This document summarizes a presentation on educating violently acting young people towards meaning, love, and ethical behavior. It discusses recognizing adolescents as persons requiring respect, love, and esteem from educators. It explores how meaning, love, and happiness are interrelated, and how contributing to the common good orients youth towards their own well-being. The presentation aims to help young people find meaning and love in their lives to cultivate their lost humanity through ethical education emphasizing personhood.

1. A Violently Acting Young Person’s
Will to Meaning and Love
18th World Congress on Logotherapy,
June 22-26, 2011, Dallas, Texas
June 22-26, 2011
Timo Purjo, PhD,
Helsinki, Finland
timo.purjo@nfg.fi

2.  Doctor of philosophy (philosophy of education,
ethics, value education), University of Tampere,
Finland
 Founder (1996) and executive director of Non
Fighting Generation, a registered nonprofit
association
 NFG is a nation-wide youth education organization
specialized in preventing youth violence
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
Who am I?

3. Outline
1. Introduction
2. Research questions
3. Method/key literature
4. Findings
5. Discussion/conclusion
6. References
7. Time for questions
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo

4. 1. Introduction
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
A. Backround
 My doctoral dissertation (in Finnish, title translated:)
From a violent youth to responsible humanity. The
existential-phenomenological conception of the human
as a basis for youth education in life skills with special
ethical emphasis.
 Starting point a conception of the human being
Finnish philosopher and psychologist Lauri Rauhala

5. 1. Introduction
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
A. Backround (cont.)
 Rauhala’s holistic conception of the human being
 Consciousness
I. Psychic level cf. Frankl
II. Spiritual level cf. Frankl
 Physicality cf. Frankl
 Situationality (or situatedness)

6. 1. Introduction
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
A holistic conception of the human being, Rauhala & Frankl

7. 1. Introduction
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
B. My paper / this presentation
 Ethical education
 Conscious conception of the human being
 Recognizing an adolescent as a person
I. Frankl’s meaning of love
 Violence as a problem of meaninglessness and
lovelessness
→ education towards ethical behaviour and
responsible humanity

8. 1. Introduction
B. My paper / this presentation (cont.)
 Life full of meaning and love
eudaimonia
 Scheler Frankl Aristotle?
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo

9. 2. Research questions
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
1) What does it mean to recognize an adolescent as
a person and what kind of an attitude it requires
from the educator?
2) Is there a link between a life full of meaning and
love, or the good existence of a person, and the
concept of eudaimonia, derived from Classical
Greek philosophy?

10. 3. Method/key literature
 Method
– Dialog with literature
– Phenomenological attitude
– Goal: to create new knowledge
 Key literature
– Max Scheler, Viktor E. Frankl and Elisabeth Lukas
– ”Franklian” pedagogs Karl Dienelt and Beda Wicki
– Heikki Ikäheimo (Axel Honneth)
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo

11. 4. Findings
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
Educational relationship as a human relationship
An educational relationship is necessarily a human
relationship
The starting point for education should be the adolescent as
a person with potential to becoming a personality
Wicki: A child has all the spiritual capacities that logotherapy
necessitates
Korczak: An educator should see the child as a partner in
performing miracles, or a co-magician

12. 4. Findings
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
Educational relationship as a … (cont.)
Ikäheimo: Recognitive attitudes constitute the quality of the
human relationship
 Loving
 Respecting
 Esteem

13. 4. Findings
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
 Respect
Striving to perceive a young person as an independent
thinker and actor
Taking the judgments that the young person poses as
possibly valid judgments
Acknowledging the human valuableness of a young
person, the intrinsic value that he or she represents
Believing and trusting in the young person’s possibilities
in growing and developing into a personality

14. 4. Findings
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
 Love
Valuing or caring about someone’s subjectively good life,
happiness or well-being (“good for someone”), not
instrumentally but intrinsically (“for her or his own sake”)
Seeing the spiritual person, his or her genuine being and
the possibilities created by values in him or her
Pedagogical love
educational goals: an ethicality of the will (goodness),
veraciousness of thought (truth) and empathy and
aesthetic character of emotion (beauty)

15. 4. Findings
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
 Respect and love
 Whereas the recognitive attitude of respect makes us
persons in the first place the recognitive attitude of love
is something that makes our life as persons better in
various ways

