The search for meaning in Albert Camus and Viktor E. Frankl

Through this study, it is aimed to comparatively examine the human search for meaning within the framework of the ideas of Albert Camus and Viktor E. Frankl. The search for meaning is regarded not only as an individual psychological need but also as a form of ethical responsibility and ontological necessity. In this context, Camus's concepts of the absurd, philosophical suicide, and the ethics of rebellion, together with Frankl's logotherapy, noetic dimension, conscience, and principle of self-transcendence, constitute the main conceptual framework of the study. Camus conceptualizes the meaning of life as an ethical stance assumed despite the absence of meaning. Frankl, on the other hand, defines meaning as a phenomenon related to transcendent values and discovered intuitively. Analyses of the texts of Camus and Frankl reveal that both thinkers associate the problem of meaning with freedom and moral responsibility. Accordingly, the central argument of the study is that the human orientation toward meaning possesses a transformative power not only at the individual but also at the social level, and that overcoming the contemporary crisis of humanity is possible through an ethical consciousness built upon the principles of freedom, conscience, and responsibility. Among the recommendations of this study is the necessity for the culture in which meaning constitutes itself to appeal to the ontological structure of the human being and to be shaped on the basis of sensitivity in order to become a dynamic force that sustains life.