SOURCE: "The Philosophy of Death in Viktor E. Frankl," in Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, Vol. 13, No. 2, Fall, 1982, pp. 197-209.

[In the following essay, Kovacs examines Frankl's notion that death is a natural and integral part of living and that it contributes an understanding of the existential meaning of life.]

Human attitudes towards the insurmountable factuality of personal death are not simply a syndrome of behavioral mechanisms for coping with a situation of stress, but, more significantly, they express philosophical and ideological understandings of the nature of death from the perspective of human living. Existential phenomenology examines the phenomenon of death precisely in accordance with the methodological significance of the relationship between attitudes and ideas or insights. The philosophies of death of Nietzsche, Jaspers, Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Marcel, and Buber (as well as those of other thinkers) show the existential confrontation with the phenomenon of death according to its attitudinal as well as conceptual dimensions. The concern with the meaning of death is an essential element of the existential-phenomenological approach to the question of death. The philosophy of death in the logotherapy of Viktor E. Frankl shows not only the attitudinal dimensions of existential ideas about death, but also examines the philosophical foundations of the logotherapeutic thesis on the meaning of death. Frankl's analysis of the meaning of death leads to the integration of the phenomenon of death into the inner dynamics of human living.

Frankl's analysis of the meaning of death represents a philosophical and a psychological alternative to the temptation of projecting the phenomenon of death onto a horizon of absurdity and meaninglessness. The interpretation of death in logotherapy is not based on any pre-established ideological presupposition; it is the result of a discovery that happens in the process of dialogue with the propositions of absurdity and meaninglessness. The basic questions of the philosophy of death in logotherapy are as follows: Is there a meaning to death? What is the final, the ultimate meaning of death? Does the reality of death, the fact of the finiteness of the human being in time, make life meaningless? What is the foundational significance of death for concrete human existence on this side of death? What is the nature and what ought to be the task of the therapy of the anxiety of death? What are the ontological (philosophical) foundations of the logotherapeutic claim that the existential fact of death is the source of meaning in human living? These issues represent basic elements of human concerns with the phenomenon of death. The most unique dimension of the philosophy of death in the thought of Frankl consists in the systematic examination of the meaning-question about death. This approach is not aiming at finding the final answers to the ultimate metaphysical questions about death (Why is there death? Is there a reward or a punishment after death? Is there a life after death?). The main task of the logotherapeutic analysis of the phenomenon of death is directed towards showing that the main characteristic of human existence is always the search for and the realization (actualization) of meaning in all human situations, especially in the human encounter with death, illness and suffering. Frankl's reflections on death deal more intensively with life than with death; they show the human capacity to find a meaningfulness in living even in the face of the reality of human death. Death is the source of human fulfillment in living and of the call for the realization of values in the process of living; it is not the cause of any existential vacuum.

By focusing on the question of meaning, logotherapy is helping the patient (all human persons are patients of logotherapy) to meet the existential facts of death, guilt, and suffering. A direct confrontation with these existential situations prevents the neurotic denial of them by the human person. The denial and the repression of these existential situations lead to a detour of the human self from its human and ontological potentialities. Thus logotherapy acknowledges the inescapable existential reality of the unchangeable existential facts (death, suffering, illness, guilt) and at the same time leads to a positive attitude towards them by showing that they are potentially meaningful.

