A difficult book, recommended only for readers curious about--and with some pre-emptive grounding in--philosophy, theology and the history of Western thought.
If you're still here: Tillich is not the 1950s-era Protestant theologian you'd expect: he's conversant in and draws heavily from many religious traditions. More surprising, he's a fan of Nietzsche, and he's even a fan of Existentialism--not in the modern sense of shitty French plays, but rather in the sense of the late 1800s/early 1900s Existentialist philosophers like Kirkegaard, Heidegger and Jaspers, who rejected the Enlightenment-era idea of reducing man and his world to pure scientific truths, and who were appalled at the dehumanization such an idea implies. And they were right, as we were to see from the brutality of the 20th century.
Although Tillich occasionally descends into punctuation-challenged academic gibberish, this book sings out with truly profound ideas. The author refuses to traffic in platitudes and easy solutions: he understands the fear, anxiety, emptiness and nihilism inherent to modern society, and the shattering effect it has on many of us. And in order to deal with these emotions, you have to spend a lot of time sitting with them, accepting them, bearing them and bearing up under them. Through this, Tillich helps readers have the "courage to be" in spite of them.
Notes:
Introduction:
* Existentialism to Tillich is "the expression of the anxiety of meaninglessness and of the attempt to take this anxiety into the courage to be as oneself."
* The courage of confidence: Tillich says genuine belief is maintained in spite of circumstances that would undermine that belief, not simply because of circumstances that would confirm that belief. "It does not take a great deal of imagination or courage to believe that God is on your side when you are prospering or winning; it takes a great deal of courage and imagination to believe that God is on your side when you are suffering or losing."
Ch 1: Being and Courage
* The difficulty of defining what courage is, something Plato wrote about in the dialogue Laches. Courage as inextricably linked to the question of being. "Courage can show us what being is, and being can show us what courage is."
* You have to know human values, have a deep understanding of man and his world, only those who know this can know what to affirm and what to negate.
* Back to Plato for a minute, some terms:
Thymus: a part of the soul where spirit and courage reside
Phylakes: the guardian part of society (like the nobility)
Phylakes would be an aristocracy representing what is noble and graceful, holding a sort of collective wisdom; in today's civilization we (likely mistakenly) believe this wisdom is in the hands of "technically organized and directed masses."
* Tillich on Aristotle: "The motive for withstanding pain and death courageously is, according to him, that it is noble to do so and base not to do so. That courage is the affirmation of one's essential nature, one's inner aim, also implies some sacrifice. That courage involves an act of beauty and goodness as well as sacrifice."
* The greatest test of courage is the readiness to make the greatest sacrifice: one's life, thus the soldier's courage was thought of as an outstanding example of courage. See also, however "the courage of the dying Socrates, rational-democratic, not heroic-aristocratic."
* The aristocratic view of courage was revived in the Middle Ages with the knight representing courage as a soldier, characteristic of the nobility.
* See Thomas Aquinas and his doctrine of courage, its duality: a fuller definition of "venturing courage" versus a more narrow definition of "fortitude" ("fortitudo"), strength of mind, conquering whatever threatens the highest good, united with wisdom, our uniting of the four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance.
* Priority of the will in courage, but also the danger of undirected willfulness (you could think of this as reactance/oppositional defiance, basically being willful/resistant just because).
* The incorporation of Faith and Hope into a broad definition of courage: "Courage listens to reason and carries out the intention of the mind. It is the strength of the soul to win victory in ultimate danger, like those martyrs of the Old Testament who are enumerated in Hebrews 11. Courage gives consolation, patience, and experience and becomes indistinguishable from Faith and Hope."
* "I believe that Faith needs such a reinterpretation more than any other religious term."
* Stoicism and neo-stoicism offering this broad concept of Courage at the end of the ancient world and at the beginning of the modern world. How some of the noblest figures in later antiquity "have answered the problem of existence and conquered the anxieties of faith and death."
* "The Stoic has a social and personal courage which is a real alternative to Christian courage." See The Death of Socrates as a specific profound event giving stoicism its roots.
* Seneca showing "the interdependence of the courage to die and the courage to live." To borrow the phrase from Freud, Seneca saw the acceptance of the pleasure principle as necessarily leading to disgust and despair about life. Over-dependence on "having a good time" or living in a good era.
* Stoic reason as the logos, a meaningful structure of reality, not "reason" in the sense of contemporary terminology (like one's "reasoning power").
* "One cannot remove anxiety by arguing it away." The Stoics knew this: "anxiety can be overcome only through the power of universal reason which prevails in the wise man over desires and fears. Stoic courage presupposes the surrender of the personal center to the Logos of being; it is participation in the divine power of reason, transcending the realm of passions and anxieties... What conflicts with the courage of wisdom is desires and fears. The Stoics developed a profound doctrine of anxiety which also reminds us of recent analyses. They discovered that the object of fear is fear itself." (For example, see both Seneca "nothing is terrible in things except fear itself" and Epictetus "for it is not death or hardship that is a fearful thing, but the fear of death and hardship").
