The Meaning of Life

The Meaning of Life (published in Russian in 1925) is a distillation of S. L. Frank’s bitter experience of the years of Revolution and post-Revolution exile. It is, quite simply, a book about the search for meaning in suffering. Translator Boris Jakim calls it “the closest thing we have in the twenty-first century to the book of Job.”

Frank begins with the understanding that, if we do not possess the meaning of life, we are like drowning men who have no way to get to shore. Only by understanding that meaning can we save ourselves and get to solid ground. But what is the meaning of life? How does one define it and how does one find it? Frank here considers the question both socio-politically and metaphysically. He immerses himself deeper and deeper into spiritual being before finally finding the answer: it is the place where man’s soul touches Divinity, and it is Divinity that illuminates life with meaning. For Frank, the meaning of life is the indissoluble unity of perfect fulfillment and perfect clarity, the unity of light and Truth.

This book displays an extraordinary spiritual profundity rooted in personal experience and suffering. Boris Jakim’s masterful translation into English brings Frank’s remarkably powerful thought to a world still — and always — searching for meaning.