Way

(DAO) is the Meaning (SINN)

A compara ve study between Logotherapy and Daoism

presented by
Jacquine Choi Ki Chan
&
Andreas Schreiber

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 Abstract

As there already exist some experiences in conduc ng Logotherapy courses in the East-Asian world,
and the a empt to con nue spreading the ideas of V. Frankl in China, especially Hong Kong, this work
should be regarded as an inves ga on of the similari es and di erences between logotheory and the
philosophy of Daoism, which helps to improve the curriculum of Logotherapy courses in the Asian
world in order to bridge the somehow quite di erent mind-sets between West and East.
The main similari es which this work points out are: a) the similar connota on of “meaning” and
“DAO” which both mean somehow a way that has been produced only by going, b) the correla on of
the logotherapeu c “meaning of the moment” with the Daoist idea of the ever changing ux of the
two opposed features of the world, Yin and Yang, c) the parallelizing of the logotherapeu c demand
for discovering the “meaning of the moment”, which is to accomplish by listening to one’s own con-
science through the successful applica on of the logotherapeu c method of dere ec on, with the
Daoist concept of Wu Wei, the doing by non-doing.
The main di erences are seen in: a) Logotherapy is poin ng out the human’s individuality, freedom
and will to a personal meaning, whereas in Daoism the individual is worth rather nothing and should
be er be merged in the DAO; b) in Logotherapy it’s emphasized that the human being feels more
comfortable and healthy the more he consciously makes some existen al decisions and assumes re-
sponsibility for his deeds, whereas in Daoism, according to the concept of Wu Wei, there shouldn’t be
any voli onal ac on, but only following the natural change of Yin and Yang without having the
concept of a deciding self.
As the, at least, modern Hong Kong people aren’t anchored too much in their philosophical heritage
but nevertheless suspect the especially highly individual and forceful mind-set of the Western “yes,
we can”-mentality, this work will give advice how to embed the tradi onal ancient Chinese thoughts
in the conveyance of the highly personality and freedom based logotherapy without being too chau-
vinis c and without to impose on them the Western thinking as a universal truth.

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 Table of Content

Abstract 2

Table of Content 3

1. Introduc on 4
2. Frankl’s Logotherapy and Existen al Analysis 6
2.1.Basic assump ons and anthropology of logotheory 6
2.2.What is meaning? 12
2.3.Finding meaning of the moment 15
2.4.Phenomenon of conscience 17
2.5.Dere ec on 19
3. Philosophy of Daoism 22
3.1.Daoism, Laozi, Zhuangzi 22
3.2.Daoist cosmology: DAO, Yin/Yang, Qi 23
3.3.Wei Wu Wei: doing as non-doing – and nothing remains undone 30
4. Comparison between Logotherapy and Daoism 34
4.1.Way (DAO) is the meaning (SINN) 34
4.2.Wu Wei as dere ec on 36
4.3.Fundamental di erences between Logotherapy and Daoism 37
5. Conclusion 40
6. References 42
7. Bibliography 43

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 1. Introduc on

There seems to be an increasing interest in Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy and Existen al Analy-
sis in the East-Asian world; namely its short cut descrip on as a meaning-centered and value-
based theory of personality and psychotherapy func ons as a rac on for people to sign up
in seminars and workshops as well as to follow long distant courses in order to gain some
creden als or cer cates as logotherapists.1 This observa on forces to the twofold conclu-
sion that, on one hand, the pressure of modern, westernized life and life-style on the Asian
people’s mind-set must be very tough and rather unbearable, so that the local helping pro-
fessionals seek for new and/or more appropriate tools to cope with the dissemina ng symp-
toms of “existen al frustra on and vacuum”; that, on the other hand, in Logotherapy the
programma cally “search for meaning” cannot be ful lled yet neither with the materialis c
a uence of modernity, nor with common healing concepts inherent in Asian’s tradi on.
In spite of the la er asser on there must be, however, some a lia ons between the con-
cepts of Logotherapy and Asian’s tradi onal mind-set, otherwise the students of Logothera-
py wouldn’t absorb this theory of therapy so willingly and easily. The authors assume that
there are primarily two elds of inves ga on in which one can discover the men oned a li-
a on.
The rst comprises socio-psychological phenomena. In regards of one of the authors’ experi-
ences we may state, that especially in such booming mega ci es like Hong Kong – similar in
Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo, Hanoi, Seoul, Phnom Penh, Bangkok, Singapore etc. – there exists
an almost exaggerated westernized life-style of vibrant consump on, a nancial, economical,
and educa onal hub which compels the local popula on jumping into an endless vicious cy-
cle of buying in more and higher educa on in order to gain higher and higher income for fur-
ther and increasing consump on. The steadily increasing popula on of such booming mega
ci es, hence, is trapped in the so called “rat race”, gets more and more exhausted, and falls
into a kind of hopelessness and existen al frustra on as it surely develops the cogni onal
feeling of being unable to achieve their individual goals. Sooner or later a er consuming the
goods of capitalis c wealth, the people slump into an existen al vacuum and try to anaes-
the se the pain of inner emp ness with further and “harder” consump on. And there are
some circumstan al e ects which worsen this unhealthy spiral, namely the increasing popu-
la on density which leaves only li le space for individual development or aesthe c nature
experiences, and the tradi onally Confucian social structures, which are s ll alive and allow
only a very restricted realm of self-determined, free life. All these phenomena together as
well as the men oned symptoms of existen al frustra on and emp ness may cause more
and more unhealthy behaviors like addic ons, aggressions, and depressions, which Frankl
has summed up in the term of “neuro c triad”. And with all these men oned symptoms it
doesn’t surprise that such psychological “remedies” like Logotherapy, which focus on “mean-
ing in life”, get more and more a rac ve to the people.

1 At least this is the impression of one of the authors of this paper, Andreas Schreiber, deriving from his experi-

ences as guest lecturer for introductory and advanced workshop courses in Logotherapy at the Chinese Univer-
sity Hong Kong in 2012-2014.

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 The second eld of a lia on between Logotherapy and East-Asian mind-set is rather philo-
sophical and will be the focus of the present paper. In the authors’ opinion the theory of Lo-
gotherapy, namely the theory of Existen al Analysis, which leads to the discovery of meaning
in one’s life, has many concepts and ideas in common with tradi onal Chinese philosophy,
namely of Daoism. Thus, the present study explores the philosophical rela onship between
Logotherapy and Daoism in order to work out their main similari es as well as their crucial
di erences. In the end we will discover how the understanding of the tenets of philosophical
Daoism will supplement with and enhance the understanding of some somehow crucial, but
yet not consistently and su ciently explained assump ons and statements of Logotherapy,
namely how to nd and ful ll the “meaning of the moment”.
The bridge between these two philosophies2 is built, on one side, on the Daoist concept of
Wei Wu Wei, doing by non-doing, on the other side, on the logotherapeu c “call of con-
science”, which should be answered by value based, situa onal ac ons while ful lling the
search for the “meaning of the moment”. The soteriological method, i.e., the salutary way
out of the su ering which is provided by life itself, is – in the realm of Logotherapy – the so
called dere ec on, whereas in Daoism it’s advised to reach self-forge ulness and to go along
with the DAO as “the way”. Both “methods” lead to a status of self-abandonment and self-
conquest, which can be speci ed by the picture of “ owing with the river”. The convergence
of the logotherapeu c method of dere ec on and the Daoist’s “entering the DAO” leads to
the abstract concepts of Frankl’s “unconscious god” and Daoist’s DAO, which, on one hand,
frui ully complete each other, and, on the other hand, give opportunity to emphasize the
fundamental di erences between both philosophies.

Essen ally, the study is divided in three parts. In the rst part it is given a brief summary of
Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy while already focusing on and interpre ng these theore cal parts
which will serve the comparison with Daoism. In the second part a few strokes about the
philosophical core assump ons of Daoism will be drawn without going too much into the
scien c and sinological details; apart from that, the structural moments which o er the
best comparison with Logotherapy will be focused on. As a summary, in the third part, these
foregoing two sec ons will be combined in order to highlight the addi onal and dividing
points of both philosophies which will elucidate some hitherto unexplained and easily being
able to be misinterpreted dogmas of Logotherapy. As a conclusion we will outline what is to
be considered to improve the introduc on of Logotherapy in the East-Asian world in order to
match the logotherapeu c core messages with the East-Asian mind-set.

2 We consider Logotherapy mainly as philosophy as – according to Frankl – each psychotherapy is based on a

philosophical anthropology. Hence, our focus regarding Logotherapy is on the theore cal assump ons, less on
its therapeu cal func on.

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 2. Frankl‘s Logotherapy and Existen al Analysis

Viktor Frankl’s “Logotherapy & Existen al Analysis”3 is, in the context of European history of
psychotherapy, called the “Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy” – succeeding Sigmund
Freud’s “Psychoanalysis” and Alfred Adler’s “Individual Psychology” –, and can be sorted into
the American history of psychology in between humanis c & existen al psychology and
transpersonal psychology.4 Frankl’s Logotherapy, which was a therapeu c answer to psycho-
logical problems of Frankl’s and – grace to his long life- me and exorbitant ac vity and pro-
duc vity in polishing, actualizing and propaga ng his theory – also s ll of our me, a empts
to help people in their struggles in life, namely in their existen al and essen al search for
meaning. But his therapeu c approach (i.e., Logotherapy) to the nowadays, mainly in a u-
ent socie es detectable existen al su erings of frustra on, boredom, and emp ness is
based on a certain and more or less consistent theory (i.e., Existen al Analysis). Insofar we
are jus ed to name his work also as a logotheory5 which relies on some few, but fundamen-
tal principles and a stringent anthropology. These will be brie y explained in the following
sec ons in order to have a basic insight in Frankl’s assump ons and be well prepared for the
thereupon subsequent comparison with Daoism.

1. Logtheory: its basic assump ons and underlying anthropology

The main assump on sine qua non,6 i.e., without it, Frankl’s logotheory wouldn’t be what it
de nitely is and wouldn’t therapeu cally func on properly, sounds as follows:
Life itself, always and ever, has meaning, however bad the circumstances may be.
The one, who doesn’t accept this core assump on, will completely miss the point of Frankl’s
“Logotherapy and Existen al Analysis”. The merciless harshness of this sentence appears
perhaps only and peculiar in fateful and extreme distressed situa ons which man has to en-

3 In the following this extended term is mostly used either in its short-term: Logotherapy, or with the abbrevia-

on: LthEA.
For a concise understanding of these two terms we may brie y summarize: Logoherapy is a certain method of
psychotherapy which focuses on the noe c human dimension in order to elicit the meaning in life; Existen al
Analysis is the anthropological theory of the former which focuses on the human way of existence.

4 See Graber, Ann V. (1998): Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy. Method of Choice in Ecumenical Pastoral Psychology;

Windham Hall Press, Lima (Ohio), pp. 171 – 177, esp. gure 8, p. 176.

5 This expression is owed to the Finnish philosopher and logotherapist Timo Purjo who used this term in his

new book in order to emphasize that Frankl’s “Logotherapy and Existen al Analysis” is grounded in a consistent
philosophical theory and can only be rightly conceived when this basic theory is understood (see: Purjo, Timo
(2012): Viktor Franklin Logoteoria. Tie arvopitoiseen ja tarkoituksentäyteisen elämään; Juvenes, Tampere).

6 A Lan legal term which goes originally like this: condi on sine qua non, and which means literally “[a condi-
on] without which it could not be”. For quick reference see: h p://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_qua_non.

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 dure, e.g., the sudden passing away of beloved ones, or the unexpected occurrence of ter-
minal diseases at others or at oneself, or the experienced in rmity a er a crucial accident.
Also imprisonment, torture or bare hunger, and many of others so called life-adversaries
could adamantly ques on the above statement. Hence, Frankl’s logotheory is validated and
e ec ve only insofar as one might nd or could s ll believe in a meaning of life even in such
situa ons. And this is, in fact, the greatest challenge what logotheory has to face. It is its very
touchstone.7
The second axiom of logotheory says that man essen ally has an imperturbable will to mea-
ning. Whatever one strives for in his ac ons, but in its highest and fullest degree this doing
has to make at least any sense to him, or has to be quite signi cant, leastwise for himself as
an individual and regarding the completeness of his life. Man, hence Frankl o en repeated a
saying of Nietzsche, must have a “why” for living, then he’s capable to endure almost every
“how”. (Frankl, 1975, p. 51) If there could be recognized and might be in principle a possibili-
ty of a reason for human’s su erings and a “whereto”, i.e., a purpose, for his doings, then
man has quite good chances to spend his life in a way of logotherapeu c meaningfulness,
i.e., sa sfyingly and successfully. And it is exactly this, so the second logotheore c assump -
on, what man only and ul mately wants to achieve with his whole for tude of striving. The
will to pleasure (Freud) and the will to power (Nietzsche, Adler)8 are, as Frankl assumes, only
deriva ve will powers which gain their superiority only and foremost, if the will to meaning is
frustrated and not able to be ful lled over a longer period of me. (Frankl, 2006a, p. 72)
And the third axiom, which philosophically should be placed at rst, postulates an essen al
freedom, in whose realm humanity resides. Only from this basic dimension of freedom the
capability of wan ng is comprehensible and at last liveable. But it’s not in the arbitrariness of
humans to only have the freedom of will whenever and for whatever they want to have it,
rather freedom is imposed on them involuntarily, so that humans are forced to want or, as
Sartre said: man is condemned to freedom. Man is thrown into the world with nothing but
his existence. All what he is going to be essen ally, he is coerced to develop it out of himself
in accordance to the given circumstances by the weighty principle of responsibly free choic-
es. This brings man in a rather paradoxical state of being: From an ontological viewpoint,
humankind hence has the ability to want, i.e., is allowed to want (due to the principle of
freedom); from an on c viewpoint however he must want, i.e., he is obliged to want (due to

7 So far we just take it as the logotherapeu

c dogma, but in the ongoing text we will suggest how it might be
understood without the necessity of only believing it.