The human person is able to create meaning even in the midst of the desert, even in the seemingly most inhuman situation. The source of many forms of contemporary neuroses lies in the denial of existential facts and not in the denial (repression) of the instinctual (e.g., sexual) components of human existence. Contemporary society may be characterized by the tendency to deny demanding existential facts and by the willingness to accept the instinctual and passionate elements in human living. A merely psychodynamic interpretation of existential facts (e.g., the fear of death interpreted as a castration anxiety) is ultimately based on a deterministic view of human life as a whole. The logotherapeutic perspective rejects the ideology of pandeterminism and affirms the contextual freedom of the human will precisely by showing the function of human attitudes in the acknowledgement of unchangeable existential facts. There is much in human life that is dependent on and decided by the attitude of the human person towards life as such. According to the main principle of logotherapy, human existence is "always directed toward a meaning to fulfill (rather than a self to actualize or one's potentialities to develop)" [Psychotherapy and Existentialism, 1967]. The essential transitoriness of human existence does not take away the meaningfulness of life but rather adds to it. Thus logotherapy is able to deal with the often repressed or unconscious existential despair of the patient. Existential despair can be made conscious and thus it may become the object of human reflection and analysis. Existential despair can be reduced and even replaced by the attitude of existential hope, by the existential potentiality of finding and thus realizing a meaning in all human situations. Logotherapy helps the human person to confront (encounter) the repressed fears and anxieties in a positive manner; it leads not to a denial, not to a repression of them but to a human way of dealing with them, to a lucid recognition of them for what they are. This approach goes beyond the reductionist tendency of a merely psychodynamic explanation of the existential situations of the human person.

The next phase of these reflections examines the main themes as well as the attitudinal significance of the philosophy of death in logotherapy. The concern with the phenomenon of meaning and with the human will to meaning enables logotherapy to make valuable and unique contributions to the theoretical understanding as well as to the concrete forms of dealing with the phenomenon of death in the process of human living.

The philosophy of death in the works of Frankl includes an analysis of the following three foundational issues: the relationship between death and the meaning of life; the ontological understanding of temporality; the nature of human death. These three issues are interrelated and they deal with the main questions arising in the process of dialogue between the human being and the reality of death.

a) According to the main thesis of Frankl's existential analysis, the finiteness of the life of the human person in time, the fact of death, does not make life meaningless, but rather gives meaning to life. Many people think that the fact of death destroys the meaning of life as well as the works of human life. Frankl rejects this assumption by indicating the fallacy included in it and by developing a positive understanding of human finiteness. The assumption that finiteness makes human life meaningless implies the claim that the infinite gives meaning to life and to the works, accomplishments of life. But the infiniteness, the immortality of human life would allow the attitude of procrastination (there would always be more time for doing things); it would make whatever the human being does or fails to do into something insignificant since there would be more and additional opportunities all the time. Therefore, the meaning of this life and its works is not dependent on eternity; life is meaningful or meaningless irrespective of its limitations or infinite prolongation in time. Thus the logic that derives meaninglessness from finiteness is not logical at all. There is a non sequitur in this assumption. According to the "positive" view of human finiteness in Frankl, "the meaning of human existence is based upon its irreversible quality" [The Doctor and the Soul]. Death and singularity make human existence irreversible and thus constitute a source of responsibility for the human person in time. Death is not a thief robbing off the meaning of human life, but the "absolute finis to our future and boundary to our possibilities" [The Doctor and the Soul]. The time-boundary of life constitutes a command to use well the time given and to seize the opportunities presented by life. The human person should not let time pass by without using it well because a human life is constituted by accepting the opportunities, by continually summing them up into the whole of life. Human life and human responsibility are situated in time, in the process of history.

How can the logotherapist lead the person who suffers from the sense of meaninglessness in the face of death to a sense of personal responsibility, to the discovery of meaning in finite life? The task of the logotherapist may be defined as the reawakening of the patient to the historical dimension of human existence that is the source of personal responsibility. The human being is responsible for writing the story (history) of his life. Often times time runs out sooner than the work is finished or completed. Nevertheless this running out of time does not make the work and the task done meaningless. A human biography is not to be evaluated by its length but by the richness of its contents. The question about the meaning of life is not a question about quantity but a question about quality!

The finiteness of a life, Frankl insists, does not distract from the quality of life but rather adds to it. By accepting and assuming finiteness, the human being unfolds his life in the process of time and history. The meaning of life does not come from the mere prolongation of living (as the false assumption indicated earlier would imply) but from the accomplishing, the finishing of tasks in finite time. Death belongs to life; there is no need to exclude death from life in order to find meaning in life. The meaning of life is situated not in the future (e.g., in future generations, in eternity) but in the now (presence) of finite time, in human history. Life grows, transcends itself "not in 'length'—in the sense of reproduction of itself—but in 'height'—by fulfilling values" [The Doctor and the Soul]; it receives meaning not from the prolongation of itself but from the fulfilling of values and tasks. The growing and the transcending nature of life is not a quantitative but a qualitative characteristic. Life is meaningful or meaningless irrespective of its span in time. The recognition and the awareness of finiteness, according to the logotherapeutic interpretation of the phenomenon of human death, do not dictate, do not lead to a philosophical ideology of absurdity and nothingness. The human acknowledgment of death becomes a source of the joy of living and peace with oneself in the struggle with the unchangeable realities of life.

