Definition
Attitudinal values are the third of the three avenues to meaning that Viktor Frankl identified in his logotherapy. Where creative values realize meaning through what a person gives, and experiential values through what a person receives, attitudinal values realize meaning through the stance a person takes toward a fate that cannot be changed.
This is the avenue that remains open when the others have closed. A person who can no longer work and can no longer expect new joys may still be confronted with a final, decisive question: how will they bear what cannot be altered?
Why it matters
How it works
Frankl held that attitudinal values are the highest of the three, precisely because they are tested under the hardest conditions. When a situation cannot be changed — an incurable illness, an irreversible loss — the person is challenged to change themselves: to rise above the circumstance by the manner in which they meet it.
The qualification from meaning-in-suffering applies here in full. Attitudinal values are not an invitation to accept hardship that could be removed. They concern only the genuinely unavoidable. Within that boundary, they affirm that a person is never wholly conditioned by their fate; some inner freedom always remains.