8 With these slogans Frankl characterizes the fundamental di erences between his theory and the other power-
ful psychotherapies of his days which simultaneously have been his psychotherapeu c parentage. That Freud’s
Psychoanalysis as well as Adler’s Individual Psychology has been more complicated as expressed in these slo-
gans was well known to Frankl.

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 the principle of necessity to build-up a personal essence out of the given existence)9. Thus, it
follows that humankind always wants something, wether it wants to or not; humans cannot
not wan ng. And the last purpose of human’s will is that his existence would be, or become,
or at least could be considered as meaningful and signi cant (see axiom two).
Let’s have some more brief re ec ons on this third axiom of human’s freedom: Man, caught
up in its daily rou ne, normally interprets freedom as a possibility of ge ng rid of his bur-
dens, su erings and socio-poli cal restric ons. This so called nega ve freedom is for sure
very important as incen ve for many socio-poli cal deeds and led to a lot of improvements
of living condi ons over the history of man (for example the aboli on of slavery and human
tra cking, the democra zing of former feudalis c governments, the women’s libera on and
emanzipa on, etc.). Yet the logotherapeu c focus of a en on lies on the so called posi ve
freedom which means to use the acquired freedom for aiming at something meaningful. This
posi ve freedom, which discovers the ever-present meaning in life and hence sa s es the
will to meaning, enables us to focus our will on meaning resp. on something meaningful, to
strive forward to it and nally to realize the meaningful.

The following graph summarizes the three core assump ons of LthEA:

Source: Andreas Schreiber

The foregoing three core assump ons – freedom of will, will to meaning, and meaning in/of
life – are based on a speci c anthropology10 which can be summarized as follows:
Man is a singular and unique individual. Hence, in the spa al-temporal place, which man oc-
cupies in the worldly cosmos during the me of his life-span, he is irreplaceable, and irre-

9 This descrip on may func on for an a empted explana on of the phenomenon that humans nearly cannot
cease their will, unless with hard disciplinary and medita ve work on renouncing the world and human’s ra o-
nality. But as human’s inten ons and wills are considered as the main source of su erings, almost all religious
a empts of salva on are concerned to overcome human’s will by sugges ng submi ng it to a higher, divine
being, like a god, who cannot and doesn’t want to do wrong due to his divinity (e.g. following the dharma in
Buddhist theory, submi ng the will to Krsna in Hinduism, or to God resp. Jesus in Chris anity).

10 See Frankl‘s „Ten Theses about the person“, in: Frankl, V. (112005): Ärztliche Seelsorge. Grundlagen der Logo-

therapie und Existenzanalyse; Deu cke Verl., Wien, pp. 330 – 343.

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 trievable. Thus, every situa on, that each single person coats and shapes in the world, is a
peculiar, unprecedented, and irreproducible one. This special status of each situa on makes
every single moment incredible precious, renders a single, unique and irretrievable experi-
ence that is totally unrepeatable. Moreover, this special status makes each situa on unbe-
lievable meaningful, especially if we assume that regarding the whole cosmic history each
situa on is inevitably important for the development of this very history, i.e., for the cosmos
itself. Therefore each single person in its individual situa on obtains an ine able dignity and
a priceless value in the total bustle of the world.
In our opinion, we don’t push Frankl too much, if we extend the foregoing descrip on of the
human person as unique and singular with the existen al feature of its situatedness. For
every moment expresses and establishes a unique constella on of world, every single human
and all his ac ons thereby are necessary for the development of the worldly cosmos, and for
the actual as well as future appearance of the world. He experiences himself of being neces-
sary for every of these moments and is in that way in deep interac on with the situa on, so
that he irrevocable changes the world with his deeds,11 and thereby is changed by himself in
reverse.
To exemplify this idea bold and simple we may think of a man cu ng some slices of bread.
Hence, we do have, as a constella on of the world, the few slices, the rest of the loaf of
bread, the knife, and the breadcrumbs spread around on the table. But we also do have as a
reverse interac on of the caused situa on of the man as someone who indelible has cut
bread. He can’t delete his deed anymore. For now and ever he will remain that certain man
who cut the bread slices in exactly this constella on, i.e. to this certain me, in this peculiar
way, with this special e ects which it may have caused. To understand the idea of mutual ef-
ciency, which can be named according to the Buddhist concept of pra tyasamutpada the
dependent arising,12 we now try to recognize in one glance on the one hand the causa on of
this special world constella on by the man cu ng the bread, as well as on the other hand
the simultaneously and recursively determining of the man as a “bread cu er” (the doer of
that deed) by the situa on itself. Situa on, deed, doer, and the “result” of the deed are all
interwoven as one, are all belonging mutually together, and build together the unique world
constella on of that special moment. It is only for heuris c reasons and mainly favored in the
Western thinking that this kind of mutual e ciency of any situa on is divided into di erent,
temporally succeeding, and causality linked por ons, but in fact it has to be considered as a
whole phenomenon.
This depicted mode of situatedness which grounds, among others, in the singularity and
uniqueness of mankind, requires hence an outstanding awareness, demands a high range of
responsibility from man regarding his doing and non-doing, and regarding the event of the
world constella on.

11 With this explana on one caring and comfor ng no on of Frankl’s understanding of me is be er compre-
hensible, namely that every single deed of any human is indelibly stored in the me dimension of the past, no
ma er if further on any other human will remember it or not, yet even when humankind no longer exists. But
we will draw a en on to this later on in the appropriate place when discussing Frankl’s theory of me.

12 See for a quick reference: h p://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da.

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 But Frankl de nes the human person not only as singular and unique, but also as an indivi-
dual, i.e., someone as undividable and whole.13 With this de ni on he opposes vigorously
the psychologism and reduc onism of his days – especially the la er, which is s ll alive in
lots of sciences, so as in medicine where humankind is considered as nothing but a material,
physico-chemical organism, in psychology where man is nothing but a s mulus-response pat-
tern, even in philosophy and theology where man is taken as an ra onal, but essen ally in-
corporeal soul (theology) or mind (philosophy). Against these reduc onisms Frankl emphasi-
zes the indivisibility (individuality) of man when he puts forth his dimensional ontology and
thereby stresses the wholeness14 und completeness of man. This dimensional ontology
shows that the human being, who for sure can be divided heuris cally into the three parts of
experience – body, psyche, mind –, is but one and already totally complete like the three di-
mensions of our space. If we consider each of the heuris cally divided parts as one dimensi-
on, so to say body as the rst, psyche as the second, and mind as the topping third, then of
course we are able to recognize this dimensionality, but we cannot reduce the whole three-
dimensional “object” in only two or one dimension, except when reckoning in the losses of
these reduc ons. Frankl demonstrates this feature geometrically:

Source: Graber, 2004, p. 69

If one, for example, projects a cylinder from the side onto a wall, he’ll get a square; if one
projects it from above to the ground, he’ll get a circle. If he now wants to combine both di-
mensionally reduced gures, he won’t come to the complete cylinder anymore, but “try to
square the circle”, which is obviously impossible as the two gures even contradict each oth-
er. Thus with the reduc onism one always will miss some certain parts of the object as a
whole. Nevertheless we are able to do so, theore cally, but we always should be aware of

13 Cf. the La n origin: in-dividere = not (to) devide.

14 Regarding the wholeness Frankl doesn’t consider it as a completed perfec

on, but rather it develops into
such only with the end of life resp. in the death. But Frankl assumes man already and in every second of his life
as complete and whole, so that he stresses that the essen al feature of “existence” never could be literally ana-
lyzed, i.e., dissected, but rather be illuminated as a unitary phenomenon. Whenever we dissect the spheres or
dimensions of man, so only for methodological reasons to make it descrip ve and for being able to communica-
te about it. (See: Frankl, V. (1987): Grundriß der Existenzanalyse und Logotherapie [1959]; in: id.: Logotherapie
und Existenzanalyse. Texte aus sechs Jahrzehnten, Piper Verl., München, pp. 57 – 185, here pp. 63 – 73).

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 actually reducing the object, and we always should keep in mind for what purpose we are
going to do this. What’s necessary to bear in mind is the wholeness of the object, and that
the third dimension never is able to be abstracted, i.e., to be isolated or extracted from the
other two. The third dimension rather brings about the essence and therefore the complete-
ness of the three-dimensional object. It is not something which can be arbitrarily added to a
two-dimensional object, rather these are two di erent kinds of objects: a two-dimensional
one and a three-dimensional one. The third dimension is either there, i.e., exis ng, or not.
Only in the game of mathema cs we can add or substrate dimensions, just as we like, but
not in reality.
To come back to Frankl’s dimensional ontology, it is exactly this third dimensional exceeding
of the mind/nous what discerns man from animal. Indeed, man also has resp. inhabits the
dimensions of body and psyche, which both are interdependent and in uencing, and deter-
mining one another, but the speci c feature of human lies in the dimensional di erent facul-
ty of the noe c, of the freedom of will to meaning wherein such phenomena like freedom,
responsibility, love, will, thinking, intui on, consciousness etc. are dwelling. Frankl describes
this dimensional di erence as on the one hand the psycho-physical parallelism (in modern
terms: the psycho-soma c interac on), and the psycho-noe c antagonism on the other
hand. (Frankl, 1987, p. 62)

Through the noe c dimension mankind gained essen ally two types of freedom. Its consid-
era on leads us to understand the logotherapeu c assump on of two human core features:
First, man is free to behave along or against his physical and psychic condi ons. With the in-
ner psychic power, which is called by Frankl the “de ant power of mind”, man can behave in
one way or another regarding his physical and psychic situa on, he can take a stance to him-
self and to his own a ec vity resp. state of mind, or he can just bypass this self-awareness
and only oat in the stream of the mediocre daily life. Thus, in the nous human has the en-
abling freedom to get into distance to and to contemplate about himself, and to freely react
upon it. This freedom compels him to responsibility, because now he no longer can excuse
his deeds by emphasizing that the circumstances or his physical or psychic condi on have
forced him to react like this or that. Through the freedom to the faculty of self-distancing he
is rather obliged to inves gate his behavior and take a stance to it; so to speak he is coerced
to nd in regards to other people and foremost to himself a plausible and ra onal, consider-
able and meaningful answer for the ques on “why” of all his doing and non-doing; he needs
to respond to his deeds. This responsibility (literally: response-ability) out of the freedom to
self-distancing a liates with the one men oned above in regards to the anthropological
character of situatedness. Hence, Frankl logotherapeu cally emphasizes always the human
capability of freedom and its “de ant power of mind”, but never omits to stress the concomi-
tant structural element of responsibility. He even stresses that being human means as such
being responsible. (Frankl, 2006a, p. 12)
Second, man is free to totally abstain from himself and his internal states so to address so-
mething which lies completely outside of his own mental and physical vicinity, may it be ano-
ther person, another living being, another item or a task which transcends his own and self-

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 centered wishes, goals and interests. In the freedom as an o spring of the noe c dimension
resides the second essen al faculty of man, namely the capability to surmount, to transcend
oneself, literally speaking to exist15. And it is especially in this possibility of self-transcending
where Frankl posi ons the quest for meaning. Man will nd a true meaning, a real signi can-
ce which jus es the whole of the individual’s completeness, only if he transcends, if he
steps out of himself in the direc on towards others, if he – an cipa ng and pointedly spoken
– forgets or looses one’s self by serving other persons, love somebody, or pursue a higher
purpose.

Let’s summarize: In Frankl’s logotheory man is considered as singular, unique, indivisible, and
hence always phenomenally appearing as wholeness, whose structural elements are self-
transcending and self-distancing. These basic features lie in the noe c dimension which dis-
cerns man from animal and which, though not only surpasses the dimensions of the physis
and psyche, but also pervades them as it were as their inner pivot. The cons tu ve moments
of the nous are par cularly the basic condi ons of freedom and will, which pervades hu-
mankind as its mo va onal force.
As the logotherapeu c argument states, the power of will always is directed towards a
meaning that dwells in every situa on as well as in the totality of the individual’s life. That
this meaning exists, however miserable the precondi ons of our lively situa on ever may be,
belongs to the fundamental credo of Frankl’s “Logotherapy and Existen al Analysis”. And, so
another logotherapeu c dogma, meaning is found par cularly then, when man is ful lling
his very own, intrinsic values. We will address to this last point later on. But rst let’s throw
some light on the concept of meaning.