The positive view of human finiteness in the thought of Frankl sheds a new light on the uniqueness and individuality of the human person. The inner limits of life add to the meaning of the life of the human being. The limitations make each individual human being unique and indispensable. Uniqueness, however, is not a springboard for isolation from, but the source of the right relationship of the individual to the community. Genuine community creates a place for the fulfillment of human individuality; authentic community is born out of the respect for the personal mode of existence. The human individual is not some sample of a general type, but a personal being as "being different, absolute otherness" [The Doctor and the Soul]. The genuine community contributes to the emergence of the individual as a category of being and enhances the sense of personal responsibility; the mass society submerges individuality and thus dilutes personal responsibility. According to Frankl, the uniqueness of the human being is formed and developed by the personal limitations, the personal choices and acts of the individual. Thus finiteness, limitations, and death itself become a source for meaning in the life of the individual human being. Death does not annul but rather creates responsibility; it calls for the individual's response to the opportunities and questions presented by life in all situations. Human uniqueness and responsibility make up the personal mode of being.

For Frankl, death itself makes life meaningful because human existence is essentially characterized by responsibility that is grounded on human finiteness. Death is not the enemy of life but a part of life. The limit in time and the limited range of his potentialities make the human person accountable for the use of time and of all that is given to him; they determine, shape the quality and the meaning of human existence. Every human being is called to face the limitations of life, but each human being is responding to this call in a personal and a unique way. Thus death makes all human beings equal and, at the same time, uniquely personal; it is a great equalizer and a powerful personalizer of human existence.

Death as a human destiny is not an absurd phenomenon, but a source of meaning in human living. However, according to the thought of Frankl, death is not the only unchangeable destiny of the human being. There are many other unchangeable realities in the life of the human person. Frankl examines the biological, the psychological, and the social determinants of human life with the same attention as he examined the phenomenon of death. The human being is a "deciding being" (Jaspers) because the human being is able to take a free stand towards destiny, towards unchangeable situations in living. According to the existential-phenomenological understanding, the structure of the human being as existence includes both facticity (that which is given) and potentiality (that which is chosen). The human being is not predetermined, but rather determines itself within a range of potentialities. The human being is determined not only by what he already is but also by what he can be; man is not only what he is (already) but also what he is not (yet). The human being can decide to be or not to be. "Destiny must always be a stimulus to conscious, responsible action" [The Doctor and the Soul]. Destiny (biological, psychological, social) is meaningfully incorporated by the human person into the structure of his life [The Doctor and the Soul]. Frankl's analysis of the various unchangeable elements of human existence (death, biological constitution, psychological dispositions, social environment) leads to the claim (and conviction) that it is possible for the human person to adopt freely chosen attitudes towards (realize values in) the unchangeable situations and realities of human life. The human being can transform a given reality into a possibility, into a potentiality for accomplishing something. An apparent obstacle or a limitation in life may become a source for new personal meaning and self-realization. Thus, for Frankl, death is not the end but rather the beginning or the birth of meaning in human living. The phenomenon of death does not constitute the source of absurdity, but rather contributes to the emergence of meaning.

b) The logotherapeutic view of the phenomenon of death as the source of meaning in human living is built on the philosophical interpretation of the nature of time, on the ontological understanding of temporality and mortality. Frankl's analysis of the ontological nature (the Being or reality) of time is an integral part of his entire philosophy of death.

