Man is never driven to moral behavior; in each instance he decides to behave morally. Man does not do so in order to satisfy a moral drive and to have a good conscience; he does so for the sake of a cause to which he commits himself, for a person whom he loves, or for the sake of his God. If he actually did it for the sake of having a good conscience, he would become a Pharisee and cease to be a truly moral person. I think that even the saints did not care for anything other than simply to serve God, and I doubt that they ever had it in mind to become saints. If that were the case they would have simply become perfectionists rather than saints.
— “Basic Concepts of Logotherapy,” from Man’s Search for Meaning.
Viktor Emil Frankl (1905–1997) was a neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor who is best known for proposing an alternative to the Freudian view that man is motivated by a pleasure principle. Calling his theory logotherapy, Frankl proposed that man’s primarily motivated in all he does by a desire to find meaning in his life. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl uses his own experiences in German concentration camps to illustrate this theory.
Man is never driven to moral behavior; in each instance he decides to behave morally. Man does not do so in order to satisfy a moral drive and to have a good conscience; he does so for the sake of a cause to which he commits himself, for a person whom he loves, or for the sake of his God. If he actually did it for the sake of having a good conscience, he would become a Pharisee and cease to be a truly moral person. I think that even the saints did not care for anything other than simply to serve God, and I doubt that they ever had it in mind to become saints. If that were the case they would have simply become perfectionists rather than saints.
— “Basic Concepts of Logotherapy,” from Man’s Search for Meaning.
Viktor Emil Frankl (1905–1997) was a neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor who is best known for proposing an alternative to the Freudian view that man is motivated by a pleasure principle. Calling his theory logotherapy, Frankl proposed that man’s primarily motivated in all he does by a desire to find meaning in his life. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl uses his own experiences in German concentration camps to illustrate this theory.
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