2. What is meaning?

Belief systems are systems, which must be believed in, which cannot be proved by pure rea-
son. Such is also the case for the dogma of the meaning which resides in life in every situa-
on, no ma er how bad it will be. However, if this really helps somebody to overcome fun-

15 Cf. the original meaning of La n: ex-sistere = stand forth (h p://etymonline.com/?term=existence).

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 damental and existen al doubts, which arise out of maybe unjus ed hard strokes of fate, is
rightly ques onable. A er all, nobody can be forced to belief something, rather it’s his own
decision to do so. Nevertheless the logotherapeu c dogma of meaning in life is at least
educible, if yet not logical provable, namely without redirec ng to religious dogmas or be-
liefs.
Frankl, as far as I know, didn’t render any further discussion about neither the content of the
meaning of life nor of the concept of meaning itself, rather he used the term in the dimen-
sion of the common sense, so to speak following the Greek word “logos” in its connota on
of “meaning, signi cance”. For “logos”, which is translated mostly into “concept, word,
speech, language”, is only reasonable deployable, if the predicated word, or the given
speech, or the used language makes sense, means or signi es something, i.e., points towards
something that underlies the given indica on (signi er) as something solid, substan al,
based, as something true (signi cate). This usage of meaning (Ger.: der Sinn) as signi ca on
(Ger.: die Bedeutung) is totally legi mate and doesn’t require any further explica on to be
understood. It was Florian Lampersberger (2012) who indicates in his bachelor thesis that
Frankl almost only focused on this common sense of “meaning”, although, as Lampersberger
showed in his work, there exist much more connota ons of this concept. But Frankl, so Lam-
persberger, was more concerned about the prac cal content of the concept of meaning than
about its philosophical-linguis c discussion.
Nevertheless I want to focus on a slightly di erent, so to speak peculiar horizon of under-
standing the concept “meaning” in order to solidify the logotheore c dogma of the meaning
in life. Like men oned above, in “logos” even in the transla on as “word” there is phenome-
nologically a certain orienta on, a spa al dimension inherent, which enables one to as-
sociate the word easily with the concept of “direc on”. The word as signi er signi es to-
wards a signi cate and hence indicates in its indica on a direc on. The seman cs of the
word points towards the essence of the enunciated thing; it is poin ng from “here”, i.e., the
posi on of the one who perceives the word, to “there”, i.e., the essence of the intended
thing. Hence, in any word indwells a certain di-mension, i.e., a measuring resp. a longing
from “here” to “there”,16 thus it has a connota on of distance17. The so interpreted concept
of “meaning” (Sinn) indicates a certain spa al direc on which provides orienta on. And in
fact, one of the many connota ons of at least the German word “Sinn” supports exactly this
interpreta on. And if we look a bit closer to the etymology of this word, then we discover
that the old-German radical word of “Sinn” is the verb “sinnan” which means “travelling, go-
ing, being on the way, moving in a direc on” (Grimm, 1971, vol. 16, col. 1103 – 1152). Sur-
prisingly this feature s ll occurs in every usage of the word “Sinn”, even if we use it in the
physiological connota on of “senses”, as we need to direct our senses towards something

16 “Dimension” from La n dimensionem (nomina ve dimensio) "a measuring," noun of ac on from past par-
ciple stem of dimetri "to measure out," from dis- “apart, between” + me ri "to measure" (see: h p://www.et-
ymonline.com/index.php?term=dimension)

17 From La n distan a "a standing apart," from distantem (nomina ve distans) "standing apart, separate, dis-
tant," present par ciple of distare "stand apart," from dis- "apart, o "+ stare "to stand". Meaning "remoteness,
space between things or places" (see: h p://www.etymonline.com/index.php?
allowed_in_frame=0&search=distance&searchmode=none).

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 percep ble (= sensible). With my physiological senses (Ger.: Sinne) I focus “outward” into the
world, try to perceive the outer items, and nd orienta on with my sensible percep on.
Hence, also with the senses we are bridging a distance from “here”, i.e., me as the inner per-
ceiver, to “there”, i.e., the perceivable world objects, which therefore can be loosely inter-
preted as “being on a way or journey” (= “sinnan”).
“Sinn” resp. meaning is, as it were, the way, on which I’m metaphorically moving on and
which provides me orienta on, or rather which primally is “wayed”18 (= groomed) by me be-
ing on the way. The orienta on, which results from the “wayed” way, helps me in living my
life. By going a step further in our considera on we take a look on the phenomenon of life.
There are several interpreta ons of what life as such might be. The most common and fa-
mous one is the de ni on of life as a biological process of metabolism, growth, and procre-
a on which is ful lled by an autopoie c system, i.e., a living being. Un l now there’s no
philosophically sa sfying explana on of the phenomenon in ques on, but if we bind togeth-
er the biological de ni on with an idea of life of the old Greeks, whereby life was described
as the process of self-mo vated and self-created mo on out of itself, we may be allowed to
summarize the quest for life as such as the self-generated, dynamic movement of or within a
being, dis nct to its surrounding.
Hence, my (= human’s) life is the dynamic movement (there’s also already in it a hint of the
hidden meaning of “grooming a way”/”waying”) of my existence as literally a stepping out of
myself (see footnote 15). For being recognized as a movement it requires some xed or rela-
onal standpoints. If such points are set-up, the rela on among them results metaphorically
spoken in a spa al dimension, in a literally di-mension (measurement), which allows to ori-
entate, and indicates a certain direc on. Life as a self-generated movement hence is a dyna-
mic state of being-on-the-way, is a going, which, as a process of linking the xed points of
orienta on together, primarily traces the track/ways the way. – This is in the meaning of the
old-German connota on simply “Sinn” (= meaning). To live ones live simply means to be on
the way, to go ones way (Ger.:“sinnen”).19
If we are willing to accept this slightly extended interpreta on of life as well as of meaning,
then we easily understand the logotherapeu c dogma that life has meaning (Sinn) in all cir-
cumstances, even in its worst ones, without making recourse to any religious assump ons or
dimensions. Understanding “meaning” in its connota on of “going”, and life as “only”, but
essen ally a movement, then “to live” and “to mean” signi es more or less the same. Thus,
we can state that:
Life is meaning! The meaning of life is to live one’s life!
This interpreta on usually is honored with great incomprehension, because it seems to bring
nothing new about our desperate search for an answer of the “why“ of our living. Because

18 Here we follow an old meaning and usage of the German transla on of way: “der Weg” in its verbal connota-
on “wegen”, which means “to make/prepare/establish a way”. Commonly in English “way” doesn’t exist as a
verb, but I want to coin it here as such in order to signify the verbal character of a way that only gets a way
whilst going it. For a be er understanding I some mes o er some other, more common expressions of this is-
sue. (For the verb “wegen” see: Grimm, 1971, vol. 27, col. 3091).

19 This interpreta on is going to be important when we later combine Logotherapy with Daoism.

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 nally we want to know in which direc on we should move on with our lives, if we should
con nue to move at all. We tend to know what the meaning of the life is, especially when we
are hit by bad fate. And this “to live the life” might already be the intrinsic, even perhaps the
only meaning of life, and it seems to be pre y few and redundant as an answer. Yet we al-
ready men oned, and Frankl himself accentuates this quite o en, that for the answer of the
ques on about the meaning of the life we need to take a meta-point of view, which lies out-
side of our experience and cognoscibility, and cannot be reached by us as long as we live.
How should we rise above the way in a landscape, how should we a ain a meta-standpoint,
if this way resp. this landscape is our own life? Wouldn’t this imply to leave our very lives be-
hind us? And if we leave our lives (ways), how could we then recognize this life (way)? Thus it
remains an unsolvable ques on which only may be sa s ed in religious faith (see Frankl,
2005, pp. 72 – 78).
Nevertheless Frankl shows us a way out of this dilemma so that we eventually are able to
nd some hints for the direc on we should take-up with our very lives. The famous Franklian
“Copernican revolu on” (Frankl, 2005, p. 107) makes us clear that it’s not man who deserves
to ask life about its meaning, rather it is life itself which is throwing man into quest about a
meaningful answer for its given situa ons. Man has to answer the situa onal quests of life
with meaningful and valuable deeds. (Frankl, 2005, p. 107)20 This change of perspec ve
throws us back to the existen al precondi on of our situatedness, men oned afore, which
we easily ignore by considering life at all in an abstract way. The following chapter will show
how we will nd meaning in the very moments which appear to us as tasks that are given to
us by life itself as its situa ons.

3. Finding meaning of the moment

As men oned above, the experience of meaning is linked together with the realisa on of va-
lues. Therefore it’s no surprise that also the discovery of the meaningfulness of the moment
is enabled by the actualisa on of one’s intrinsic value structure. But Frankl doesn’t discuss
peculiar values or describe a certain set of values that might apply best for the recogni on of
the meaning of the moment, for he was very aware of the individuality of such sets. He him-
self believed in a sparse amount of values which he considered as universal, i.e., applicable

20 Orig.: „Holen wir zu einer Rückbesinnung auf die ursprüngliche Struktur des Welterlebens aus, dann müssen

wir der Frage nach dem Sinn des Lebens eine kopernikanische Wendung geben: Das Leben selbst ist es, das dem
Menschen Fragen stellt. Er hat nicht zu fragen, er ist vielmehr der vom Leben her Befragte, der dem Leben zu
antworten – das Leben zu verantworten hat. Die Antworten aber, die der Mensch gibt, können nur konkrete
Antworten auf konkrete ‚Lebensfragen‘ sein. In der Verantwortung des Daseins erfolgt ihre Beantwortung, in
der Existenz selbst ‚vollzieht‘ der Mensch das Beantworten ihrer eigenen Fragen.“

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 for each person of each region and each epoch, namely freedom, responsibility and love.21
But it’s not this set of values which might serve the meaning of the moment, instead he gu-
red out a triad of ways of value actualisa on. These are the actualisa on of crea ve values,
of experien al values, and the value of a tudinal change. (Frankl, 2005, pp. 91 – 95) Frankl
was convinced that these three ways are the comprising possibili es to realise our various
individual, intrinsic values and to experience meaning thereby; as it would be, if we a) are
ac ve, take part in the composi on of our environment, and bring something of value into
the world, if we b) are open to the kindness and beauty of the world (for example the beauty
of nature) and the loving care of fellow humans, and receive something of value from the
world, and if we c) revise our a tudes when the world looks too ugly and misfortune to us,
and reverse our perspec ve towards that of value in the world. Then each moment in life be-
comes, or be er to say: can be discovered as meaningful.
Especially in situa ons of strokes of fate the la er way is the hardest to realize, but therefore
also the most digni ed. It is the highest dignity of human being that, with the help of the
“de ant power of the mind”, he is able to endure even the hardest, but unavoidable su er-
ings with grandeur, that he is able to willingly change his a tude in order to quasi heroically
bear his fateful misery and to transform his su erings into an achievement, although, in fact,
this is not an easy task. Because of this Frankl considers the changing of a tudes as the
supreme way of actualizing values. While this way has the highest priority for Frankl, he em-
phasizes that the primacy lies in the way of actualizing crea ve values. That means, whenev-
er and as long as we are (s ll) able to ac vely bring something of value into the world or be-
ing able to change (bad) situa ons by our ac ons, so to speak as long as there is any freedom
and possibility to ac vely deal with the situa on, we are obliged to ful l this in order to nd
meaning in life and in the moment. But if it’s no longer possible to ac vely take part at the
composi on of our environment, to give our ac ve contribu on to the world, may it be be-
cause of the situa on which doesn’t allow us to act and react, or of physical blockades due
to, e.g., illness, then we s ll must ful l our possibility of actualizing experien al values. And
only if we face unavoidable and unchangeable misery, fate and/or su ering which we, a er
thorough examina on, cannot change anymore, then, and only then, we do have the dignity
to ful l an a tudinal change in order to experience even in such moments s ll some mean-
ing, and bear the su erings heroically. (cf. Frankl, 2005, p. 162)
Eventually we have discovered and xed a certain order of value-realiza on which leads to
nd meaning in the moment, but this order can’t be considered as a recipe or a xed schema
which could be automa cally and technically processed. Rather, due to the uniqueness and
singularity of each person and its situatedness, so to speak “ad personam et ad situa onam”
(Frankl, 2006a, p. 13), each moment sets man a speci c task which requires a peculiar way of
value actualiza on. Frankl says:

21 Regarding these universal values I haven’t found any concrete proofs of being considered like that in Frankl’s

texts, but I inferred these three from my studies of Logotherapy: Freedom as “freedom to will” is already one of
the three pillars of logotheory; responsibility is the indelible partner of freedom and is men oned as essen al
feature of human being at least in Frankl, 2006a, p. 12; and love is discussed in length as an own chapter in
Frankl, 2005, pp. 178 – 216.

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 In life the opportuni es to address oneself to this or that group of values vary from hour to
hour. Some mes life demands of us the realiza on of crea ve values; at other mes we feel it
necessary to turn to the category of experien al values. At one me we are called upon, as it
were, to enrich the world by our ac ons, another me to enrich ourselves by our experi-
ences. Some mes the demands of the hour may be ful lled by an act, at another me by our
surrendering to the glory of an experience. Man can be "obligated" to experience joy. (Frankl,
1955, p. 51)
For the conscien ous meaning seeker there s ll remains the ques on how he could gure
out which category of value actualiza on is in demand for this or that peculiar moment. Fur-
thermore he tends to know which of these many possible values of each category is suitable
to ful ll this special situa on. Though everyone will understand and has sympathy with this
yearning for a guideline through the rough sea of life’s situa ons, but this demand is not to
be answered by Logotherapy, nor is Logotherapy willing to do so due to the uniqueness of
personality and situatedness. Rather the task itself with which one is confronted in each si-
tua on proclaims which value realiza on is required now. (Frankl, 2005, p. 85)22
But therefore one has to listen to this proclama on very cau ously, one has to take into ac-
count oneself in the actual situa on, and has to intuit carefully out of this constella on the
demanded values as well as the category of value realiza on. Yet this intui ng, as Frankl
names it, is not a mere sensing or feeling, it is not only psychological, rather it is a mindful act
of exis ng which takes place in the depth of our personhood. And the “authority”, which
grants us the task-speci c value realiza on by intui on and hence the experience of a mean-
ingful moment, is called conscience.