The transitoriness of human life does not distract from its meaningfulness because of the ontological status of the past. According to logotherapy, the past is nothing but a mode of being, a reality and not merely a possibility. The actualized possibilities exist as part of the past of the person. Everything is being conserved in the past. The accomplishments of the person, the reality of love lived and of the suffering endured with courage remain stored in the past; they are conserved, treasure as the strong background and foundation of what the acting and living person is all about. In Frankl's expression, "being past" is a form of being, "having been" is a mode of being [The Unheard Cry for Meaning]. The affirmation of the reality of the past of the human person is a key thesis of logotherapy. The past of the person using time wisely is a source of strength because it is not the product of the chronological passage of time, but the result of passing (transforming) possibilities into realities (accomplishments, actualities). The passing or passage of possibilities into realities is a creative passage (passing) and not a destructive passage. The love lived with a person remains even after the death of the person. The past retains, keeps alive all the possibilities that were transformed into realities through the decisions and acts of the human person. The goodness, the achievements, the trials endured with courage, the meaning of human experience cannot be removed from the world. All these are stored, all these endure in the safety of the past; they constitute a source of comfort and consolation. Thus the life of the human person is transitory, but it is not a life lived in vain; the human person does not live for nothing, but for "some thing."

The interpreation of the ontological status of the past as the "safest mode of being" represents a way of transcending the transitory nature of human life. The past is the record of our choices, of our responsibilities. Human actions and human creations do not vanish into nothingness, but remain an eternal record. For Frankl, the world is not a manuscript written in a secret code we have to decipher (Jaspers), but it is "rather a record we must dictate" [The Unheard Cry for Meaning]. This record is written daily by the responses we give to the questions (tasks, assignments) that are presented to us by life. The record, the life lived and created by our responses cannot be lost, but it cannot be corrected either. Thus this record is a source of hope and comfort, but it is also a warning at the same time. Nothing can be removed from the past, but we may rescue our chosen possibilities into the past. We decide in the present what we wish to eternalize by making it part of the past. The art of human creativity consists in nothing else but in the turning of the "possibilities of the future into realities of the past," in the act of moving something "from the nothingness of the future into the 'being past'" [The Unheard Cry for Meaning]. Thus everything is transitory because everything is "fleeing from the emptiness of the future into the safety of the past!" [The Unheard Cry for Meaning]. All beings fear emptiness; every being is dominated by the horror vacui according to the ancient thinkers. All beings are rushing from the emptiness of the future into the safety of the past, into past existence. The present is the narrow passage, the opening into the safety of the past, the admission into eternity. "The present is the borderline between the unreality of the future and the eternal reality of the past" [The Unheard Cry for Meaning]. The present is called by Frankl the "borderline" of eternity because the present moment (the decision in the now) decides what should be eternalized, what should be the eternal record of the past. The only way to gain time is by depositing it in the past, by using time well for something now. According to Frankl, the good use of time that takes place in the present, the passage from the future into the past through personal decisions made in this manner by every individual person is nothing else ultimately but the exercise of the existential potentiality for transforming possibilities into realities.

c) What is death? What happens in death? The ontological and the axiological interpretations of time lead to some insights about the issues that are involved in dealing with these questions. According to the logotherapeutic perspective, death gives a definite form and structure to all that happens in the life of the human person. Only the spiritual self remains in and survives death. In death the individual human being not only sees his life in review, but becomes his life; the individual becomes his history. Life in death, then, becomes what the human person made of it. Thus Frankl is able to say that "man's own past is his future. The living man has both a future and a past; the dying man has no future in the usual sense, but only a past; the dead, however, 'is' his past" [The Unheard Cry for Meaning]. In living we have both a future and a past; in dying we have no future but only past. In death, in being dead, we are, we have become our own past. In death we have no life; in death we are our lives. The past as the safest mode of being cannot be taken away; in the past as the safest mode of being life is completed and perfected. In life we complete individual facts and tasks; in death life in its totality is completed. Therefore man creates himself, and becomes a reality not at his birth but at his death, at the completion of life by death. The human self is not something that is ready-made but it is rather "some thing" that becomes fully itself in time. Temporality is not simply an aspect of the external process of becoming, but much rather it is an essential element in the inner growth of the human self.

