Viktor Frankl and Science

New discoveries in Quantum physics suggest that the meaning of the Universe would paradoxically be to create a consciousness that allows life to escape its determinism, by exercising wisely the freedom that this consciousness brings. Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl grasped part of the role of conscience, that of giving meaning to one's life, to everyone's life. But in fact, consciousness would also make it possible to give meaning to life, in the Universe. If man has a place in the project of the Universe, he will only occupy it by rising to the height of this destiny. We know that we are not creating the order of the Universe, but we are growing in our awareness of that order which is already there. We are able to perceive that nothing is definitively acquired in this ascent and that the regressions are too frequent and always hopeless. Our human civilization is fragile, fallible and on the way to self-destruction, for lack of sufficient awareness. Frankl's Existential Analysis constitutes above all a reflection on the human condition, underlining the urgency of distinguishing between determinism and free will, matter and spirit. Frankl was convinced that the specificity of man lay in his dimension of the spirit, which was expressed by this consciousness bearing freedom, responsibility, and the need for meaning. If Frankl 's thought seduces today by responding to a certain growing demand for the quest for meaning or spirituality, it also repels by its other dimension, yet inseparable, of responsibility and freedom. This thought, however, in no way disdains those who suffer, the victims of injustice or of a miserable fate, and the material help that can and should be given to them, but it considers that this help will always be incomplete as long as it will not have aroused the strength and the will to place life in a direction that goes beyond it. It is the essence of Existential Analysis to allow man to free himself from the shackles of his past, to free himself from the weight of the present, to overcome all that has been described to him as an insurmountable determinism, thanks to this dimension of the spirit that we will have helped him to identify and manifest.

Dettagli