4. The phenomenon of conscience

For Frankl the conscience is a “meaning-organ” (Frankl, 2005, p. 87), it is a special human
faculty for intui vely recognizing the singular and unique meaning which is contained in each
situa on and has to be realized as man’s very own duty. It is necessary to hear and to answer
the “voice of conscience”; man has the duty to follow the “call of conscience” and to inter-
pret it due to the situa on. But also concerning the conscience there is s ll valid the postula-
on of man’s freedom and free will. We do have the possibility to willingly and consciously
ignore the gently knocking of the “voice of the transcendence” (Frankl, 2006a, p. 39 – 46)
and turn away from the task of the moment. But if we meet the challenge of the “call of con-
science”, then we s ll have the duty to interpret this voice. Unfortunately, due to our
“damna on to freedom” there’s always the risk of misinterpreta on (otherwise there would
be no freedom at work), and we can never gain certainty about it during our whole life, al-
though, as Frankl states, the conscience heralds solely “the one, that’s necessary”.(Frankl,
2006a, pp. 86 – 89)

22 Orig.: „Die Werte gehen in Forderungen des Tages und in persönlichen Aufgaben auf; die hinter diesen Auf-

gaben stehenden Werte lassen sich anscheinend nur durch die Aufgaben hindurch intendieren.“

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 This may leave the meaning seeker in despera on and discouragement, nonetheless it be-
longs to the adventure of being human that we must bear the risk of inscrutability of the
„last things“. Man, as a nite being, has no other choice than taking this risk as he never gets
certainty about the nite meaning of life at all. (cf. Frankl, 2005, p. 89)23
But we don’t have the faculty of conscience in order to be essen ally in error. To err is only a
possibility of our freedom, not a necessity. Therefore the fact of having a conscience contains
also the very possibility to interpret rightly and to follow this interpreta on appropriately
regarding the situa on. The more we prac ce the listening to our voice of conscience, the
be er it will succeed. One logotherapeu c method to prac ce this listening is the so called
dere ec on, although it wasn’t developed by Frankl speci cally for this task. But we will ex-
plain this in short.
First I want to summarize and extend the theory of conscience a bit more. Conscience hence
doesn’t re ect that what exists, like the ra onality does, rather it an cipates that what ought
to be, it conceives possibili es of existence in accordance with the factual situa on. As such
it is almost already the highest expression of being human, insofar it longs as well in the
realm of freedom as in the realm of responsibility. So to speak it is the (mathema cal) func-
on, i.e., the essen al interface as a human faculty, which connects future poten ality with
the compounded past and actual factuality. Hence we can call the conscience as the inward,
and func onally unconscious, but noe c individual expression of a human person, whereby
every person gets dis nc ve and unique.
“Person” as a La n word means “mask”, and stems from the linkage of “per” with “sonare”
which means “to sound through”. So we have a wonderful allegory of the conscience – in its
func on of linking that what ought to be with that what already exists, and as an expression
of our very person: conscience, as the “voice of transcendence”, sounds to us “the one,
that’s necessary” through the “mask” of the factual situa on. This echo or be er: calling,
remains unconscious for itself but can be heard by our conscious mind and – likewise the
role play of an actor with a “mask” – can be expressed as an individual conduct of life, as a
decision which ini ates an ac on. And it is exactly in this way how Frankl imagines the con-
science as the “voice of transcendence”. This one may see especially in two of his sentences:
„Through the conscience of the human person sounds [per sonat; A. S.] an extrahuman en -
ty.”24, and “The conscience is only the inward side of a transcendent whole.”25 The calling of
„the one, that’s necessary“, comes from outside of us, and it is our very human duty to an-
swer this. The answer is, as it were, our response to the challenge of our situa on we are liv-
ing in, and with our meaningful ac ons we take responsibility for our interpreta ve percep-

23 Orig.: „Und mag der Mensch auch noch sosehr auf sein Gewissen angewiesen sein, was den Sinn einer kon-

kreten Situa on anlangt, und mag er auch noch sosehr im Ungewissen sein (und bis zum letzten Atemzug blei-
ben), ob sein Gewissen in der konkreten Situa on irrt, wie fakulta v alles Menschliche, oder nicht irrt, er muß
das Risiko solchen Irrens auf sich nehmen und sich zu seiner Menschlichkeit, zu seiner Endlichkeit bekennen.“

24 Frankl, 2006a, p. 40: “Durch das Gewissen der menschlichen Person per-sonat eine außermenschliche In-

stanz.“ (Transla on by the author A.S.)

25 Ibid., p. 41: “Das Gewissen ist nur die immanente Seite eines transzendenten Ganzen.“ (Transla on by the
author.)

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 on of this challenge.26 Yet the transcending from where the calling emerges – Frankl there-
fore freely uses the term “god” – remains inaccessible and unconscious for us.
Finally, although the origin of the calling is transcendent to us and the “call of conscience”
remains in itself unconscious, the conscience itself nevertheless is a noe c func on and be-
longs to the person as its intrinsic expression. The personal expression longs from the deep-
est bo om of our unconscious psycho-physical being up to our highest possibility of mere
noe c awareness. The person as our very noe c core pervades as well the psychic dimension
as the physical one, as men oned above, and longs from the realm of unconsciousness up to
the realm of the highest consciousness. As such it’s like a pivot, around which the conduct of
our individual life as a unique person circles. And this pivotal person can be considered as the
conscience which guides us to nd meaning in every moment appropriate to each unique
situa on.
Let’s see now, how we can prac ce to listen to this personal “call of conscience” by the
method of dere ec on.

5. Dere ec on

Frankl developed the method of dere ec on not in order to listen to the “voice of con-
science”, but to help people with special neuro c symptoms, especially sexual disorders,
which weren’t induced by physical but psychic and mental causes, by breaking a certain kind
of vicious circle. In Frankl’s opinion, these disorders derive from an enforced inten on (i.e.,
hyper-inten on) that leads to a hyper-re ec on which captures the pa ent’s mind by in-
creasingly targe ng at and yearning for the sought-a er aim. The complete thinking, the
whole mind, so to speak, as well as subsequently the whole ac on and behavior is then oc-
cupied with the desire and the thorough a empt to reach that target. But, and that’s the
fateful tragedy, the target cannot be reached. Hence, the e ort of winning the self set-up
goal is increased and the person ends-up in a vicious circle which intensi es the person’s suf-
fering. At this point the method of dere ec on successfully helps to break the vicious circle.
Frankl illustrates his method with an example, whereby a female pa ent who was sexually
abused by her father in quite young age nowadays couldn’t nd sexual ful llment and or-
gasm. She complained about her incapability and asked Frankl for help. He diagnosed a hy-
perre ec ve concentra on of the woman on the highly awaited impacts of the abuse when-
ever she will have sex with her partner. As a therapy Frankl rst told her that he actually
would not have me for a treatment, but would like to see her again two months later. Sec-
ond, he prescribed her meanwhile not to think about her ability or disability regarding having
an orgasm or not, but only concentra ng and focusing on her partner while having sexual

26 Wheter this interpreta on has been right or wrong will be shown in/through future situa ons. Nevertheless
we a) need to make any decision regarding the task of the moment, i.e., we need to interpret the “call of con-
science” and act thereupon, we b) need to face the consequences of this ac on in further situa ons, which is
what is called to take up one’s responsibility.

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 intercourse. As Frankl reports the woman already announced two days a er this consulta on
that she already has had an orgasm, the rst orgasm in her life! Frankl infers that solely the
removal of her a en on on the awaited impact of the abuse already freed her to experience
spontaneously her orgasm out of sexual joy. (cf. Frankl, 2006b, p. 65) This case study shows
impressively how dere ec on, i.e., the removal of one’s a en on and concentra on from
the hyper-intended issue in order to provide an inner state wherein spontaneity can happen,
works.
But in this rather psychotherapeu c method resides an ontological mechanism, which oper-
ates more fundamentally than only in neuro c disorders, and which can be applied par cu-
larly in the search for meaning. This extended interpreta on of dere ec on was not in Fran-
kl’s mind, as far as the literature shows, but yet it’s s ll mo vated by his statements regard-
ing the will to meaning. Frankl o en repeated his no on that happiness cannot be aimed at
directly, while otherwise we’ll miss it completely. Happiness only comes as a “by-product” of
a life full of meaning realiza ons and value actualiza ons. By this occasion Frankl some mes
quotes a remark of Kierkegaard that ‘the door to happiness opens outwardly’, and whenever
one wants to push it open, he shuts it even more. (cf. Frankl, 2006b, p. 71) These two
thoughts (i.e., to aim at something makes it slip away, and it rather appears occasionally as a
by-product) inspired us to our further interpreta on about the mode of ac on of dere ec-
on. If we observe not only neuro c, but our all common behavior, we can recognize that
whenever human not only hear ly, but willingly and thinkingly strive towards something
which is not merely a material object but rather the immaterial essence of it, we gloriously
miss it. Only if we, a er a certain point of wan ng which is needed to be ac ve in order to
start the striving, then forget about the target, forget even about our striving as such we’ll
come recognizable closer to it, in a way that we even cannot name – ine ably and uncon-
sciously. By forge ng about our striving and even our target the la er mysteriously appears
so to say by itself.
Let’s illustrate this mechanism for example with the aim to discover the essence of ma er.
The deeper we go, the more we analyze and explore the substances of ma er, the less of
par cles, even the less of something we nd; it’s merely void, and from me to me a chal-
lenged reac on of something that should be a kind of ma er theore cally. Just consider the
experiments in the lab of CERN. They do have large amounts of papers, full wri en with
mathema cal equa ons which seem to proof that there should appear now and there this or
that reac on, like a short ashlight or so. Some mes it happens, some mes not. In between
there’s rather nothing, emp ness. And – to get back to our interpreta on – the CERN exper-
iments are the far longing results of the rst inves ga on of ma er which leads to the idea
of atoms which already appeared in ancient Greek with Democritus. – Or to put in another,
quite easier understandable allegory: If one seeks out to catch water or wind with his bare
hands, he will regularly miss it, so to say it will always slip away whenever he closes his hand
in order to hold it ght.
This example illustrates the mechanism which we also may nd in the inves ga on of the
essences of, for example, health, happiness, love, friendship, peace, freedom, luck, pleasure,
power and whatsoever. What we want to emphasize with this is that even we’re recognizing
these phenomena and somehow also experiencing them in our life, we are not able to grasp

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 their very essence, especially not by reasoning. We experience health or love or friendship, if
we don’t consider them, if we follow our daily du es and aim at other things than these. It
seems as that the feature of any essence in the world we may consider lies in its withdrawal.
And the percep on of it happens phenomenally while we are drawn into the draw of the
withdrawal of the essence of the things being. The a rac on of the very essence grounds in
its own aver ng or turning-away.
And it is our convic on that this mechanism also func ons with the search for meaning itself:
We yearn for meaning, but whenever we focus our mind to nd a certain meaning in this or
that situa on, in our life, or in life at all, we already are in a state of hyper-inten on which
leads to hyper-re ec on, and thus we will nally miss the target, we will not nd any mean-
ing. We won’t nd the meaning because of our hyper-inten on, on the one hand, but also
because of the mechanism of withdrawal of the essence of meaning itself, on the other
hand. But once we start to dere ect, i.e., to focus our mind onto other things or even on
nothing at all (as we will see in the next part of Daoism), we’ll experience meaning by the
way, i.e., as a by-product.
S ll the ques on will arise, on which things we should focus instead. Therefore logotheory
holds the answer and we already men oned it above: we should not directly focus on some-
thing, but just transcend our own horizon, our concern about our self, i.e., our self-interest,
and aim towards something “greater” than us, some higher task or people to care for. But
the success depends on the inner state of mind. If we aim to care for others and expect in
reverse some acknowledgement, we again miss the essence of the target. The dere ec on
works in the way that whenever we recognize ourselves being in a hyper-inten on and/or
hyper-re ec on, i.e., in a state of mentally as well as emo onally focusing too much, then we
just should switch our ac on towards deeds that doesn’t imply at rst so much thinking, at
second our own well-being as result. With this prac ce we will experience meaningfulness
“by the way”, without having intended it, we will nd the meaning of the moment by just
realizing it, and we will just understand the “call of conscience” by ful lling it without having
directly listened to it. This is, because the above men oned withdrawal as the character of
every very essence is not nothing, hence cannot be considered only in a nega ve or even ni-
hilis c way. Rather the withdrawal “calls” us into its move as aver ng and so reveals to our
unconscious mind “the one, that’s needed”.
The dere ec on in combina on with the self-transcendence leads to a state of mind which
in other contexts is emphasized as the holy state of mind of forge ulness, emp ness, peace-
fulness. If we let ourselves go, if we forget about us and our self-concerns, and just live intu-
i vely as the situa on of the moment requires it, then we automa cally realize our intrinsic
set of values in an appropriate and exible way and experience meaning in every single mo-
ment. This is, in our opinion, what Frankl intended with his logotheory, and this is what Dao-
ism is about, as we want to show in the following chapters.

