🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

1. The meaning of life changes through life.
2. We can find meaning in spite of suffering.
3. The primary human drive is not pleasure but the pursuit of what we find meaningful.

🎨 Impressions

What I liked:

• The split between the first part (author's life in a concentration camp) and the seconds part (principles of logotherapy). It is a good way to prove that if logotherapy can work for an Auschwitz prisoner, it can work for almost anything.

What I didn't like:

• Some part of the book feel like a somewhat (in)coherent chain of toughts rather than the chapters of a book. It doesn't help that the "chapter" division seems arbitrary. Probably because the author wrote the book in 9 days.
• The language in the second part is too advanced for the average reader, especially for non-native english speakers. It seemed to be the language one professional would use to speak with his peers, rather than a language used to teach novices in the field.

How I Discovered It

Somehow it ended in my reading list.

Who Should Read It?

Probably everyone. Especially people struggling with finding meaning in life.

🍀 How the Book Changed Me

I'm not sure it did. I'm not 100% sold on the concept of logotherapy. It seems to me to be a coping mechanism with the pain of being rather than a property instrinsic of existence. Existence might not need to be justifiable. In my opinion you existing in a Universe that allowed life to exist, otherwise there would be no life to observe that existence.

Also nihilism is not a prelude to cynicism. You can enjoy existence despite its meaninglessness. Even in a commpletely deterministic Universe you can still choose to be happy. Even if life is a consequence of the properties of the Universe, and everyone follows preprogrammed rules (genetic, social, etc.), yourself included, subjectivity gives it a baseline meaning.

And by extension if you remove that subjectivity, only a Universe that just "is" will remain, but let's not go there.