Meaning Success & Happiness (Jordan Peterson + Viktor Frankl)

Video Credits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c9Uu5eILZ8&t=3s

Article used:
Richard Bailey (2022): Meaning, will to meaning, and Frankl’s existential
psychiatry, Philosophical Psychology

Frankl’s concept of Meaning
-Meaning is a [striving] toward a worthwhile goal; and an act of making sense of life.
-Therefore meaning is a consequence of an agent striving toward some other end and not striving towards meaning itself.
-“[Meaning] success, [and] happiness, cannot be pursued; [they] must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.
-“Something worth sacrificing pleasure or choose to undergo pain if it is understood to have a transcendent meaning for the sake of another person or for a goal to which she aspires.”

Goods
-Without [worthwhile] goals at which to aim for their own sake, there would be no meaningful purpose in any activity. Thus, the value of final ends (final good) lies in their role as a necessary condition of engaging in activities judged by an agent to be worthwhile

Final end
-Something is a final good if it is good for its own sake;
-Not everything that is good is a final good;
-Some things are good merely as means.

-Lightly chosen ends are uncompelling: if “the meaning that is waiting to be fulfilled by man” was just an intention, “it would immediately lose its demanding and challenging character; it could no longer call man forth or summon him”

-Recognizing that something has intrinsic worth (is a worthwhile goal) need not mean there is a compulsion to do it. At most, “it is qualified to be desired for its own sake, and to be pursued as a final end.”