According to Frankl, in daily living the human person tends to misunderstand the reality and the meaning of death. Thus death is regarded very often as an intrusion upon, as an interference with the process of living, and as something finishing off the whole of life. Human beings in daily living worry about death and think about death as something dreadful and entirely hostile to all that life is all about. Human beings forget that death is an alarm that wakes us up to our real existence in the real world. Death opens us up to the true reality of our inner being and self-hood; the personal awareness of our own death leads to the discovery of our own personal being and living.

The above analysis of the philosophy of death in the thought of Frankl leads to some valuable insights about the meaning of human death. The logotherapeutic interpretation of the phenomenon of death integrates the reality of death into the dynamics of human living. Thus the existential analysis of the meaning of death in Frankl represents a positive attitude towards the existential fact of death; it rejects the nihilistic attitude towards death regarded as the enemy of human projects and possibilities. The difficulty of integrating the phenomenon of death into human living is clearly expressed by Simone de Beauvoir in connection with the description of her attitude towards the death of her mother: "It is useless to try to integrate life and death and to behave rationally in the presence of something that is not rational: each must manage as well as he can in the tumult of his feelings" [Simone de Beauvoir, A Very Easy Death, 1973]. For Simone de Beauvoir "there is no such thing as a natural death: nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation" [A Very Easy Death]. The philosophy of death in Simone de Beauvoir as well as in Sartre is bound to remain incomplete because it does not include a comprehensive philosophy of human suffering and because it does not develop a more critical analysis of the spectrum of human and intellectual attitudes towards the presence of death in human living. The philosophy of death in Frankl includes a comprehensive analysis of human suffering as well as an analysis of the gamut of human attitudes towards the existential facts of life. Frankl's philosophy and existential psychotherapy is based on the existential principle of the will to meaning. This principle makes possible the integration of the phenomenon of death into the dynamics of human living. The following reflections show the existential significance and the philosophical dimensions as well as the boundaries of Frankl's analysis of the meaning of death.

a) The key thesis of the logotherapeutic interpretation of the phenomenon of death is the affirmation of the meaning-generating function of death, of the potentialities of the will to meaning in the process of dealing with the finiteness of human existence. Death does not take away the meaning that is found in human living but rather propels the human person to find and create meaning in finite living. The human person is able to find and create meaning even in the face of the insurmountable reality of death. According to the logotherapeutic perspective, death can be integrated into the dynamics of human living; death is not the enemy but the essential part of life. Death may come by an accident, but it is not something accidental at all. Logotherapy regards death as an existential fact, as a natural part of human existence. It leads to the attitude of acknowledgment towards death and to the discovery of possibilities for personal fulfillment.

b) Frankl's philosophy of death does not analyze, at least directly, the many metaphysical questions which may be raised in connection with the ultimate meaning of death. Why is there death? Why is the human being condemned to die? Is there a life after death? What is the relationship between the reality of death and the human nostalgia for and speculation about immortality? Is death a punishment or is it the final test of the human capacity to struggle against all the odds in the experience of living? The philosophy of death in Frankl does not constitute a metaphysical response to these fundamentally metaphysical questions. The fact that his analysis of the existential meaning of death may well be compatible with a metaphysical view of death as the passage to another mode of being or as a punishment does not necessarily mean that his analysis eo ipso ought to lead to the adoption of a particular system of metaphysics. Frankl's thought is aware of both the orientation and the limitations (boundaries) of existential analysis.

