This book is based on a lecture given by Viktor Frankl, author of "Man's Search for Meaning," at an Austrian citizens' university in 1946, the year after he was released from a Nazi concentration camp.
In this lecture, Viktor Frankl finds answers to questions that every modern person has asked at least once: why should we live, why is life painful, how should we live, what meaning can we find in life, etc., from a more anthropological perspective than anyone else.
Through this renowned lecture, we can gain hints on how modern people living in this materially abundant yet mentally challenging era can receive help, comfort, and find hope.

Talking about the meaning and value of life may be more necessary today than ever.
The only question is whether it is possible and how.
It's much easier these days.
Because we can now freely talk about many things related to the existence and value of human beings, as well as the meaning of human dignity.

But on the other hand, it has become difficult again to talk about 'meaning', 'value', and 'dignity'.
Yet we must ask ourselves:
Can we really utter these words so casually? Has their meaning become questionable? Has the past few years not produced so much negative propaganda that denies everything these words mean or ever meant?

The propaganda of the past was, so to speak, propaganda that defied all meaning and the meaningful value of existence! Frankly, over the past few years, it's even attempted to prove the worthlessness of human life.

Since the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), European thought has known how to clearly state the inherent dignity of human beings.
Kant himself, in the second formulation of the categorical imperative, stated that "all things have value and human beings have dignity," and emphasized that "human beings should never be a means to an end."
But if we look at the economic order of the past few decades, most working people have literally become tools, reduced to instruments of economic life.
Labor was no longer a means to an end, a means to life.
Rather, humans and life, vitality and labor have become means to an end.

Then the war broke out.
In war, human beings and life were sacrificed even to death.
And then came the concentration camps.
Even the lives that were thought to be destined to die there were exploited until the last day.
What kind of devaluation of life, what kind of human humiliation and degrading experience do concentration camps have? To understand, let's imagine.
Imagine a country that continues to exploit those it has sentenced to death, exploiting their labor right up until the very last moment of execution.
If you think about it, that might make a lot more sense than killing people outright or feeding them until the end.
Otherwise, we wouldn't have had to hear so many times in the concentration camps that we weren't worthy of soup.
Soup was our only meal, given once a day, and we paid for it with our earthworks.
We, worthless people, deserved to receive such an excessive bounty in proportion to our merits.
When receiving soup, the prisoners took off their hats.
Just as our lives were not worthy of soup, so our deaths were also insignificant.
We didn't even want to waste bullets, so only Zyklon B* was suitable.

Eventually, a mass murder took place in the mental hospital.
It became clear then that any life that was no longer 'productive' was literally considered 'not worth living', even if it was done in a very miserable way.

But as I just said, meaninglessness was also something that was instigated by that era.
What are the circumstances?
---From “On the Meaning and Value of Life I”

One of the things we came to from our reflections in the first lecture was that if life has meaning, then suffering has meaning too.
Illness is part of suffering.
The reason I say some is because pain and illness are not the same thing.
Humans can suffer even when they are not sick.
And you can get sick without pain.
After all, pain is a very human thing, a part of human life, and in some cases, painlessness can even become a disease.
We usually see this in what we call mental illness, which is not a disease of the mind at all.
So to speak, the mind can never become sick or ill.
Mental things can be true or false, valuable or worthless.
Sickness and disease are only possible in the spiritual realm.
One thing that appears in these spiritual illnesses and in mental illnesses that are caused by physical, not spiritual, causes (psychosis, as opposed to neurosis, which is caused by mental problems) is that one of the symptoms is the absence of suffering.

For example, a person infected with syphilis may develop paralysis years or even decades later, with a low probability.
The brain is at risk due to the aftereffects of syphilis.
If he didn't know that he could definitely tell if he was in danger by testing his cerebrospinal fluid at regular intervals, he would be constantly worrying about developing a mental disorder. (Incidentally, even if paralysis has already occurred, it can be cured with early treatment, and if the cerebrospinal fluid test is positive, malaria treatment can be used to prevent mental disorder.)
The fear of paralysis can be neurotically exaggerated, with pathological aspects imagined.
But do you know what happens when paralysis actually sets in, when the disease you've been (pathologically) afraid of actually occurs? Then, you stop fearing the disease! Why? It's one of the symptoms of paralysis: when paralysis strikes, the patient feels better and no longer feels pain.
Because the patient is in the midst of the 'suffering' he is experiencing, but cannot feel the pain.

Doctors are generally very cautious about diagnosing something as frightening and dangerous as paralysis in front of their patients, or even to themselves.
However, this caution is not advisable for paralyzed patients.
If a doctor were to tell a paralyzed patient frankly what his illness was, the patient would laugh and insist that the diagnosis was wrong.
The doctor will then inform the patient that he or she will no longer be able to speak properly and, as is usually the case in the end, will not be able to move.
However, in these cases, patients often attribute their speech difficulties to poor dental condition or bad alignment.
Anything that would normally make a strong impression or shock to a person leaves no impression or emotion on a person whose capacity for suffering is impaired by mental illness.
Let's take the specific example of being admitted to a mental hospital.

I remember a paralyzed patient.
I first met him in the doctor's office where the doctors were examining newly admitted patients.
The patient, who seemed cheerful at first glance with a bright smile, greeted us without hesitation, saying that he was very happy to be here.
A few moments later, as the doctor prepared to perform a puncture on him, the patient showed no signs of anxiety and said:

“I know why teachers want to do this.
“You’re telling me not to be bored!”

It was natural for the doctor to feel a stabbing pain when he inserted the needle, but he reflexively let out a single "Ouch" and immediately added:

“I feel really good…….”

If people ignore the fact that people with mental illness, especially those with mental illness, lose their normal ability to perceive pain, then what I experienced could happen to anyone one day.

---From “On the Meaning and Value of Life II”