I have heard it argued that human beings cannot be trusted to decide right from wrong. The argument usually goes something like this: Someone’s conscience can tell him to commit mass murder. Just look at Hitler. He thought he was doing the right thing…!
If you really think about it, the ramifications of a belief that human beings cannot be trusted to think for themselves about what is right or wrong is pretty awful. As for the argument itself, they presume they are challenging the logotherapeutic concept of conscience, when in fact they are only proving the necessity for conscience as a therapeutic modality.
Hitler was not following his conscience but squelching it. By definition, conscience tells you to do what is morally and personally right. (We’ll leave the question of how you can improve the capacity of your conscience to hear, for a different discussion.)
For now we’ll explore a different concept, the pleasure principle, because this principle tends to muddle our understanding of conscience.
If the goal of human aspirations is pleasure, “then you devaluate every genuine moral impulse in man.” (p. 36)
If the goal of human beings is to derive pleasure, then if we gives money to the poor or read a good book only for the good sensation it brings, we might as well eat a piece of cake instead.
In one humorous example, a patient who had attempted suicide shared his thoughts with Frankl. In order to carry out his plan, he needed to get to a distant part of the city and decided to take a cab. “Then I thought it over,” he said, “wondering whether I ought to spend the few marks. Right away I could not help smiling at wanting to save a few marks when I would be dead so soon.”
In conclusion, Frankl writes, “Life itself teaches most people that ‘we are not here to enjoy ourselves.'” (p. 38)
He assumes the existence of a moral impulse.
There are those who will derive perverse pleasure in someone’s misfortune. But the way to get through to someone like this (although probably not to Hitler, and this too, is a different discussion) is not to replace one source of pleasure for another, but to access the person’s moral impulse.
Pleasure, tension reduction and everything in the biological and physical world can be seen as a reflection of human functioning. But we can also find contrasting realities in the world of physics – entropy on one hand and preservation of the individual on the other. Which side of the pole in physics reveals the truth about human beings? “What commands us to identify ourselves with all these principles and tendencies?” Frankl demands to know. Maybe it is our moral task to oppose them!
What matters is not that human beings belong to the natural world. What matters is knowing that we are in a more important sense, distinctive from the natural world.
We want what we want because we see it as valuable, and pleasure is the natural consequence.
There is a direct relationship between the moral impulse and the sense that life is meaningful. If the goal was only for the pleasure that comes in the wake of pursuing meaningful goals, life would not be experienced as meaningful.
In contrast, “A man who is enjoying supreme artistic pleasure or the happiness of love never doubts for a moment that his life is meaningful.” (The Doctor and the Soul, p. 35-39)