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On happiness and meaning

שו”תCategory: philosophyOn happiness and meaning
asked 9 years ago

Hello Rabbi,
I came across an article that I thought would interest you and I would also love to hear your opinion on it.

http://globes.co.il/news/m/article.aspx?did=1001155429
Best regards,

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0 Answers
מיכי Staff answered 9 years ago

Hello.
I agree with most of what he says, but it has nothing to do with philosophy. It’s psychology (partly in a nutshell). He doesn’t talk about what’s right, but about what brings you joy and what’s useful, and also, on a factual level, what motivates people. Sometimes he presents his claims as right and wrong, but that’s cheating. He doesn’t justify anything with normative reasoning. It’s all statements, some of which are said as if they were facts, and others are psychological recommendations (what will bring you joy and motivate you to action).
I don’t know him, but it seems to belong to philosophy lecturers who are not philosophers and don’t really understand what philosophy is. They are actually engaged in psychology (like most existentialists). Existentialism is considered a philosophical movement or a field of philosophy, but in fact it is psychology, and even worse than psychology since the assertions are made in a statement without the factual basis that proper psychology is supposed to have (which, as is generally known, does not exist there either).
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Asks:
Does his statement mean that someone who keeps a mitzvah for the sake of it is actually only satisfying his psychological drive for meaning and not keeping the mitzvah for the sake of the mitzvah? In other words, would that person keep a mitzvah if he did not have that drive for meaning?
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Rabbi:
That’s how it turns out. But it was said without foundation. Similarly, it can also be said of him that the search for meaning is nothing more than a private case of pursuing happiness, except that for him happiness comes from meaning and not from money or ordinary pleasures. So what is the essential difference? After Frankl published logotherapy (the person seeks meaning), they said of him that this was the Fourth Viennese School. After the honor and sex of Freud, Adler, and Jung came Frankl. This truly expresses that meaning for him was no more than an instinct like any other, while meaning is in a completely different conceptual and mental sphere. Meaning is related to truth and not to satisfaction and psychological motivation. Shimon Danan falls into the same mistake.
I’m starting to feel like writing something about this too.

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