours straight while a long line of members wait their turn. Or take the all-you-can-eat buffet that has a sign telling people to stand in an orderly line and avoid touching the buffet food with their hands.
There is also the selfish impulse to be heard, to lecture, to talk over everyone and never learn to listen to others. Living insulated in a Universe of One is perhaps the ultimate selfishness.
So the selfish personality looks like this: He is someone whose needs must always be met; he is someone who constantly jockeys for attention; he is someone with in insatiable craving for power; he is someone forever hoarding his trinkets and trophies. This is not the picture of a happy person but a disturbed, lonely child, an adult suffering from arrested development. And once again we are looking at the Maturity Scale as a way of measuring our success, or failure, in finding meaning.
I had heard about how the government will pay for your 4 years of med school if you agree to work for 4 years in an underrepresented area. I told my students about it and Juan, a med student, researched it and sent us the links.
Required Texts:Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl; The Story and Its Writer, Eighth Edition Edited by Ann Charters
Reading and Writing Schedule
June 20 Introduction
June 21 Frankl 1-60
June 22 Frankl 61-130
June 23 Frankl 131-end; Quiz 1
June 27 Essay 1 due in PE4
June 28 Essay 1 due in PE4
June 29 Death of Ivan Ilych
June 30 Death of Ivan Ilych continued
July 4 Holiday
July 5 Death of Ivan Ilych continued
July 6 Death of Ivan Ilych continued; Quiz 2
July 11 Essay 2 due in PE4
July 12 Essay 2 due in PE4
July 13 A Good Man Is Hard to Find
July 14 Good Country People; Quiz 3
July 18 Essay 3 due in PE4
July 19 Essay 3 due in PE4
July 20 The Swimmer
July 21 Babylon Revisited
July 25 The Lottery and The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas
July 26 Sonny’s Blues; Quiz 4
July 27 Essay 4 due in PE4
July 28 Essay 4 due in PE4
Essay One: Man’s Search for Meaning
In the context of Frankl’s book, write a 5-page essay explaining where you rank on the Meaning Scale, analyzing your strengths and weaknesses that determine your ranking. For example, are you worthy of your suffering in the way Frankl explains? Do you have a higher purpose or do you live a provisional existence? If you need a measurement for the Meaning Scale, you can use a ranking system between 0-10 or 0-100. Your essay must incorporate several principles from Frankl’s book and use concrete personal examples.
Your Works Cited Page should have 3 sources, the Frankl’s book, my blog, and another source of your choice (film, book, TV show, etc.)
Your outline might look like this:
In one page summarize the book’s major points.
Then write a thesis paragraph such as “My Meaning Scale is X evidenced by __________________, ____________________, _____________________, _______________________, and ____________________________.
Your body paragraphs will correspond to the above mapping components. Your conclusion will be a restatement of your thesis in shorter, more powerful form.
Option Two
In a 5-page essay, argue whether or not we can overcome the "existential vacuum" by finding meaning as prescribed by Frankl or if "meaning" is merely an illusion that "keeps us going."Include no fewer than 4 research sources for your Works Cited page.
Option Three
In a 5-page essay, contrast psychotherapy and logotherapy. Include no fewer than 4 research sources for your Works Cited page.
Essay Two: The Death of Ivan Ilych
In a 5-page research paper, analyze the life of Ivan Ilych in the context of Man’s Search for Meaning.
Your Works Cited page should have no fewer than 4 sources, Tolstoy’s story, Frankl’s book, my blog, and another source of your choice.
Essay Three: A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Good Country People
I In a 5-page essay, compare the demonic persona of nihilism and fatalism in the characters The Misfit from “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and Hulga from “Good Country People.’ For your Works Cited page, refer to the two stories, Frankl’s book, and my blog for 4 sources minimum.
Second Choice:
Argue if whether or not O'Connor's two stories are compatible with Man's Search for Meaning.
Essay 4 Choose Either A or B
A. In a 5-page essay, compare the distorted time warp, the failure to grasp our “finiteness,” as Frankl writes about, and its danger to the human soul in “The Swimmer” and “Babylon Revisited.” For your Works Cited page, refer to the two stories, Frankl’s book, and my blog for a minimum of 4 sources.