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 2. Philosophy of Daoism

In this work we want to combine the insights into logotheory which we’ve achieved by the
previous delibera ons with the tradi onal Chinese thinking, especially the philosophy of
Daoism, in order to fathom the possibili es of cross-fer lizing and thus improving the profes-
sional help in meaningless situa ons, and to reveal the fundamental divergences of both at-
tempts. As we have already taken a more theore cal standpoint regarding the logotheory we
now consider Daoism likewise more theore cally and hence skip mostly the religious and
alchemis c connota ons. Our focus thus lies, as men oned before, on the philosophy of
Daoism.

2.1.Daoism, Laozi, Zhuangzi

According to the contemporary scien c outcomes, the origins of Daoism lie in the second
half of the rst millennium before our me (5. – 3. cent. B.C.), and are laid down in the be-
queathed scriptures of the Laozi resp. Daodejing27 and the Zhuangzi. The spiritual basis of
these works, which can be traced back to the beginning of the rst millennium B.C., are the
divina ons and the rites of oracles which have been noted on tortoise shells and bones, and
which later have been collected in the scripture of the Yijing, the famous Book of Changes.
The Yijing as well as the Laozi and the Zuangzi are no coherent composi ons of a theory or a
consistent set of thoughts, and they are as well not wri en by only one single author. Rather
their contents have been collected by various persons, again and again restructured, and
completed by this or that comment, interpreta on, and other wisdom sayings. That means,
we do not have any assured knowledge about the original text basis of Daoism, although we
can detect a certain common thread which pervades these texts, and which we consider as
the philosophy of Daoism. Before we look at this we just want to men on some few notes
regarding the texts of the Laozi and Zhuangzi.
The authorship of the Laozi resp. Daodejing is ascribed usually to a person named Lao-tzi.
Even the most famous and also rst annalist of Chinese history, Sui’ma Chien or Sima Quian28
of the second century of our age, cannot report something valuable and reliable about him.
It is more a legend what he reports. This tells about a person of the family Lao who lived in
the period of Warring States (5. – 3. cent. B.C.), and who held an administra ve job as archi-
vist which he suddenly qui ed to leave the country to the West. At the border he was stop-
ped by the guardian who inhibited his passage unless he would have wri en down his alrea-
dy famous wisdom. Lao followed this command, sat aside and scribbled down his thoughts in

27 The rst of the names is the original one which is preferred in sciences, although the la er s ll is valid. To
enrich the variety of expressions in this text we will use both names.

28 Also here exist di erent wri ngs of Chinese names. See: Moeller, 2004, p. 6.

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 5000 characters and 81 chapters. A er nishing, Lao-tzi disappeared to the land in the West
and has never been seen again.
Because of the beauty of that story we just leave it as it is and keep further in mind that Lao-
tzi as well as the guardian didn’t exist as reported and that even the text in the nowadays
appearance of 81 chapters and 5000 characters hasn’t exist like that.29 There are too many
arguments against such an assump on as reported in the legend, star ng with the many in-
terpola ons and repe ons in the text, and ending at least with the many compila ons of
the text fragments which have been excavated in di erent places in China. (Moeller, 2004,
pp. 1 – 8) Rather we need to assume that the Laozi was a so called hypertext for the usage of
already inaugurated persons like priests, kings, ministers etc. in order to memorize the inher-
ent images and the basic essence of DAO, its e ects and its e ciency (DE), and to hand down
this wisdom to the following genera ons. (cf. Moeller, 2006, pp. 4 – 7)
Concerning the Zhuangzi the case is much clearer, although s ll confused enough. At least
we know that there really has been a person named Zhuang Zhou who belonged to a poor
family and therefore has been a guardian who later assembled lots of students due to his
wisdom. Nevertheless he spent his life foremost in poverty which was somehow self-chosen
respec vely to his Daoist a tude. Zhuang-tzi composed a lot of poe cally beautyful and
philosophically complex scripts which have been compiled, edited, and integrated in the
eponymic book Zhuangzi. Zhuang-tzi must have been a bit younger than Lao-tzi, because his
texts can be understood as comments and explana ons, as literal reprocessings and prac -
cally illustra ons of the wisdom sayings in the Laozi. The nowadays edi on of the Zhuangzi is
structured in three pieces with in total 33 chapters: the “inner chapters” (1 – 7) which might
have been wri en by Zhuang-tzi himself, the “outer chapters” (8 – 22) which stem probably
from his disciples, and the “miscellaneous” (23 – 33) which have been composed either by
his disciples or by other Daoist authors. (cf. Zhuang, 2008, pp. I – XXVII)
In this work these two books, Laozi and Zhuanzi, will be the textual basis, although it is taken
into considera on the knowledge of the Yijing and other Daoist texts and interpreta ons.

2.2.Daoist cosmology: DAO, Yin/Yang, QI

Di erent from Western thinking, in Daoism the concern is not mainly about human being
and its essen al features, rather it is inves gated the basic condi ons of the cosmic order
and its preserva on. Humankind only takes part in this considera on as a part to preserve
this order. If we envisage this fundamental di erence, then it is no surprise that there’s no
humanism in the Laozi, and that it couldn’t be interpreted ethically like we are used to do so

29 Although I mostly refer to the texts of Hans-Gerd Moeller, see also in addi on the recent publica on of the
German transla on of the so called Urtext, which was found 1993 in the Chinese village Guodian and seems to
be the oldest recording of Laozi-texts (approx. 300 B.C.). [Lao Zi (Laotse). Der Urtext; transl. and intro. by Kubin,
Wolfgang, Herder, Freiburg 2011] It’s remarkable that the found 71 tablets correspond only with 31 chapters of
the “textus receptus”, i.e., the common edi on of 81 chapters (Lao Zi, 2011, p. 13).

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 with Western philosophic texts. (cf. Moeller, 2006, ch. 7, pp. 99 – 111) Nevertheless and
quite contrary to the last statement, human plays a signi cant role in the Daodejing and in
nearly every chapter it’s talked about him. But this seemingly contradic on is quite easy to
solve. Although Daoism isn’t that much concerned about ethical analysis and about blaming
man regarding its unful lled moral duty, hence his irresponsibility, s ll it is man who is able
to recognize the structure of the world and its ongoing dynamics, and as such he should take
care of not disturbing the ow of nature, but not for a higher moral aim, but rather for his
own sake.
The present chapter will elucidate what is meant by the above men oned asser ons. This is,
on one hand, quite easy to understand, on the other hand s ll di cult to grasp if we’re not
living or prac ce this theory. Nevertheless we will try to give a brief and clear introduc on
into its philosophy and therefore relinquish lots of scien c discussions about the text com-
pila ons and excava ons as well as about di erent transla ons and the general di culty of
transla ng this text into modern languages.
Star ng from the phenomenal world it is quite easy to no ce the dual di erences in/of our
world: Night follows day, winter follows summer; there are male and female beings as well as
the basic direc ons of up and down, right and le , front and rear; we nd solid and liquid,
visible and invisible, loudness and quietness, height and depth resp. lowness etc. According
to these observa ons of nature and to the entanglement in agrarian life of the early Chinese
socie es man discerned the bipolar classi ca on of the world into the two quali es Yin and
Yang. Yin literally means “northern riverside or hillside, shady side, shadows”, and Yang
“sunny hill, side of light, sunny side”.30 In the beginning these concepts rather have been
used geographically to indicate the di erent (may it be fortunate or misfortunate) sides of a
place, ll they were extended over history to more and more abstract and complex connota-
ons of all kinds of features and quali es spread over the whole realm of phenomenal expe-
riences. Thus the “shady side” turns into, for example, the darkness, coldness, lowness, hu-
midity, femininity, enclosure, concep on, giving birth etc., whereas the “sunny side” subsu-
mes the opposites of the former. But both aspects primarily were not thought in compe on
of one being „be er, more precious“ as the other.
But the main di erence to Western thinking is not solely in the recogni on of bipolarity, be-
cause this was also seen in Western philosophy as it, too, stems from agrarian experiences,
but in the West the focus laid more on that which separates, and on the logical self-contra-
dic ng features which inhabits these dual poles.31 Out of this it evolved the nowadays com-
mon ra onal and mostly bivalent logical thinking and classi ca on, whereas in ancient Chi-
nese thinking the focus rather laid on the complementari es of the diverging poles and on
the everlas ng changes of one of the quali es into another. While in the West is was sear-
ched for stability, permanence, established clear posi ons, substances and immutable essen-
ces in the phenomena, and serenity and truth of being, in the East there has been accepted
much more the characters of transi on, turnover, reversal which all the phenomena experi-

30 Cf.: h p://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_und_Yang.

31 For example this led to the Aristotelian formulaon of the principle of contradic on that something cannot
be in respect of me, place, and quali es simultaneously be and not be.

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 ence from me to me, and which cause a high degree of vagueness regarding their cogno-
scibility. That’s why and how the Yijing, the Book of Changes, was one of the rst and most
famous books in China. With its divina ons and oracles they have tried to gure out as exact
as possible the status of any given situa on in order to an cipate the future way of changes
and to direct one’s own ac on according to these changes, so as to preserve the harmony of
the world and the order of the changes.
Well, Yin and Yang yet cannot be considered only as two opposing poles, which contradict
each other in its existence according to Western logic. They are not the “absolute one” or the
“absolute other” like in the West where they like to think of two endpoints of an imagined
endless long and ideal geometrical line. The so called poles Yin and Yang are no immutable,
substan al xed points (substances) with its appropriate proper es which adhere accidental-
ly to these substances. Rather they already cons tute a certain eld of proper es, for exam-
ple Yang = abundance and Yin = de ciency, according to which they determine the yin-like
and yang-like phenomena. And both “sides” always already exist together, they are never
separated from each other. The before men oned complementari es which adhere to the
an podes already tell about their essen al a lia on, their mutual bipolar rela onship. They
essen ally belong together. Even in that me when people interpreted them geographically
as the fortune (yang-like) or misfortune (yin-like) side of a river or mountain they have been
fully aware of the rela vity of this interpreta on and that a yin-like side was needed in order
to have a yang-like one. Because, taking the example of riversides, you can’t - per de ni on -
not have a river with only one riverside. If there is a river, the one side implies the other. And
addi onally we have to take into account that the now so to say fortunate side may change
rapidly into the misfortunate one and vice versa.
Therefore Yin and Yang conceptually never split into a principal contradic on to each other,
rather they are just opposing one the other. Even when it looks like as there might be, for
example, pure light, i.e., pure Yang, as a phenomenon, there’s always also the darkness, Yin,
at play. In Daoist thinking there is no Yin without Yang and vice versa.
To illustrate this we nd some wonderful verses in chapter 2 of the Laozi:
Everybody in the world knows the beau ful as being beau ful.
Thus there is already ugliness.
Everybody knows what is good.
Thus there is that which is not good.
That
presence and nonpresence generate each other,
di cult and easy complement each other,
long and short give each other shape,
above and below ll each other,
tones and voices harmonize with each other,
before and a er follow each other,
is permanent.
(Moeller, 2007, p. 7)
If, for example, Yang increases more and more, s ll it doesn’t increase into in nity or to
reach a state of absoluteness, because with this it would literally kill Yin in its essence, would

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 annihilate it, and by this also itself. Rather it is the case that Yang is growing only up to a cer-
tain point of its intrinsic exhaus on whereupon it gives the always already indwelling Yin the
possibility and premise to grow out of itself (Chin.: ziran) – naturally, without any force. Now
the Yang is diminishing more and more while Yin is steadily increasing, un l the Yin reaches
its intrinsic exhaus on, and the movement ips to the opposite.32 The constantly up and
down resp. in and out and forth and back is illustrated in chapter 5 of the Laozi by a bellows:
The space between heaven and earth –
Does it not resemble a bellows?
Empty, but not consumed,
The more it is moved, the more comes out.
(Moeller, 2007, p. 15)
If we now, regarding these permanent changes between Yin and Yang, visualize the famous
symbol of Daoism, we will recognize in each of the di erent-colored points (for example the
white one for Yang) residing in the other colored “drop” (here: the black one for Yin) the styl-
ized essence of the reciprocal quality which dwells as a germ, regarding our example in Yin.
The form of a “drop” and its arrangement symbolizes the growing which takes place “self-so”
(ziran), the qualifying direc ons of up (Yang) and down (Yin), the reversal of the one into the
other as well as the eternal movement in general. The circle which holds and encompasses
the “drops” represents the closeness and the unity as well as the inescapability of the
change. Eventually, this is all, that is (exists), hence there’s only changing, process, move-
ment, and becoming-vanishing.

The now arising ques on is: How does the permanent change, the steady reversal occurs and
on what is it based? As an answer some verses of the chapters 40 and 42 of the Laozi may
serve quite well, although they need some further explana ons:
Chapter 40:
Reversal is the movement of the Dao.
Weakness is the usefulness of the Dao.
The things of the world are generated from presence (you).
Presence is generated from nonpresence (wu).
(Moeller, 2007, p. 97)

32 It’s highly remarkable that this thought was already expressed in the ancient Greek, namely by Anaximander.

He states: “Into that from which things take their rise they pass away once more, as is ordained; for they make
repara on and sa sfac on to one another for the injus ce according to the appointed me.” (quoted from Rus-
sel, 1967, p. 113) Likewise as in Daoist thinking we also shouldn’t here interpret this passage ethically, rather
the “repara on” is thought as a mutual owing and has no moral implica ons.

