After examining Victor Frankl’s article, can you think of other horrific events in recent history that find their roots in a nihilist mindset?
Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), a survivor of Auschwitz, wrote: “If we present man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present him as an automation of reflexes, as a mind machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of heredity and environment, we feed that nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone. I became acquainted with the last stage of corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment—or as the Nazis like to say, of ‘blood and soil.’ I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidenek were ultimately prepared at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers” (The Doctor and the Soul, 1986, p. xxvii).