B. In a 5-page essay, compare the tribe’s influence on nihilism, the misguided desire for a provisional existence, and the soul’s forfeiture of meaning in “The Lottery” and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Your Works Cited page should refer to the two stories, Frankl’s book, my blog, and one other source for a total of 5 sources.
Grading
4 Six-Page Research Papers 225 each
4 Quizzes 25 each
Grand Total: 1,000 points
Pressure to Get an A and Things That Disqualify a Student from Receiving an A Grade
I know a lot of students are under excruciating pressure to get A grades in their classes. I appreciate that and because I do, I need to explain two things that disqualify a student from getting an A grade:
One: Turning in a late essay more than a week after its due date. These late essays get ZERO points and will mathematically eliminate the chances of an A grade.
Two. Cheating, plagiarising, trying to deceive me by turning in work that you didn't write.
College Policies and Objectives:
Students with Disabilities:
If you have a documented disability and wish to discuss academic accommodations, please contact me as soon as possible.
Student Learning Objectives
Students will compose an argumentative essay that shows an ability to
support a claim using analysis, elements of argumentation, and
integration of primary and secondary sources. This essay will be well
organized, follow proper MLA format, and be technically correct in
paragraph composition, sentence structure, grammar, spelling, and
usage.
Course Objectives
The student will be able to: 1. Read expository prose critically to distinguish between perception and inference, surface and implied meanings, fact and opinion. 2. Analyze the way arguments are presented in readings and the media. 3. Demonstrate the ability to organize and develop written arguments and compositions. 4. Refine writing skills developed in English 1A: focusing a topic, formulating a thesis, providing support, and developing unity and coherence. 5. Evaluate the accuracy and cogency of arguments by identifying logical fallacies and drawing inferences from readings and media presentations. 6. Formulate and develop arguments and critical theories about issues, argumentative prose, and literary interpretations.
Major Topics
Structures of argument: Thinking, reading, discussing. Evaluate data, credibility, and relevance.
Understanding and evaluating claims: Reasons, purposes, support, ambiguity, vagueness, complexity. Assessing credibility: Causal arguments, moral reasoning.
Evaluating arguments and explanations: Relevance, clarity, testability, and consistency. Identifying assumptions, developing counter arguments and justifications.
Writing argumentative, evaluative, and analytic essays: Prewriting, writing, and rewriting. Topic selection: Narrowing, evaluating validity and relevance. Developing parts of the argumentative essay: Strategies for organizing an argument or evaluation, including evidence, inductive and deductive reasoning. Avoiding logical fallacies.
Literary analysis: Evaluating point of view, inferences, and assumptions. Understanding diction, identification, aesthetic distance, and focus. Exploring rhetorical devices: Satire, irony, paradox, over-statement and understatement, evaluating authority.
Comparative analysis: Analyzing symbols, analogy, ambiguity, and imagery.
Deductive reasoning in expressive or expository literature: Recognizing assumptions in literary criticism and theory.
Political and advertising rhetoric: Slanders, euphemisms, innuendo, loaded questions, downplaying, avoidance, stereotyping, hyperbole, persuasive definitions. Information tailoring and the news media: Loaded language in reporting and advertising.
(Major writing assignments will consist of approximately 6 essays totaling 6000 words.)
Success in McMahon’s Class Is Predicated on Three Major Components:
One. Turn in 4 five-page research papers with correct MLA format ON TIME. Research Papers (all 4 of your essays) have a minimum of 4 sources, which can include Signs of Life in the USA, my lecture notes, interviews, and online sources.
Two. Do the reading assignments so that you can write a one-paragraph response that is cohesive, coherent and well developed in the five surprise closed-book reading tests.
Three. Show up on time to 90% of the classes. Missing 3 out of 30 classes is 90%.
Policies:
You can’t make-up reading exams. Points are irretrievably lost. This policy encourages class attendance.
Late Papers: I don’t accept late papers more than one week after the original due date and I reduce a full grade; no late papers accepted once new set of essays is due.
Research Papers should be approximately 1,200 words, 12 font, Times New Roman, page numbers, name, and essay title in upper right hand corner (headers in Microsoft View) and Works Cited should have minimum 3 sources and spacing using MLA format.
Revisions: You may revise ONE paper for 10-30 pts. depending on the quality of the rewrite. Revision must be turned in ONE WEEK after original due date.