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 Chapter 42:
The Dao generates Oneness.
Oneness generates Twoness.
Twoness generates Threeness.
Threeness generates the ten thousand things.
The ten thousands things;
carrying Yin, embracing Yang –
blending Qi to create harmony.
(Moeller, 2007, p. 103)
The „ten thousand things“, i.e. all that appears in the phenomenal world, are and can only be
in the sphere of presence/being, like we experience them as exis ng. The manifoldness of
the things emerges, according to chapter 42, out of the threeness and appears in the way we
already described above: alterna ng and always reversing mul fariously in its opposite.
Hence, the threeness symbolizes the dynamic play of changes of Yin and Yang. The interac-
ons of this threeness with its endless possibili es as result con gure the “ten thousand
things”, i.e. the diversity of our world. But what is the threeness itself? It emerges out of the
twoness, namely of Yin and Yang, and consists of these two polar elds and of their dynamic
which emanates out of the bipolar tension. Figura vely spoken, the tension itself results only
of the contra-posi oning of the polar opposites, of their posi oning into a rela onship,
which represents certain energy, and by its virtue the movement of changes is ini ated. This
moving power or dynamic is expressed in Chinese with the character of QI what literally
means “gas, air, steam, aether, aspira on”, and is used nowadays in the connota ons of “en-
ergy, power, temperament, breath or atmosphere”. In the meaning of “energy”, which is a
strict de ned term only in natural sciences, we have a vague idea of what QI wants to tell us,
and as “breath or aspira on” we do have a good opportunity to combine it with the ancient
Greek use of “pneuma” which has been the expression of the s ll mysterious phenomenon
of vital energy (which later was transformed into the concept of “soul”).
If we, according to chapter 42, consider only the transforma on from twoness over three-
ness to “the ten thousand things” there’s no greater problem of understanding for the West-
ern mind. In the West the concepts are almost the same as we may see at the example of
electricity: There’s plus and minus as quali es of a surplus of electrons (= Yang) and an elec-
tron de ciency (Ying). If we put these quali es in a mutual rela on (voltage eld/QI) and
provide a free owing in between (electrical connec on) then an endless realm of possible
e ciencies result out of these three condi ons as one easily can verify regarding our highly
electri ed world. Much more di cult to understand is the step from the oneness to the
twoness. With the Western way of thinking there always pop up thought-traps which seduce
us to carry out some waggly specula ons like applied mainly from theologians or theologiz-
ing philosophers. The jump from the oneness to the manifoldness remains inscrutable in the
occidental thinking and hence o ers an open space for confessions of (metaphysical) faith.
We likewise can consider the assump ons of theore cal physics which, in spite of the postu-
late of manifold big bangs, s ll believe in and search for the condi on of possibility and the
causing par cles and forces of the very rst Big Bang, as such a faith.

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 Daoistly thought, the issue is quite very easy as Moeller quotes from the Yijing: “One Yin, one
Yang, that is called Dao.” (Moeller, 2007, p. 100) Yin and Yang, the twoness, as qualita ve po-
ten als do always exist, cons tute in phenomenological respect the DAO. DAO is the cons -
tu ve, ontological antecedent unity resp. oneness of the possible polar duality of Yin and
Yang. Thus, this oneness is the DAO itself. This last sentence is quite important for avoiding
the fallacy of Western thinking to infer an anteceding zero before/behind the oneness when
reading this verse of chapter 42: “Dao generates Oneness”. If we do so, we get entangled
again in the occidental explanatory gap regarding the genesis of the manifold of the phe-
nomenal world out of the unity of the oneness, or of the being coming out of the non-being
– as it was stated in the last two verses of chapter 40: “The things of the world are generated
from presence (you). / Presence is generated from nonpresence (wu)”. Especially the last as-
sump on was already vehemently rejected by the Western middle-age theologians with
their dogma c asser on: “ex nihilo nihil t/from nothing comes nothing”. So the Western
thinking is almost condemned either to believe in the universal divine oneness (God) and to
explain the genesis of the manifold by an act of mystery by this oneness, which then is medi-
ated by a divine revela on, or to discard the assump on of an exis ng oneness and explain
the manifold as the e ciency of a dynamic chain of physical causality, which has no begin-
ning and no end.
Yet, in Daoism presence/being, nonpresence/non-being, DAO, the oneness, twoness and
threeness are mutually interwoven and hence belonging together, are, so to speak, one and
the same, but in di erent perspec ves. The discourse of the term “genera on” is not to be
taken for granted and as literal in an on c (worldly) sense, i.e., it is not taken as to be infer-
able out of our phenomenal experiences which formed the concept of “to generate”. Rather
the expressed order is an ontological one. The oneness of the DAO is therefore only ontolog-
ical antecedent to the two- and threeness. The illustra on of “genera on” serves only our
recogni on, but has no actual on c equivalent. When the Laozi men ons that DAO gener-
ates the one, the one the two, the two the three and the three the “ten thousands things”,
then it’s intended that the one is (only) based on the DAO, the two on the one etc. It is not
meant that in fact DAO precedes the one, the one the two and so on, but rather that they
belong together as mutually determining each other as that what they are. In the Greek
thinking there exists the term “ai a” (= cause) which expresses somehow the similar phe-
nomenon of reciprocal guil ness, but factually implies the issue of “to owe” resp. “to be due
to s.th.”. Then the beginning verses in chapter 42 have to be read as follows: “The one owes
its existence to the DAO; the two owes its existence to the one; etc” – and vice versa! Ac-
cording to chapter 40 the verses must be read as: “being is owed by non-being; non-being is
owed by being”. If you put it this way, the common causal connota on of “genera on” hence
is removed. To put it in a slightly di erent way: The DAO up to “the ten thousand things” are
one and the same and represent only di erent phenomenal facets; they bring themselves
into appearance by a mutually interplay of mirroring simultaneously each other and so bring-
ing forth its very essence. There’s neither a strictly speaking causality, nor any essen ally dis-
nc on between these dimensions at work; all di erences and meliness is only due to our
limited cogni ve ability.
Let’s summarize: DAO, Yin, Yang, and QI are essen ally one and indivisible. Their di erence
is, likewise as the one in the three-dimensionality regarding the essence of mankind in Fran-
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 kl’s logotheory, solely a heuris c, ra onally necessary posi ng, but which always is and re-
mains a unity. However, we as sensual beings are living in the realm of “the ten thousand
things”, thus, we cannot really grasp and name the DAO.
This phenomenon becomes apparent par cular with the rise of modern language philosophy
whose fundamental insights are, that the word which signi es something is not and never
iden cal with the signi ed. Thus, the middle-age de ni on of truth as accordance of the
cognizing, i.e., the intellect which expresses itself via speech, with the cognized got rebu ed.
We cannot state any de ni ve asser ons of truth anymore. And this rather modern insight
we may already nd in the Laozi, in fact on highly delicate and logical central posi on, name-
ly in chapter 1:
As to a Dao –
if it can be speci ed as a Dao,
it is not a permanent Dao.
As to a name –
if it can be speci ed as a name,
it is not a permanent name.
Having no name
is the beginning of the ten thousand things.
is the mother of the ten thousand things.
Thus,
to be permanently without desires
in order to see the subtle es.
to permanently have desires
in order to see that which is yearned for.
The two –
Together they come to the fore,
Di erently they are named.
Together they are called:
Darker even than darkness –
Gate of mul ple subtle es.
(Moeller, 2007, p. 3)
The only remaining thing is, perhaps, the however appearing, yet deep experience of truth,
i.e., the concept of the essence of the phenomena through the unity of our body. But as
soon as we start to communicate these experiences, we’ll miss them essen ally and destroy
with our signi ers, words and gestures the experience of the pure and unitary phenomenon.
This we already recognized above in the part concerning Frankl that the signi er never
reaches the signi cat. The la er always remains a mystery to the former, and yet both are
mysteriously linked together through their mutual reference, through the draw into the mo-
on of its withdrawal. Due to that it can be said in chapter 1 of the Laozi that both are the
same regarding their origin (“together they come to the fore”) and are only di erent regard-
ing their names (“di erently they are named”). Though together they cons tute the mystery

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 (“darker even than darkness”), and the pure ine ability of its occurrence is the mystery’s far
deeper mystery (“Gate of mul ple subtle es”).33
Hence, what are we supposed to do regarding this mysterious, inconceivable and ine able
situa on? We men oned it already: Nothing. We can do nothing except the experience of
the unity of our embodiment which is always changing like the ever changing river of QI. And
it is exactly this, as we may see in the next chapter, what is considered as the holy ideal in the
philosophy of Daoism: Doing as non-doing.

2.3.Wei Wu Wei: doing as non-doing – and nothing remains undone

Let’s recapitulate the already achieved issues. In the philosophy of Daoism the exis ng things
in the world are mere temporal, situa onal manifesta ons of the incessantly game between
the dual quali es of Yang as abundance and Yin as de ciency which is kept running through
the enabling power of QI that resides in the tension of the dual poles. The dynamic of the
game (QI) as well as the playing eld (Yin and Yang) cons tute in their whole structure the
DAO, i.e., literally the “way”, on which the game is “going on”. Signi cantly in Daoism there’s
no “telos”, i.e. no nal goal, towards the game of “the ten thousand things” is moving to in
its dynamic, there’s not like in Western thinking an idea of progress or evolu on, but only
change. Of course, in this change lies the possibility of improvement, but this is not following
a certain way which once may terminate in a state of absolute, yet ideal perfec on, rather
this improvement is highly rela ve to the situa on and the one who perceives the improve-
ment as such in this situa on. This rela vity grounds in the concept of the endlessness of
changing. There will be no xed endpoint to reach in history as there’s also no determinable
beginning of it. The power of QI, the changing of Yin and Yang, and the e ciency (DE) of DAO
will always and ever go on and on and on.
And if we accept this concept then we as humans have no clue where to start from and
where to lead to our ac ons. We only can observe the actual situa on, try to discover some
kind of laws or rules of the ever changing process, which surely manifests itself in recurring
circles, and cau ously act according to the processes in order not to disturb or disrupt them
and cause some unexpected impacts. Because, if we do so, the process of changing will nev-
er stop, but just take another, unforeseeable direc on which may lead, in the very extreme,
to that point, where the DE of DAO will probably scrunch us as a species. In avoidance of this
the Daoist tries to act as non-ac ng, he tries to nd out the natural dynamics which makes
things change in their natural way, “self-so” (ziran), in order not to disturbe the immanent
possibility of a kind of harmony.
Maybe this is the most puzzling and incomprehensible point in Daoism that in the dynamic of
change of Yin and Yang, in the QI itself, resides a possibility for a harmony, a so called dynam-

33 For this connota

ons refer to the German transla on of Richard Wilhelm in: Lao-tse, 1991, p. 41: “Beides ist
eins dem Ursprung nach / Und nur verschieden durch den Namen. / In seiner Einheit heißt es das Geheimnis. /
Des Geheimnisse noch eferes Geheimnis / Ist das Tor durch das alle Wunder hervortreten.“

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 ic balance which corresponds to the DAO and hence is bene cial for the whole structure of
nature which is spirally circling of the process of reversal. For every natural phenomenon,
i.e., all that appears in and as cosmos, owns a speci c dynamic of Yin/Yang energy which it
tries to pass through (or ful ll) on its very own way (DAO) during its exis ng. If all follow the
own and inner DAO, then the “cosmos” would be in order. And this is the status which is con-
sidered as the highest ideal in Daoism. Although the inconsiderable ac on regarding the DAO
will cause disorders, quite serious for the survival of human beings, it is nevertheless a hybris
of man to think that he alone is responsible for the cause of disorder or the installa on of
cosmic harmony. As we can learn from chapter 23 of the Laozi the so called and o en in
Western thinking strongly roman cized “harmony of nature” can be disrupted by nature self,
again “self-so” (ziran):
A whirlwind does not last a morning.
A downpour does not last a day.
Who is ac ng in these cases?
Heaven and earth –
But even these can’t make them last.
How then, should humans be able to?
(Moeller, 2007, p. 59)
These so called natural aberra ons from DAO occasionally happen – as the rst not quoted
verse of the above men oned chapter says: “Silent speech – self so.”, – but they don’t last
long. Soon they change again and a er a while nature nds the way back to its dynamic bal-
ance. This movement of natural changes with its aberra ons and re-stabiliza ons is the
mode of opera on of the concept “self-so” (ziran). Occasionally the changing process jumps
out of harmony in order to nd back dynamically in another state of balance. This, for sure,
will change the appearing face of worldly phenomena, but never change or destroy the inner
structure of DAO.34 As men oned above, man is able to cause some extra jumps which then
may change the face of the world that much that the ongoing changes of Yin and Yang en-
danger human’s further existence. But man never can disrupt the process so that the process
itself will cease. On the other hand man also has the ability through his noe c dimension to
somehow understand the QI up to a certain degree and submit his ac ons to the “way” of QI
resp. to the DAO. And exactly this is called Wu Wei, the doing as non-doing.
Chapter 48 illustrates this as follows:
One who engages in learning
increases daily.
One who hears of the Dao
diminishes daily.
To decrease and to decrease even more
so that “doing nothing” [wu wei] is reached.
Doing nothing, and nothing is undone.
(Moeller, 2007, p. 115)

34 In Western sciences we do have the term “muta on” for this phenomenon, but restricted to the process of
the evolu on of living beings.