16. 4. Findings
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
Love as a meaning and as a basis for happiness
Aristotle: The attitude of being concerned with someone's
eudaimonia – good life, happiness or well-being - is called
philia - best translated as love
Frankl: Love provides happiness
vs. Freud:
 pursuing happiness is the guiding principle of human conduct
 happiness is nothing but experiencing strong emotions of
pleasure

17. 4. Findings
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
The relation between meaning, love and happiness

18. 4. Findings
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
Youth education to orientate towards common
good
Recognitive attitude of esteem based on contributions to
the common good, or to the good of others
 one dimension of having a full status of a person in social live
 being valuated in this sense is the basis for one’s enduring
self-esteem
A violently acting adolescent expects esteem from others
despite their external behaviour

19. 4. Findings
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
Youth education to orientate … (cont.)
The educator’s recognitive attitude of esteem brings
confirmation to the fact that the adolescent is being
regarded as a person fit to be held responsible
 the educator recognizes that a young person is able to
contribute beneficially to the good of others
 strengthens the young person's view that they are important,
that they are and can be someone to someone else
 Frankl: a young person is responsible and must actualize the
potential meaning of their life

20. 4. Findings
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
Youth education to orientate … (cont.)
The recognitive attitude of esteem means that the educator
values a young person inasmuch as they out of their own
free will contribute to the good of others
 fitting response only when one's voluntary contributions are
beneficial to the well-being of other persons
 a person should not be esteemed for violent actions or such
actions or skills that are only beneficial to themselves

21. 4. Findings
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
Youth education to orientate … (cont.)
It is the educator's duty to provide opportunities for the
young person to promote the good of others
 the idea is that when young persons feel they are useful to
others, they will spontaneously start striving for opportunities
where they could contribute to the common good
 it is extremely important to give positive feedback also from
trying
 validation must be continuous
 to get started, confrontation could also be needed

22. 4. Findings
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
Contributing to common good leads to own well-being

23. 5. Discussion/conclusion
 In the present valueless and merciless world it is
challenging to live a life that is meaningful and full
of love
 An educator's duty is to help young persons in
striving for happiness via searching for love and
meaning in their lives
 There is hope that the lost humanity will begin to
flourish again through youth education with special
ethical emphasis
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo

24. 6. References
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
 Ikäheimo, H. (2003, November). Analysing Social inclusion in Terms of Recognitive
Attitudes. Paper presented at the 1st Annual Conference of the Centre for Research
on Social Inclusion, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
 Ikäheimo, H. (2007). Recognizing Persons. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14(5–
6), 224–247.
 Ikäheimo, H. (2009). A Vital Human Need: Recognition as Inclusion in Personhood.
European Journal of Political Theory, 8(1), 31–45.
 Ikäheimo, H. (2010). Making the best of what we are–Recognition as an ontological
and ethical concept. In H.-C. Schmidt am Busch & C. Zurn (Eds.), The Philosophy of
Recognition (pp. 343–368). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
 Ikäheimo, H. & Laitinen, A. (2010). Esteem for contributions to the common good: The
role of personifying attitudes and instrumental value. In M. Seymour (Ed.), The Plural
States of Recognition (98–121). Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan

25. 6. References
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo
 Korczak, J. (2005). Wie man ein Kind lieben soll. (13th ed.). Göttingen:
Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht.
 Wicki, B. (1988a). Das Kind als Person. In A. Längle (Ed.), Entscheidung zum
Sein. Viktor. E. Frankls Logotherapie in der Praxis (pp. 191–213). München:
Piper.
 Wicki, B. (1988b). Der Appell als Maßnahme einer existenzanalytisch
ausgerichteten Erziehung. In A. Längle (Ed.), Existenz zwischen Zwang und
Freiheit. Therapeutischer Prozeß und ezistentielle Entscheidung (pp. 94–99).
Wien: Gesellschaft für Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse.
 Wicki, B. (1991). Das Kind als Person. In A. Längle (Ed.), Das Kind als Person.
Entwicklung und Erziehung aus existenzanalytischer Sicht (pp. 14–26). Wien:
Gesellschaft für Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse.

26. 7. Questions?
June 22-26, 2011Copyright © Timo Purjo