Definition
Experiential values are the second of the three avenues to meaning in Viktor Frankl's logotherapy. They are the values a person realizes by receiving something from the world — through an encounter with beauty, an experience of nature or art, and above all through love: the experience of another person in their full uniqueness.
Where creative values are about what one gives, experiential values are about what one takes in. A single moment — a piece of music heard fully, the sight of a landscape, the presence of someone loved — can confer meaning that retrospectively justifies a great deal.
Why it matters
How it works
Frankl gave love the central place among the experiential values. To love, in his sense, is to grasp another person's innermost core — to see what they uniquely are, and what they may yet become. Love is not a side effect of meaning but one of its primary roads.
He also resisted the assumption that a meaningful life must be a long or visibly accomplished one. The meaning of a life is not measured by output. A person who has truly received even one great experience has thereby found a meaning that no later loss can revoke. Quantity is not the measure; depth is.