What view of human beings makes for a more moral society?
For Frankl, responsibility (after spirituality and freedom) is the third facet of being human.
He draws a link between morality and responsibility, saying that moral behavior is always preceded by the sense of being responsible, in contrast to the corrupting influence of irresponsibility.
We all sense that this is true, but what kind of self-concept does the responsible vs. irresponsible person have?
Frankl writes the following about the relationship between morality and the conception of what it means to be human. “The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment…I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.” (The Doctor and the Soul, p. xxvii)
I very much agree
If you are composed of a complex of drives and instincts, as well as hereditary and environmental factors then you are at the mercy of those mechanisms, and your independence is a sham. Without a spiritual core that functions independently of instincts and environment, there is no ultimate address for responsibility. Although corruption is not what the nihilists will openly propose, it is the logical conclusion of their point of view.
But we have made a leap from the human capacity for acting freely and independently to utilizing that independence for the sake of a value or a higher cause, which is, being responsible.
Is responsibility the necessary result of independence?
We’ve said that independence points to one ultimate address for responsibility. Yet, why should this free, autonomous being, freely choose to accept responsibility?
Being responsible is not an instinct but a human quality of relationship. It is not a social relationship in the sense of bowing to the wishes of others from a standpoint of dependence and passivity. So what is it?
Responsibility is always relatedness to someone or something. The Hebrew word for responsibility, achrayut, contains within it the word acher, the other. Independence does not connote exclusivity.
The spiritual core that decides for itself is the very same spiritual core that chooses to recognize the existence of realities outside itself, and to relate and respond to the demands of that reality. These demands are not felt as a negation of freedom but rather a function of being in relationship.
The autonomous human spirit recognizes that even in our freedom and independence we are never alone. On one hand we are free to do whatever we want, yet as free agents we stand in relationship to an “other,” whether we call that “other” a person who needs our assistance, a value we sensitively respond to or God. (p. xxvii)