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 By doing as non-doing, it’s not that man is doing completely nothing, that he remains inac-
ve and in paralyza on, rather he acts as he is supposed to act as a human being, but aligns
his doing with the inves gated and recognized ow of QI. In doing so his ac ng just follows
the natural ow of changes, hence, he is not doing at all. If man submits his willing, which
some mes runs riot, to the DAO then his doing is one what DAO is going to do, and it looks
like he’s not doing something, hence, nothing is le undone. This is the secret of non-inva-
sive, non-interven onal ac on which comes always to the right resp. appropriate point and
me without being ac ve, without being involved in unnatural behavior and therefore in
power consuming ac vi es.
See chapter 64:
Those who act on things will be defeated by them.
Those who take things in their hands will lose them.
Therefore the sage
will not act and thus not be defeated,
will not hold on and thus not lose.
When the people follow their tasks they are con nuously defeated at the comple on.
Therefore it is said:
Be as careful with respect to the end as with respect to the beginning,
then you will not su er defeat in your undertakings.
Therefore the sage
desires without desiring
and does not esteem goods that are hard to obtain;
learns without learning
and returns to that which the masses of people have passed by.
He is able to support the own course [ziran] of the ten thousand things
and does not dare to act on them.
(Moeller, 2007, 147 – 149)
The Daoist sage is prac cing Wu Wei and all his striving goes for being like the DAO, being
like the pivot, or the hub of a wheel which doesn’t move, yet determines the spoke’s turning,
which is rather nothing, but yet so essen al that without it the func on of that object is sus-
pended.
For illustra on of this complex thought see chapter 11:
Thirty spokes are united in one hub.
It is in its [space of] emp ness,
Where the usefulness of the cart is.
Clay is heated and a pot is made.
It is in its [space of] emp ness,
Where the usefulness of the pot is.
Doors and windows are chiseled out.
It is in its [space of] emp ness,
Where the usefulness of a room is.
Thus,
There is presence [you] for the bene t,

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 There is nonpresence [wu] for the use.

(Moeller, 2007, 27.)
If we consider all these verses carefully we detect the secret way of achieving DAO and prac-
cing Wu Wei: The submission of one’s self to the DAO resp. to the process of QI as the ever
changing dynamic of Yin and Yang. The highest aim to reach for the Daoist is the state of self-
forge ulness. Leaving one’s self behind, forge ng about it, and s ll living passively ac ve
without personal or individual dis nc on to the surrounding nature is the highly ideal of the
Daoist sage. This also may be illustrated with some verses of the Laozi:
Chapter 2:
Therefore the sage
resides with the task of nonac on,
prac ces the teaching of nonspeaking.
The ten thousand things –
he makes them work, but does not ini ate them,
he makes them act, but does not depend on them,
he makes them complete their tasks and does not reside with them.
Well, only because he does not reside with them,
they do not depart.
(Moeller, 2007, p. 7)
Chapter 7:
Therefore the sage
takes back his own person,
and will personally be in the front,
keeps his own person out
and will personally be established
Is this not because he has no self-interest?
Thus he can bring his self-interest to comple on.
(Moeller, 2007, p. 19)
He then knows how and when to act as if nature itself would have whispered it to him. His
doing seems to be completely e ortless, precise, and suppor ve to the ow of situa on. He
doesn’t need to learn much, or to act hard or to travel far, as chapter 47 knows:
Not to go out of the door –
to know the world.
Not to look out of the window –
to know the Dao of heaven.
The further one goes out,
the less one will know.
Therefore the sage
knows without going,
names without seeing,
completes without ac ng.
(Moeller, 2007, p. 113)

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 3. Comparison between Logotherapy and Daoism

Now we come to the nal step and main part of this study, namely to compare both intro-
duced theories in order to discover their similari es as well as di erences. We will divide this
part in three chapters whereby the rst two will interpreta vely and synop cally depict the
similari es, and the third one shows the di erences.

3.1.Way (DAO) is the Meaning (SINN)35

In our introduc on of logotheory we already emphasized the interpreta on of the word

“meaning” as “being on the way/going/travelling”, according to the old connota on of the
German word “Sinn”. Highly interes ng in that regard is the foremost verbal interpreta on
which focuses on the ac on of going, travelling. As there is no xed determina on of how
each human being should develop oneself, but rather needs to create his own essen al be-
ing-in-the-world due to the faculty of freedom, we cannot assume an already exis ng way
that only would need to be used in order to actualize ones innate self. Instead, we humans
rst need to pave the way while going (grooming, waying the way/Ger.: den Weg wegen).
There’s a saying by the old Islamic mys c Rumi which summarizes this thought impressively:
“As you start to walk out on the way, the way appears.”36 Nevertheless, nally, i.e., at the end
of our lives, there is a way, which represents us and our own and individual living process.
This yielded way and the process of waying/grooming is one and the same, and it appears as,
or be er said: is, the meaning (of our very own life). It represents the direc on we’ve pur-
sued, the tracks we’ve le for the descendants and fellow men; it cons tutes the purport of
our life and person. Insofar this walked way can be considered as the sought meaning in life
whereby every single and even small step as the ful lled meaning of the moment was
uniquely important. This interpreta on ts very well with the above men oned claim that
the meaning of life is a lived life which we now are able to transcribe into: the way of life is a
way which is brought forth by going.
This abstract and somehow indecent summary of the core issue of logotheory, namely the
search for meaning under the premise that meaning can be found in any circumstances of
life, coincides very well with our other object of inves ga on, with Daoism. As we have
worked out, DAO literally means just “way”, but couldn’t be understood in a common sense,

35 The tle derives from the signi cant German transla on of the Daodejing by Richard Wilhelm, who conse-
quently translated the word DAO as Ger.: SINN (= meaning). In his introduc on he explains that he grabbed this
transla on in reference rst, to a passage of J.W. v. Goethe’s Faust I, where Faust tried to translate the biblical
word “At the beginning it only was logos” with “Am Anfang war der Sinn”, second, to the observa on that in
Chinese transla ons of the Bible the word “logos” consistently is translated into “dao”. Third, Wilhelm already
points to the coincidence of the very similar connota ons of “dao” and “Sinn” as “going, taking a direc on,
way” (Lao-tze, 1991, p. 24f). So, the tle of our present work is not only a word-play, but brings intrinsically
together what was already considered by Wilhelm.

36 The only inconsistency of this saying with our thought is, that Rumi already presumes an exis ng way when
he states: “As you start to walk out on the way, …” (emphasis added).

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 for as it is claimed in the very rst verse of the rst chapter in the Daodejing, the way which
can be named as way is not the true way (or correctly quoted: “As to a Dao – if it can be
speci ed as a Dao, it is not a permanent Dao” [Moeller, 2007, p. 3]). That which we common-
ly consider as way and which is used by us in order to lead somewhere is not the true way, is
not DAO as way, insofar as it is already speci ed and xed, and thus misses the inner feature
of DAO, namely to be stable, unalterable only regarding the gran ng of the incessant move-
ment of changes, and to be dynamic regarding this movement of changes, which appear as
the ongoing world. This means – in di erence to the common interpreta on of way – that
the mo onlessness of DAO as a pivot is not able to be speci ed. DAO essen ally needs to be
unspeci c exactly for providing the process of speci ca on of DAO, which takes place in its
movement as the “spokes” of the world. This sounds quite odd and totally paradox, but
that’s exactly the only way to grasp a glimpse of the idea of DAO. It is a general and abstract
term which signi es pure possibility of concre za on. DAO is, so to speak, the ontological
framework for the process of on c concre za on. By contrast, the common interpreta on of
way assumes, rst, a certain being – the way – which already exists (in the realm of the
on c), which is totally de ned and – as a way – leading from one point to another, but – as
an on c being – succumbs to the worldly dynamic of perpetual altera on of its mode of be-
ing. Second, there exists another being – e.g., a human – which uses this rst en ty (= way)
for its “going” (= perpetual altera on). So we do have, in the common interpreta on of
“way”, two di erent en es which interact with each other. Not so with the unnamable,
true, pivotal DAO in Daoism. There the way and the walker are one and the same, but di er-
ent in their perspec ves. The innermost feature of DAO is the enablement of the con gura-
on of the way by means of its outer feature of the owing change of Yin and Yang like the
walker who then ways the way by walking.
This explana on should serve to recognize the coincidence of Daoism with logotheory. At the
la er we metaphorically summarized it in the saying of Rumi: “As you start walking out the
way, the way appears”, and pointed thereby on the verbal interpreta on of “way”: going.
This interpreta on applies exquisite also for Daoism as there’s no substan al reference in the
world that can be determina vely named as way. Only by the process of everlas ng changes,
of the circling altera on of Yin and Yang, DAO appears, a way emerges. But the mystery is
that the perceivable way which can be named as such cannot be considered as the true resp.
permanent way which ontologically provides this waying of the way. The true way/DAO is
inscrutable, yet it appears in its e ciency (DE) and e ect as somehow a common way. DAO
as the core, the pivot, the hub, as the emp ness, regarding to chapter 11, is the unrecogniz-
able, s ll, and stable center as the origin resp. anchor of the ongoing process of changes
which cons tute our perceivable, empirical world. And this process is the one and only which
we are able to know and to react on, this process is the nameable way which cons tutes our
life. (We may just think on the above given picture of the feature of each essence as with-
drawal which, exactly because of its withdrawing, draws into movement. The draught of
withdrawal into the center core of emp ness discloses world as “the ten thousand things”.)
Here now, the ways of both theories converge, as likewise the way as DAO and the way as
the logotherapeu cally so-called meaning of life are in their inner fabric inscrutable and re-
main in their essence unconscious for us. DAO and meaning coincide as the way which is to

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 be understood verbally as waying/grooming/paving, so that we according to our tle can

state: Way (= to way the way) is the Meaning (= live the life). This coincidence as way now
de nes in its condi onal feature the further procedure of how to realize, how to create, how
to discover and ful ll this way resp. meaning, which is to be understood now as the meaning
of the moment resp. the perpetual changing ux of Yin and Yang.

3.2.Wu Wei as dere ec on

The above presented coincidence of the Daoist DAO and the logotheore c meaning as the
bi-perspec val way (on one hand as unconceivable [DAO/meaning of life], on the other hand
as perceivable [Yin, Yang, QI/meaning of the moment]) is jus ed as in both theories this
way provides us the possibility to dive into the mo on of the way as “to live our life” and
gives us direc ons to way this way, so to speak, how and whereto we should and could live
our lives. These direc ons are the phenomena of the situa onal circumstances, called the
constella on, and the so called meaning of the moment. The former can somehow be ana-
lyzed by our ra onality through observa on and inference, and brings to the fore the recur-
ring “life cycles” [East] resp. laws of natural sciences [West]. The la er occurs rather uncon-
sciously through the hearable but yet incomprehensible “call of conscience” which needs to
be interpreted in accordance with the perceived world constella on. This interpreta on
though is not so much a highly ra onal re ec ng act of mind, but rather the meaning of the
moment is conceived by intui on. Intui on hence is no ac ve, but more a passive ac on, it is
no willingly doing, but an aware awai ng. In this manner our mind abstains from re ec ng
on the possible meaning of a certain moment, but opens up its inner senses rather to feel
into the situa onal constella on. That’s why Frankl always could say that meaning, especially
the meaning of the moment, never can be given to somebody, nor constructed out of one’s
own fantasy, but rather needs to be found, as it already indwells the unique situa on and
awaits its discovery by the meaning seeker. If one willingly re ect on the meaning of the
moment than he rather misses it, for this re ec on is like a hyperinten on which leads to
hyperre ec on, as the more meaning is intended the more it ees away. It ees away be-
cause as something that is non-substan al but rather an essen al process it cannot be
grabbed and determined. For if so, then it would be xed and deprived from its inner way of
being, which is – taking in considera on the Daoist stance here – the process of change. Its
essence appears only in the execu on, like the way only occurs by waying, the direc on (also
a connota on of Ger. “Sinn” resp. meaning) only is a direc on as such by poin ng from one
point to another, by bridging-over a dimension, by direc ng. The way as well as the meaning
actualize themselves only by ac ng out themselves; that means, the way realizes itself by
going it, and the meaning realizes itself by living it resp. by actualizing one’s inner set of val-
ues, i.e., the correspondence between one’s inner a tudes and the actual world constella-
on.
If we really want to grasp the meaning of the moment, if we in fact want to understand the
DAO, we shouldn’t long out for knowledge or for other goals or aims. Rather we should strive

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 for diminishing our longing for and our wishing for self-actualiza on, as chapter 48 of the
Laozi explains. For conceiving the meaning of the moment we have to dere ect. And this
means we have to redirect our focus of the seeking mind from this special meaning to some-
thing which provides us s llness, calmness, relaxa on, and which therefore hasn’t to do
something with our very own. We need to turn the re ec on from the meaning as a purpose
to something which is even no purpose at all. This is the “self-so-ing” (ziran) DAO at best.
And we will reach it by prac cing Wu Wei as it was described above, which coincides for-
midable with Frankl’s idea of a) listening to the “call of conscience”, and b) prac cing dere-
ec on. The very coincidence lies in the point of the Daoist self-forge ulness as Wu Wei
through the Franklian self-transcending as dere ec on. The la er only func ons well – also
in pure logotherapeu cal considera on – if the transcending is not forced with eager inten-
ons towards a self-se led goal, like forcefully wan ng to save the world or love all humans
(or at least one’s spouse) etc., but if the task or goal of the self-transcending occurs by itself
(self-so, ziran) in a spontaneous way (like the men oned orgasm in Frankl’s case study). In
the Zhuangzi there are many examples where the Daoist sage, appearing quite as a normal
fellow, suddenly and spontaneously acts highly appropriate to the situa on and even creates
skillfully almost perfect ar facts, pain ngs or speeches, or uses perfectly skillful his profes-
sional tools like, for example, a butcher his knife (cf. Zhuang Zi, 2008, ch. 3, pp. 36 – 38). This
spontaneity is required to grasp and live the meaning of the moment, to recognize and ful ll
“the one, that’s needed”. And also Frankl refers to this spontaneity when he says that love,
happiness, or even orgasm cannot be forced, when he emphasizes that meaning needs to be
found, not given, and that the task of a logotherapist is to listen to the pa ent’s narra ve in
order to discover some so called “logo-hooks”. These “logo-hooks” are some words or phras-
es which have been spoken out by the pa ent rather unconsciously, but bear hints of mean-
ing. To re ect this hidden meaning in the “logo-hooks” is the highly task of any logotherapist.

