Meaning as the Primary Motivational Driver
In this article, we explore the triad of motivational drivers (pleasure, power and meaning), outline their natural hierarchy, and highlight why meaning stands as the primary driver for motivation, resilience, and purpose in human life.
The Pleasure Principle, The Will to Power & The Will to Meaning: A Driving Triad
Up until Viktor E. Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist, introduced the Will to Meaning, two main drivers of human will were known: Freud’s Pleasure Principle (early drafts in the 1890s, fully elaborated in 1920) and Nietzsche’s Will to Power (1880s).
Sigmund Freud argued that the human psyche is essentially driven by a search for pleasure, satisfaction of needs, and immediate gratification while seeking to steer clear of pain and discomfort. Here, happiness is thought to result from maximal pleasure and minimal pain, although the realities of life force us to defer or modulate the former and make it impossible to completely avoid the latter. The Pleasure Principle underlies the pursuit of happiness, comfort, and stimulation as well as the avoidance of suffering and discomfort, making it more difficult for people to step out of familiar settings and challenge themselves.
Nietzsche, for his part, claimed that the main driving force in human life is the desire to actualize and project one’s will onto oneself and one’s environment. This includes growth, expansion, and creativity to overcome, master, or even dominate both one’s inner and outer life. The Will to Power lies at the heart of human ambition and achievements, but it also fuels self-assertion, aggression, and domination. In this paradigm, individual fulfillment is thought to result from mastery over one’s life (achievements, recognition, self-overcoming) and to a certain extent over others (projecting power, imposing one’s will, shaping outcomes, and in some cases, dominating others).
Frankl enriched the discourse with his Will to Meaning in 1946, contending that humans are in fact primarily driven not by pleasure or power but meaning. He posited that the will to find meaning in life is the prevailing drive in the individual – something his experience and observations in concentration camps, and later as a psychologist, supported. According to Frankl, the pursuit of meaning is an existential force and the only one that can satiate the human spirit. When meaning is encountered, it brings about the greatest fulfillment. In Frankl’s psychology, such meaning is discovered in a life of purposeful engagement with the world’s needs and demands.
Hence, the human will is understood to be driven by the pleasure-power-meaning triad. The Pleasure Principle is reward-based, focusing on familiar, low-effort, low-risk situations, regardless of long-term consequences. The Will to Power is focused on assertiveness and the expansion of one’s capabilities even at the cost of discomfort, pain, or sacrifice. The Will to Meaning is meaning-based, emphasizing purpose and significance in life even if that entails forgoing pleasure or power. The three principles are not mutually exclusive. While some individuals might indeed be given to pleasure, power or meaning quite unequivocally, most in fact navigate the three principles depending on circumstances, life stages, experiences, and situational needs.
A Natural Hierarchy in the Driving Triad
Frankl does not reject or denigrate pleasure and power as actual drivers of human beings. However, he subsumes them into a higher pursuit – that of meaning. That is, a natural hierarchy exists among the pleasure-power-meaning triad, with meaning arising as the foundational driver. Indeed, when individuals seek meaning in life, profound and authentic happiness naturally ensues in the form of enduring satisfaction stemming from a feeling of being committed to what matters. Likewise, because one often needs some degree of autonomy, resources and influence to pursue and accomplish meaningful goals, power emerges as a means to an end, an instrument towards purposeful achievements.
However, pleasure and power should not be pursued as ultimate goals in and of themselves. This would amount to mistaking the effect (pleasure) and the means (power) for the end (meaning). It is largely self-defeating, if not outright destructive – for the individual, their environment, or both. Besides, neither the craving for pleasure nor power can be fully sated; they turn addictive and corrupt, pushing one to always seek more while further neglecting the soul’s cry for meaning. Even for those who can achieve a significant degree of either, they eventually prove empty – devoid of real substance, leaving the individual unfulfilled.
Hence, pleasure and power find their most natural resonance and constructive expressions in life as integral parts of a greater endeavor whose compass is anchored in meaning. Here, the three principles can be seen as hierarchically organized dimensions of human motivation:
Meaning sits at the top of the triad and informs one’s life direction and requirements; it orients growth, ambition, and achievements yet remains beyond them and is not reducible to them.
Power must be aligned with and support, not supplant, the actualization of meaning. It becomes most purposeful when exercised in service to something beyond the self.
Pleasure is downstream and emerges as a spontaneous by-product of fulfillment. Likewise, the responsible use of power can generate a feeling of agency and integrity, resulting in greater satisfaction with one’s life. Hence, pleasure naturally feeds back into and sustains the pursuit of meaning and responsible power.
Meaning as the Primary Motivational Driver – by Freedom for
A Natural Hierarchy Among the Drivers of Human Motivation
Meaning as the Foundation for Life
Since meaning organizes the driving triad, it is in the best position to cultivate a sound foundation for life. In fact, Frankl argues that we turn to pleasure and power as motivational drivers when the primary search for meaning is neglected or has been frustrated. This leads to an existential vacuum – a feeling of emptiness which pleasure and power attempt to fill, to no avail. In other words, pleasure and power, when understood as ends in themselves, act in fact as substitutes for a deeper need that remains unfulfilled. They are therefore incomplete motivational principles on their own – while human beings can forgo pleasure and power, a life without meaning depletes the soul. This firmly establishes meaning as the most fundamental driver in human lives.
Meaning does not deny pleasure and power but redirects them away from self-serving pursuits towards greater integration in life. As it gives people a why to live for, meaning empowers individuals to muster more courage and resources than they ever would for themselves alone. It calls for greater growth and self-mastery than the pursuit of mere power would ever require. It yields a deeper satisfaction, a sense of inner peace, a lasting contentment at having done what was right, and an enduring form of happiness – all things that, interestingly, an obsession with the self cannot provide. Meaning can also lead people to transcend themselves in service to something greater in a way that pure pleasure or pure power never would – and in this, its accomplishments are lasting and greatly inspiring. Finally, as it doesn’t depend on external conditions being pleasant, uplifting or even intrinsically empowering, meaning can be found and endure even under dire circumstances where the other principles have long been denied.
For all these reasons, meaning is the noble ingredient that binds the three motivational principles together into a resilient foundation for life.