'Man's Search For Meaning'

Viktor Frankl and the quest for re-enchantment

Dr. Viktor Frankl (1905-1997)

Yesterday I talked by phone with a friend back in the US about my book project. She said that she hoped I wouldn’t take the Simon Magus Option. Simon Magus is the magician of Acts 8, who, after converting to Christianity, tried to buy spiritual power from the Apostles. My friend’s point was that she hopes I’m not presenting re-enchantment as some avenue to spiritual power.

Not at all! In fact, that’s what occultism is: methods of harnessing spiritual powers to compel them to do the occultist’s bidding. I explained to her the sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s concept of “resonance” (not a bad synonym for “re-enchantment”), and how Rosa teaches that the more we try to control the world, the less “resonant” (enchanted) it will be to us. I told her that in my view, “re-enchantment” is mostly about finding meaning, and ultimately grounding that meaning in a loving, self-sacrificial relationship to God. It’s not about discovering pleasure or avoiding suffering, but rather embedding pleasure, pain, and everything else human within a matrix of ultimate meaning. Re-enchantment is recovering the ability to see God in the world, and more than that, to participate in His life.

After we finished our conversation, it struck me that the iconic drawing that Luca Daum gave me in 2018 — the one that started this personal quest — contains within it a clue emphasizing this point. Look: St. Galgano only found the meaning of his life, and enchantment, when he renounced power by plunging his sword into a stone:

Which brings us to psychiatrist and Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl and his famous book Man’s Search For Meaning. This astonishing little book is not quite a guide to re-enchantment, but it gets us very far along the way. Let me explain.