3.3.Fundamental di erences between Logotherapy and Daoism

The last remark in the foregoing chapter brings us directly to the elucida on of the crucial
divergences between the two explored theories. One of these points is the intrinsic purpose
of each theory. Logotherapy is, though it is also developed as an anthropological and psycho-
logical theory, foremost a therapy. That means that its main concern is about the healing
help for people with neuroses and problems of life, induced by a lack of meaning in life.
Frankl was a doctor at rst, and as such he saw himself. The development of his theory was
based on his strive for an appropriate therapy which helps solving some psychopathological
problems of our me, i.e., in the 20th century. In contrast, Daoism is a conglomera on of so-
teriological thoughts from ancient mes un l now which have been assembled to a more or
less concise theory. Daoism mainly wants to explain the essence of the world as such, as well
as the essence of man, and how man could and should live in this world in order to su er
less, and to cause less world-wide troubles. With this philosophy – similar to that of Bud-

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 dhism or Hinduism – the people sought strategies to cope with the unpleasantries of life in
general, and to nd their individual as well as human’s salva on.
To summarize this very rst and crucial di erence we may say that Logotherapy aims at the
psychologically healthy well-being of individuals, especially such of a uent socie es, for they
su er most from the so called existen al vacuum and frustra on. Daoism, by contrast, aims
at the explana on of the intrinsic laws of the universe and how to maintain and support
them as humans. It is clear that in Daoist thinking the well-being of each human individual is
not in its focus, but rather it aims at the smoothly ongoing of the dynamic of DAO. The role
of man is limited to and considered idealis cally as submi ng one’s self to the ux of chang-
ing, forge ng about one’s self and diving into the DAO as the pivot of the moving world.
Nevertheless, even this more universal, yet abstract approach entails an ideal of human well-
being, but this is not so obvious and commonly accepted as such, because it is hard to
achieve and not so appealing to the normal thinking mind. The Daoist well-being lies in the
renuncia on of the world, which is totally contrary to the emphasized well-being of logothe-
ory, where the individual is rather brought back to a smooth and meaningful worldly life. The
Daoist renuncia on of the world seem more like a sour asce cism, though the Daoist sage
permanently is depicted as self-centered, mo onless, and, most notably, happy.
This last point brings us to another crucial di erence between the two theories, which is
highly ambiguous. We stated that entering the DAO is a kind of renuncia on of the world in
order to achieve inner s llness and thus everlas ng happiness. We also noted that this is,
rst, hard to achieve, second, striking our commonly thinking. If we think of all the nowadays
published books of self-development and self-help, of the famosity of posi ve psychology
resp. posi ve thinking, of all the books which give prac cal advice to gain happiness, sa sfac-
on and success, then we will discover that their recipe is totally counterfactual to the Daoist
advice. The – mainly westernized – thinking emphasizes the decisive ac veness of the indi-
vidual. Aiming to purposes, se ng goals, and stepping forward to it decisively seems to be
the right way to experience happiness. If one looks around in his social surrounding, he also
may recognize the phenomenon that people from various social backgrounds all the same
absorb eagerly the published and broadcasted stories of people “who made it”, i.e., who had
unexpected success, overcame crucial obstacles, or just found their inner peace and self-sat-
isfac on only by following this formula: enter into a dialogue with yourself, nd out what you
always and really want(ed), se le up reachable and controllable goals, go for this goals with
adamant discipline, control and evaluate your steps, and never give in when you experience
hardship, but stay with your decision! This is the westernized formula for a succeeding life,
for well-being, and happiness (– noteworthy: not for inner peace)! So, one may achieve sa s-
fac on in life when he has a purpose to strive for and cul vates an a tude of disciplinarily
pursuing this purpose. Happiness will ensue by itself, guaranteed! And even Frankl held this
posi on although he at last combined it with the individual responsibility, and warned the
readers not only to se le-up their goals by their own reasoning and fantasy, but – as men-
oned above – rather to nd it out of the situa on by listening to the constella on of life.
This leads us to the ambiguity of the di erence of our two considered theories. For Daoist
thinking it is clear that the prac cal ideal of Wu Wei is favored and even considered as the
only way to salva on and self-soothing contentment. Wan ng, pursuing, ac ng, all are ways

38
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 of life which rather cause trouble, chaos, disorder, and will be followed by catastrophes. So,
it’s be er not to act forcefully but inves gate the rules of DAO and act as non-ac ng with the
ow of QI. So far, so clear. But the ambiguity lies on the side of logotheory. In contrast to the
just men oned, logotheory holds the posi on that having resp. nding ones situa onal pur-
poses and striving for them will be obviously very healthy and lead to a happy and ful lled
life. Even if you fail your purpose, you will have the content feeling of having given your best
and hence res ng self-su ciently in your rendered performance. For the main posit of Lo-
gotherapy is s ll the o en quoted sentence from Nietzsche: The one who has a why for his
life endures almost every how! And nding a why, which also implies a whereto, provides the
best chance of a happy, joyful and succeeding life. Also the logotherapeu c “de ant power
of the mind”, and the third way of value actualiza on, changes of a tudes, proofs the forgo-
ing statements.
But on the other hand Logotherapy accentuates with the meaning of the moment, the listen-
ing to one’s conscience, and the prac ce of dere ec on the alike a tude of Daoism, namely
the “le ng go” resp. “le ng ow”. As we learned from above also in logotheory reigns the
insight that we cannot successfully and sa sfactorily grab out into the world to achieve main-
ly self-se led goals and purposes, but should match such longings with our percep on of the
life constella on and our inner set of values. We should get into cri cal distance to ourselves
and try to nd a “higher” meaning in order to be able to transcendent one’s self and nd
somehow something like a purpose which isn’t a purpose as such. This sounds self contra-
dic ng, and in fact it is. On one hand Logotherapy states the necessity of an inner “noo-dy-
namic”, which means a dynamical tension in our mind which keeps us going on with the
noe c quali es of wan ng, loving, thinking etc. On the other hand it states the impossibility
of reaching the foremost sought happiness in life as this appears only as the side e ect (or,
combined with Daoist thinking, the e ciency [DE]) of the sa sfactorily striving for “higher”
goals. Like happiness also this goals should transcend our self-interests and self-concerns.
They should have nothing to do with the improvement of our lively well-being. The la er fol-
lows by itself, self-so, ziran.
To conclude with this ambiguous di erence we may summarize that in Logotherapy the main
concern is the noe cal well-being of the individual which comes to the forth by yearning for
valuable purposes and striving for their actualiza on, although these purposes essen ally
should transcend our self-concerns about a meaningful and happy life, and should rather be
no purposes at all. To achieve this split we shall honestly and seriously strive for meaning,
but “only” for the meaning of the moment which we discover – not impose! – by listening to
the whispering of our unconscious “call of conscience”. This works out by being highly aware
but unfocused in mind, by dere ec on. In logotheory we should be both at the same me:
noe cal dynamic by using our freedom to will in order to make responsible choices for
meaningful goals, and holding back ones eager striving for self-interes ng achievements by
transcending one’s self towards a state of mind of dere ec ve self-forge ulness. By contrast,
in Daoism only the la er is required. Though this is already hard enough, it spares one from
the experience of unsuccessfully trying to bridge the contradic ng gap resp. to solve this
men oned paradox, at least in its idealis c self-concep on. In fact – and this again brings the
two considered theories again closer to each other in spite of the men oned di erences –

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 also the Daoist approach eventually is a kind of paradoxical, as also prac cing Wu Wei and
achieving individual forge ulness is at rst a mindful act of decision, second of disciplinarily
prac cing, and at last also of inner awareness and somehow alertness concerning the actual
yet changing state of DAO.

4. Conclusion

Our re ec ons about Logotherapy and Daoism as well as the delibera ons about their simi-
lari es and di erences, and especially the last paragraph of the last chapter revealed a re-
markable feature of the essence of being a human: not only our theories seem to be contro-
versial, but rather our very human condi on is highly paradoxical! At the end we need to
admit that maybe the essence of ourselves, our very own personality, consists of, or be er: is
our inner contradic ons, which bases on the paradoxical feature of humankind. This paradox
can be explained by Frankl’s emphasis of the so called “noo-dynamic” and the dismissal of
the concept of homoeostasis, which he ascribed to the theory of psychoanalysis. In our opin-
ion, man needs both. And this exactly depicts the named fundamental paradox. On one side
we need the inner, noe c tension in order to live our lives resp. to actualize our dynamic part
of being. The noe c tension is the innermost energy which leads us to achieve something, it
is the mo va on for our striving for goals, seeking for meaningful ac vi es, and longing for
love and happiness. On the other side we certainly also need to establish a state of balance,
harmony, or homoeostasis. This may be seen in the striving for relaxa on, inner peace, calm-
ness and mental as well as psychophysical stability. If we wouldn’t also seek for a relaxing
balance, the tension would tear us up. But if we wouldn’t set us by ourselves in this noe c
tension again, we just would die inwardly, we would seem to be in a state of suspended ani-
ma on.37
If we cut o the fashionable extras or religious connota ons of our two deliberated theories,
we may agree that both serve quite well this paradoxical feature resp. need of humankind,
although from di erent star ng-points and perspec ves: philosophical Daoism isn’t com-
pletely and only asce c, and logotheory isn’t completely and only dynamic resp. ful lling the
ac vity of will. Both re ect the ac ve as well the inac ve parts of our essence. In Daoism
these inac ve parts and strivings for balance are anchored in the concept of Wu Wei, doing
by non-doing, in Logotherapy they are anchored in the conceptual prac ce of dere ec on,
i.e., re ec on on di erent, self-transcending things resp. focus-less re ec on. And that’s why
and how they both t together very well, as we may consider the prac ce of Wu Wei as the
prac cal result of logotherapeu c dere ec on. But also the above men oned ac ve parts of
human essence are embedded in both philosophies. In logotheory they are clearly anchored

37 Maybe we can harmonize these inner di erences and name the men oned similari es by a structural term
which was already claimed by Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana: Homoeodynamic. This may reconcile
Frankl in his insistence on “noo-dynamic” with the, by him, rejected term of homoeostasis, which emphasizes
the inner yearning for peace and stability.

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 in the emphasis of the will to meaning, hence in the striving for meaningful achievements,
whereas in Daoism the ac ve parts are ful lled by the longing for the actualiza on of the
ideal of the Daoist sage. This is done by the thoroughly inves ga on of the actual constella-
on of Yin and Yang in order to perform Wu Wei in the appropriate way to DAO.
S ll, there remains a last ques on out of the interpreta on in this study: How does this com-
parison in uences the further introduc on of Logotherapy in the Asian world? In other
words: Can we extract some prac cal conclusions from this study in order to provide a more
appropriate Logotherapy for the Asian students and clients?
In our opinion, there are especially four points which are worth to be considered for design-
ing a course curriculum which serves the Asian mindset. First, as the Asian mindset is not
only built by the concepts of Daoism, but rather by that of Confucianism which focuses more
on a system of moral, social, and loyal obedience, there should be s ll a higher emphasis on
the logotheore c core values of freedom to will, will to meaning, meaning in life plus the in-
dividual responsibility regarding the outcome of applying these values. Second, in Logother-
apy courses it should be focused more on the ideal method of dere ec on to achieve a sen-
si ve understanding for the discovery of the meaning of the moment, which is the only wor-
thy meaning to strive for. Third, it should be emphasized the similarity between Logotherapy
and Asian mindset exactly by stressing that this method of dere ec on resembles very much
an ancient Chinese philosophy, namely the concept of Wu Wei in Daoism. This may help,
fourth, the Asian students to avert their possibly entertained suspicion against the western-
ized world approach of “Yes, we can!”, and may reopen themselves towards their own cul-
tural and philosophical heritage when they discover that even the Asian world has had its
own therapeu c methods for mental forlornness and its psychological implica ons.
If we follow these points and further expand them through deeper re ec on, we bene cially
may match and harmonize the Asian yearning for Western wealth and mental achievements
out of sciences on the one hand, with their suspicion of maybe ge ng overrun and thereby
losing their cultural and tradi onal self-reliance on the other hand. So it will come to inspir-
ing and hopefully mutual fruc ca on which leads on the long run to more, and more hap-
pier people.

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 5. References

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