Entre o sentido e o silêncio: uma proposta de diálogo Frankl-Wittgenstein

Abstract

This academic work develops questions about the unveiling of the meaning of life from the perspective of Viktor Emil Frankl’s Existential Analysis, which is the main reference of this manuscript, in dialog with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy, particularly on his considerations about the ineffable and the meaning of life. Both authors address the existential point of meaning, which constitutes a significant part of their writings and biographies. They point to the possibility of finding meaning, in a fiercer way, after a war experience. Frankl and Wittgenstein persist in this possibility even in the face of the death that surrounded their lives, whether it was as a prisoner in a concentration camp or as a war fighter. In this extreme context, the interior decision for a meaning became graver and more necessary, what is reflected in their works. This present research was developed from a literature review surrounding Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. The dialog with Wittgenstein comes especially from his Tractatus Logicus Philosophicus and his Notebooks 1914-1916. Ultimately, from the psychiatrist’s and the philosopher’s writings and biographies is proposed a synthesis consisting of a supermeaning of the daily life as a proposition for an existential decision to fulfill a will for meaning pertaining to the human being.