Plagiarism Policy: If you plagiarize, steal previously written material and attempt to make it appear as if you wrote it, you will get ZERO points on the essay. For a rewrite, the HIGHEST POSSIBLE GRADE WILL BE A C MINUS.
(20 points deducted for not having headers (your last name and page number in the upper right corner of every page and 40 points deducted for not having a correct Works Cited page)
Attendance Policy: For 16-week semesters, students may be dropped after missing 6 classes for ANY REASON, including medical. For Summer and Winter sessions, students may be dropped after missing 4 classes for whatever reason, including medical.
Riding Policy: You cannot “ride” my class. A “rider” is a student who does nothing and tries to turn in papers all at once during the end of the semester. If by the eighth week of the semester you have not turned in your first two essays or are failing the class, I will drop you.
Etiquette Policy: If you’re text-messaging, receiving phone calls, privately conversing or studying for other courses during my class, you will be asked to leave the class.
Required Texts:A Good Fall by Ha Jin; Back in the World by Tobias Wolff; The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol; Cooked by Jeff Henderson; A Writer’s Resource El Camino College Handbook 3rd Edition
Reading and Writing Schedule
June 20 Introduction; Start A Good Fall
June 21 “The Beauty,” “Temporary Love”
June 22 “Choice,” “The House Behind the Weeping Cherry,” “A Good Fall”
June 23 Quiz 1
June 27 Essay 1 due in PE4
June 28 Essay 1 due in PE4; next book is Cooked
June 29 Cooked 1-80
June 30 Cooked 81-150
July 4 Holiday
July 5 Cooked 151-220
July 6 Cooked 221-end
July 7 Quiz 2
July 11 Essay 2 due in PE4
July 12 Essay 2 due in PE4
July 13 The Overcoat, first half
July 14 Start with a Quiz 3. The Overcoat, second half
July 18 Essay 3 due in PE4
July 19 Essay 3 due in PE4
July 20 Back in the World: "The Rich Brother"
July 21 Back in the World: "Desert Breakdown, 1968"; "Say Yes"
July 25 Back in the World: "The Missing Person"
July 26 Quiz 4
July 27 Essay 4 due in PE4
July 27 Essay 4 due in PE4
Essay Assignments
Essay 1 A Good Fall
In a 5-page research paper, develop a thesis that develops the contradictions of freedom as those contradictions are evidenced in the stories of Ha Jin’s A Good Fall. Refer to no fewer than 2 stories. Your outline might look like this:
Paragraph 1: Introduction
Paragraph 2: Thesis with 4 or 5 mapping components
Paragraphs 3-9: Elaborate on your mapping components
Paragraph 10: Conclusion, a restatement of your thesis
Last page is your Works Cited page with at least 3 sources.
Essay 2 Cooked
A wise man once said that when "we think we're rising in life we're really falling; and when we think we're falling in life we're really rising."
In a 5-page research paper, apply this adage to the memoir of Jeff Henderson as rendered in his book Cooked. Successful papers will use personal comparisons to underscore the salient wisdom above.
Paragraph 1: Introduction
Paragraph 2: Thesis with 4 or 5 mapping components
Paragraphs 3-9: Elaborate on your mapping components in these supporting paragraphs
Paragraph 10: Restate your thesis with a dramatic restatement.
Last page: Works Cited with no fewer than 3 sources.
Essay 3 The Overcoat
Analyze the story's overcoat as a particular symbol or metaphor and elaborate on this analysis of the metaphor or analogy throughout your essay.
Paragraph 1. Introduction
Paragraph 2. Thesis with 4 or 5 mapping statements
Paragraphs 3-9: Elaborate on your mapping statements
Paragraph 10: Conclusion, a restatement of your thesis
Last page: Works Cited with no fewer than 4 sources
Essay 4 Back in the World
Using at least two stories from Tobias Wolff's Back in the World, explain the book's title in your thesis. Successful papers will use personal experience to illustrate your major points.
Paragraph 1: Introduction
Paragraph 2: Thesis with 4 or 5 mapping components
Paragraphs 3-9: Support your mapping components
Paragraph 10. Restate your thesis
Last Page: Works Cited with no fewer than 2 sources
Grading
Four Essays, 225 for 900 total
Four Quizzes, 25 for 100 total
Grand Total: 1,000
Late Papers: Reduce one full grade ; no late papers accepted AFTER ONE WEEK. Since not turning in a paper will probably fail you, I’ll drop you at that point.