c) Frankl's analysis of the meaning of death, nevertheless, represents not only a psychology and an existential axiology of death, but also an ontology of death. Many aspects of Frankl's philosophy of death, as well as the thought of Frankl as a whole, may be regarded as being quite close to the philosophy of Scheler and to that of Heidegger. The consistent concern with meaning and values in dealing with the basic questions of life and death in Frankl includes some important relationships to the philosophy of values and of the human person in Scheler. Frankl's analysis and interpretation of the finiteness of human existence, in the final analysis, may be viewed as being quite close to several elements of the existential hermeneutics of death in Heidegger. Frankl, like Heidegger, speaks of the ontology of human finiteness, examines the ontological status (the Being-dimension) of death, of temporality, and of human accomplishments. The future, according to Frankl, is a possibility that is transformed by the decisions and attitudes of the present into realities (actualities) secured in the past as the safest mode of being. The ontological structure of temporality makes possible the logotherapeutic interpretation of death which regards death not as the enemy but as the source of meaning in living for the human person. Human possibilities are situated (given) between the boundaries of temporality and death; these boundaries define and shape the possibilities that are transformed into realities. Thus the tasks become (are transformed into) accomplishments. The present, as Frankl says, is nothing else but the passage of possibilities (future) into realities (past); the present is the passage made possible through the decisions of the human person. The human person is a deciding being, a being that can be described as presence. The issue at stake in these reflections is not the significance of the works (accomplishments, decisions) of life for a possible life after (beyond) death but the possibility of meaning at all under the horizon of death as the expression of temporality. Death does not annul but creates meaningfulness in the works, experiences, and sufferings of this life. The basic insights of logotherapy are not concerned with the possibility of life outside (independently of) the horizon of temporality. Logotherapy is not a substitute for theology and metaphysics.

d) Death as an ontological dimension and horizon of human living challenges the human person to search for meaning in living without deriving this meaning from a system of ideology. The philosophy of death in Frankl transcends ideological and metaphysical boundaries and disputes because it is not based on a commitment to any particular system of ideology or metaphysics. The logotherapeutic view of death, nevertheless, guards an attitude of openness towards the theological perspective on death because logotherapy is aware of the religious dimensions of human existence. These special characteristics of Frankl's philosophy of death lead to the following question: What can we learn from the analysis of the meaning of death for the conduct of a meaningful life? The main teaching of the logotherapeutic interpretation of the phenomenon of death is the description and the justification of the natural attitude of acknowledging the reality of death. The natural and existential awareness of death does not distract from the joy and the value of living. There is a healing power in thinking about death. Meanings and values are realized on this side of death. The boundary of human living and of human actions does not constitute a wall of enclosure, but it functions as a container and a shield of accomplishments and values. The authentic and thus healthy attitude towards death contributes significantly to the discovery of the true self and enhances the development of the human person. The attitudes of skepticism and absurdity towards life and death may not be eliminated for once and for all by the logotherapeutic understanding of death. Skepticism and absurdity take many forms. However, the logotherapeutic discernment of the meaning of temporality and mortality makes more difficult the use of death for establishing and fostering the attitude of skepticism and absurdity towards the meaning of human living.

Logotherapy can neither give nor prescribe meaning; it can only describe meaning. The understanding of the function of meaning in human living also includes the recognition of the limits of the understanding of meaning. Thus logotherapy shows the importance of keeping an open mind in dealing with the ultimate meaning of life and death precisely because "the more comprehensive the meaning, the less comprehensible it is" [The Unconscious God]. The discernment and the choice of a meaning, especially the choice of an ultimate meaning, does have a therapeutic effect on the human person. The process of discerning and choosing ultimate meaning not only enlarges but also transcends the task of logotherapy and thus calls for a philosophical as well as for a theological, indeed for a multidisciplinary, analysis and understanding. Logotherapy is able to deal with the specifically human (noogenic) and spiritual dimensions of death without becoming an ideology at the same time. The practitioner of logotherapy helps in the search for meaning but he does not impose a particular meaning. The logotherapist is aware of the philosophical and the theological dimensions of the questions regarding the ultimate meaning of life and death; he knows the difference between science and wisdom. The attitude of openness and professional objectivity in Frankl's philosophy of death is founded on his consistent emphasis on the distinction between the domain of medicine (the science of the art of healing, human comfort) and the realm of theology and wisdom (religious faith, commitment to an ultimate meaning). Medical, clinical problems are not only somatic and psychological, but also philosophical and religious in many instances due to the oneness and wholeness of the human person. The logotherapist ought to be aware of the person's spiritual needs and resources; he also ought to try to understand them and draw on them. The search for meaning and the attitude of openness towards the expressions and formulations of meaning on many levels contribute to the process of healing the human person from the neurotic denials of the existential facts of suffering, illness, and death.