Free Republic

If you want to understand a human being or the human condition, what is the single most important question you should ask? Most religious people would probably ask, "Do you believe in God?" The most important question most secular people, especially progressives, could imagine asking is probably a policy question. Today it would be "Do you support Donald Trump?" Otherwise it might be "Do you support abortion rights?" or "Do you support gay marriage?" As important as all of these questions are, in attempting to understand human beings, especially large groups of human beings -- i.e., their society -- the...

Much as I admire the late Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who turned his horrific experience at Auschwitz into clinical insights, the notion of "man's search for meaning" seems inadequate. Just what about man qualifies him to search for meaning, whatever that might be?

I make it a point to re-read Man's Search for Meaning by Dr. Viktor Frankl every five years or so. The late Dr. Frankl had an extraordinary gift for observation combined with a talent for communicating clearly and persuasively. His recollections of life in a concentration camp reveal humanity at its best and at its most vile. In 1965 they had a profound impact on a skinny high school freshman who was just beginning to experience life outside of his small circle of friends and family. Like Socrates, Santayana and Bishop Sheen, Dr. Frankl believed that the greatest dangers facing...