From Existential Vacuum to Divine Submission: A Post-Secular Hermeneutical Inquiry into Frankl and Thānwī’s Doctrines of Meaning

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative hermeneutics of healing by examining Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy alongside the Islamic tradition of tazkiyah al-nafs, particularly as articulated by Ashraf ‘Alī Thānwī. While Frankl’s framework locates meaning within the self through the “will to meaning,” it remains ontologically grounded in secular autonomy and existential immanence. In contrast, tazkiyah—rooted in Qur’ānic revelation and prophetic spirituality—presents meaning as divinely anchored and realized through submission (ubūdiyyah). Drawing on Thānwī’s texts such as Tarbiyat al-Sālik, al-Takashshuf and Ashraf al-Jawāb, the paper argues that these two models are not interdisciplinary partners but metaphysically incompatible paradigms. Meaning, in the Islamic tradition, is not self-constructed but revealed, not therapeutic but devotional. This paper therefore proposes a post-secular rethinking of philosophical counseling that affirms a metaphysical either/or rather than an integrative “and,” reclaiming tazkiyah from the reductionism of modern psychology and repositioning it as a theologically coherent alternative to Western therapeutic discourses.