Three categories of values
- Creative values - what we give to the world: work, a creation, a deed, service.
- Experiential values - what we receive from the world: love, encounter with another person, beauty, nature, art, truth.
- Attitudinal values - the stand we take towards unavoidable suffering, guilt and death.
Hierarchy
Frankl considered attitudinal values the highest, because they remain available even when the other two paths are closed - for example in incurable illness. Thanks to them, life retains its meaning to the last breath.
In practice
In logotherapeutic work one often asks:
- What can I still give? Who or what is waiting for me?
- What do I receive - whom do I love, what moves me?
- How do I want to relate to what I cannot change?
These three questions have also become the axis of many logotherapy workshops - including the Logo Przestrzeń Foundation's workshop “In Search of Meaning”.
Sources
V. E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning; The Doctor and the Soul.