Success in McMahon’s Class Is Predicated on Three Major Components:
One. Turn in 4 five-page research papers with correct MLA format ON TIME. Research Papers (all 4 of your essays) have a minimum of 4 sources, which can include my lecture notes, interviews, and online sources.
Two. Do the reading assignments so that you can write a one-paragraph response that is cohesive, coherent and well developed in the five surprise closed-book reading tests.
Three. Show up on time to 90% of the classes. Missing 3 out of 30 classes is 90%.
Grading
Four Essays: 225 for 900
Four Reading Exams that are a 1-page 250-word paragraph, 25 each c
Grand Total: 1,000 points based on a total of 6,000 words of writing.
Policies:
You cannot make-up exams.
Late Papers: Reduce one full grade; no late papers accepted AFTER ONE WEEK. Since not turning in a paper will probably fail you, I’ll drop you at that point.
Research Papers should be approximately 1,000 words, 12 font, Times New Roman, page numbers, name, and essay title in upper right hand corner (headers in Microsoft View) and Works Cited should have minimum 3 sources and spacing using MLA format.
Revisions: You may revise one paper for 10-30 pts. depending on the quality of the rewrite. Revision must be turned in one week after original due date.
If your research paper has no headers, your last name and page number on every page, your essay will be deducted 20 points.
If your research paper has no Works Cited page, you’ll lose 40 points.
Pressure to Get an A and Things That Disqualify a Student from Receiving an A Grade
I know a lot of students are under excruciating pressure to get A grades in their classes. I appreciate that and because I do, I need to explain two things that disqualify a student from getting an A grade:
One: Turning in a late essay more than a week after its due date. These late essays get ZERO points and will mathematically eliminate the chances of an A grade.
Two. Cheating, plagiarising, trying to deceive me by turning in work that you didn't write.
Student Learning Objectives:
I. Review of Grammar and Usage The student will locate and demonstrate the ability to correct the following errors in a composition: A. sentence fragments B. comma splices C. misused commas D. fused sentences E. misplaced and dangling modifiers F. incorrect pronoun case G. faculty pronoun references H. pronoun-antecedent disagreement I. subject-verb agreement J. wrong tense II. Instruction in Reading A. Essays The student will 1. locate and paraphrase the thesis/preposition 2. identify the basic types of support used to develop the thesis or proposition: examples, facts, details, reasons, illustrations, anecdotes 3. indicate the shift from general to specific levels of support 4. distinguish statements of fact from statements of opinion 5. identify the method of development/strategy used: comparison, contrast, classification, definition, cause/effect, process, persuasion 6. summarize the idea and content 7. advocate or challenge the author's opinions B. Short fiction and poetry The student will 1. paraphrase the work 2. identify and define the central theme or metaphor 3. assess the aesthetic qualities of the work 4. compare the work with another, drawing conclusions based on appropriate criteria C. Book-length nonfiction The student will 1. summarize the work in its separate units and as a complete entity 2. identify the central theme or themes 3. judge the value of the information 4. advocate or challenge the author's opinions D. Novels The student will 1. summarize the plot 2. identify the central themes 3. indicate the functions of characters, plot, and setting in relation to the themes 4. judge the aesthetic value of 2 or 3 and of the whole work III. Instruction in Composition The student will 1. compose theses/topic statements of a proper scope for the composition 2. delimit subjects by brainstorming and outlining 3. organize the content of a composition using spatial, climatic, and/or chronological principles 4. use a range of general and specific levels of support with proper transitions to signal shifts from one level to another 5. compose introductory and concluding paragraphs for a composition 6. compose a timed essay 7. perform research techniques (use library resources, cite and document sources) and compose a formal research paper of at least 1250 words, utilizing parenthetical documentation
McMahon will be teaching Elie Wiesel's Night starting in the summer of 2011. It is a slim autobiography, barely 110 pages long. It is also one of the most powerful books McMahon has ever read.
The assignment will be thus:
One of the striking features of Night is the tension between nihilism--the loss of faith in God and humanity in the presence of the Holocaust--and the implicit moral stand Wiesel asserts by writing this book.
Develop a thesis that explores this tension and the moral conclusions--if any-we are to make from this tension.