One of the dear participants in the “Farzanesh and Philosophy Conversations” page, Hanieh, concluded her thoughtful and profound seminar on “Suffering and the Meaning of Life” (the PDF can be found above) by drawing on Viktor Frankl's valuable book Man's Search for Meaning and placing three questions before us. I will try, within the limits of my ability, to respond.

1) If the existential meaning of our lives is not something we create but something we discover, does this conflict with our individuality and freedom?

2) If we continually search for a meaning that is already determined and yet unique to us, will we become lost?

3) Is there a direction that guides us towards finding the unique meaning of our existence? What is the path to finding meaning, and what role does suffering have in it?

Perhaps one way into these deep and valuable questions is to reverse the first question:

• If we human beings are free to shape our individuality, is the meaning of our life something we create, given our freedom, or something we discover, given the idea of individuation and the Self—the idea that there is someone we may become?

This is one of the deepest existential questions we can ask ourselves, and the answer we give reveals the kind of existentialism to which we are inclined.

1) In a Sartrean perspective, “freedom” is the first and only fundamental truth of the human being. We are the only beings in the world for whom, even in chains and in the darkest dungeon, our freedom and our understanding of being free depend upon our perspective. No power can completely take such freedom from a human being.

In Sartre's view, “individuality” is only the result of choice and our freedom to choose, not the object or goal of life and not something towards which we are destined. Freedom is fundamental. The person who lives freedom creates the individuality he or she wills, like a sculptor forming a magnificent statue from the clay of existence, or a painter depicting the self in whatever colours are chosen.

In this perspective, freedom is the “only truth fully embodied” in human life. It is not something to be reached, nor is there a predetermined road to it. We are free in this desert to choose a path and make it our own. The path we freely make our own expresses not only our individuality and who we are, but also our freedom to create the self. Freedom and individuality are not two different things. Creation and discovery take place together. What we discover and what we create are embodiments of our freedom—the only possession that is truly ours in life.

2) This first perspective conflicts with a second: the approach found, on one side, in certain ideological outlooks and, on the other, in many religiously oriented views. Such perspectives offer human beings ready-made instructions for reaching a preformed, approved statue of what a person should become. In these views, the human being is free only to become what has already been demanded.

Beyond that, freedom is treated as a difficult test and heavy burden of life rather than a passionate song of liberation. Freedom is frightening and without splendour. The less value given to it, and the more precisely the supplied instructions are followed, the greater the possibility of salvation. From this perspective, freedom itself can even be interpreted as the essence of humanity's primordial sin: what expelled the human being from paradise. Freedom becomes a dangerous and cursed idea that should be withheld from people on earth. If you learn not to value freedom and to walk the road shown to you, you may one day arrive at the prescribed destination—but the condition of arrival is first to kill the freedom to leave that road and choose one not yet travelled.

3) But there is a third path, a path I love and have made my own philosophy.

In Transcendental Existentialism, as in the Sartrean view, individuality, freedom, creation of the self and discovery of the self come into unity. But I bring them together not under the banner of freedom, but under the name of individuation.

In the Sartrean view, human freedom is the most important truth about us; being free is as constitutive and self-evident as being human. In a transcendental perspective, however, the human being has another dimension that the Sartrean perspective overlooks. The human being is not only radically free; the human being can also look at the world not merely as what it is but as what it could become. The human being is the only being capable of opening the gates of truths within the world.