Reductionisms and nihilism

Nihilism

For Frankl the overarching threat was nihilism - the refusal to recognise values and purpose in life. In practice it takes the form of irony, sarcasm and catastrophism (“we struggle and then we die anyway”). Oscar Wilde captured it well: a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. The various reductionisms - explaining the human being as “nothing but” one of their dimensions - are forms of nihilism.

Physiologism (biologism)

The human being is “nothing but” biochemistry: serotonin, dopamine, the limbic system. This is a partial truth - the brain really does affect our experience. But the other side is also true: “the brain has me, but I also have a brain” - my choices (whom I talk to, what I read, what I listen to, how I treat my loved ones) change how my brain works.

Psychologism

The temptation closest to psychologists and therapists: the spiritual sphere is reduced to emotions, drives and mechanisms. Psychotherapy then becomes merely “providing the right experiences”. Karl Jaspers wrote that a person must care for the beloved, not for love; for God, not for faith - experience is the starting point, not the destination.

Sociologism

The human being as a product of social pressure, culture and class. Social conditioning is real - someone “thinks with their mother's, father's or PE teacher's head” - but sociologism encloses the whole truth within it and takes away the possibility of authentic choice.

Reductionism “upwards”

Frankl also warned against the opposite error: ignoring biology and psychology in the name of the spirit. Logotherapy does not replace psychiatric treatment or work with psychological mechanisms - it complements them.

Homo humanus or homunculus?

As long as we see in a person only dependencies and fail to see what is independent of conditions, we will not see the real human being - homo humanus - but only a homunculus, a puppet moved by mechanisms. See also dimensional ontology.