Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Man is never driven to moral behavior; in each instance he decides to behave morally. Man does not do so in order to satisfy a moral drive and to have a good conscience; he does so for the sake of a cause to which he commits himself, for a person whom he loves, or for the sake of his God. If he actually did it for the sake of having a good conscience, he would become a Pharisee and cease to be a truly moral person. I think that even the saints did not care for anything other than simply to serve God, and I doubt that they ever had it in mind to become saints. If that were the case they would have simply become perfectionists rather than saints. 

— “Basic Concepts of Logotherapy,” from ­Man’s Search for Meaning.

Viktor Emil Frankl (1905–1997) was a neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor who is best known for proposing an alternative to the Freudian view that man is motivated by a pleasure principle. Calling his theory logotherapy, Frankl proposed that ­man’s primarily motivated in all he does by a desire to find meaning in his life. In ­Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl uses his own experiences in German concentration camps to illustrate this ­theory.