* The Stoics advocate to learn how to feel Joy (see in Seneca's "Letters from a Stoic" to Lucilius), but not joy in the sense of fulfilled desires but joy in the sense of self-affirmation of our essential being despite whatever is happening in our life situation. This is also a form of courage, courage beyond the ethical definition.
* Seneca: "Undisturbed by fears and unspoiled by pleasures, we shall be afraid neither of death nor of the gods."
* Spinoza, courage and self-affirmation: The ancient era was dominated by a tragic feeling towards existence, the Renaissance began an era of looking to the future with hopeful feelings, a non-tragedic belief in progress rather than "resignation to circular repetition."
* Modern humanism has so many similarities with ancient Stoicism that it may be called Neo-Stoicism." Less emphasis on the divine, more emphasis on the individual, a type of self-affirmation, with "Spinoza is its representative."
* Per Spinoza "Striving towards self-preservation or towards self-affirmation makes a thing be what it is."
* Self affirmation (or "right love of self") and the right love of others are interdependent; likewise selfishness and the abuse of others are equally interdependent. In other words you have to think highly enough of yourself in order to radiate that same vibe to others.
* To Spinoza, self-affirmation is participation in the Divine self-affirmation. Likewise God loves himself, "and by loving himself also loves what belongs to him, human beings."
Courage and life: Nietzsche
* Is courage a human quality or can it be attributed to other animals?
* "Both self-preservation and self-affirmation logically imply the overcoming of something which, at least potentially, threatens or denies the self. There is no explanation of this 'something' in either stoicism or neo-stoicism, though both presuppose it."
* "Nietzsche develops a prophecy and philosophy of courage in opposition to the mediocrity and decadence of life in the period whose coming he saw."
* [One of the problems of the modern era is that we think somehow that we shouldn't die, that death is the ultimate narcissistic injury, when in reality death is an intrinsic part of life; they go together.]
* Nature and the courage to look into the abyss, to accept the abyss of non-being even for him to accept the message that God is dead: per Nietzsche: "He hath heart who knoweth fear but vanquisheth it; who seeth the abyss, but with pride. He who seeth the abyss but with eagle's eyes,—he who with eagle's talons graspeth the abyss: he hath courage."
Chapter 2: Being, Non-Being, and Anxiety: An ontology of anxiety
* A really good example right here of academic gibberish: "Courage is self-affirmation 'in-spite-of,' that is in spite of that which tends to prevent the self from affirming itself." This is the lead sentence of the chapter, and of all places this is where you must state what you're thinking as clearly and directly as possible. This genuinely awful sentence sounds like something parodied in an Austin Powers movie. It is the author's job to communicate his ideas clearly, cleanly and crisply, and to at least try to lighten the reader's burden of understanding.
* Re the term "non-being" maybe it would be better if the author would just come out and say "death."
* This chapter should have been re-rewritten, good lord. But I get it: the author has to expend some "epistemological time" to clarify terms, address specifically what mental states he's trying to address and help the reader navigate.
* Non-being: the transitoriness of everything created.
* "Courage is usually described as the power of the mind to overcome fear." But note the distinction between fear and anxiety, more precise definitions of each of these mental states.
* And ontology of courage requires an ontology of anxiety because they are interdependent.
* First assertion about the nature of anxiety: "anxiety is the state in which a being is aware of its possible nonbeing." Or: "anxiety is the existential awareness of non-being."
* Fear has a definite object "which can be faced, analyzed, attacked, endured. One can act upon it, and in acting upon it participate in it--even if in the form of struggle. In this way one can take it into one's self-affirmation. Courage can meet every object of fear, because it is an object and makes participation possible."
* "But this is not so with anxiety, because anxiety has no object, or rather, in a paradoxical phrase, its object is the negation of every object. Therefore participation, struggle, and love with respect to it are impossible."
* Helplessness in the state of anxiety, loss of direction, lack of intentionality; there's no object on which to act or concentrate. The fundamental source of the threat is nothingness.
* Anxiety as a type of fear of the implications of some loss: The fear of dying, for example, which is based on the object of an anticipated event of being killed, but our anxiety from this event has more to do with the absolute unknowns of the death state, the non-being that comes at death.
* "Anxiety is the painful feeling of not being able to deal with the threat of a special situation."
* Anxiety is beyond the reach of the most courageous attack, which drives an anxious person to establish objects of fear. These then can be met by courage. [Sure seems like we can apply this insight to the COVID era: people experience free-floating anxiety but transfer it to "the unvaccinated," "covidiots" or "Republicans/Democrats" etc. This is of course a tool that a manipulative government can easily put to use to divide, distract and enervate the people.
* "But ultimately the attempts to transform anxiety into fear are vain. The basic anxiety, the anxiety of a finite being about the threat of non-being, cannot be eliminated. It belongs to existence itself."
* Three types of anxiety:
1) Anxiety of death and fate:
2) Anxiety of meaninglessness
3) Anxiety of guilt and condemnation
These are all existential forms of anxiety, as differentiated from neurotic anxiety.
* The anxiety of death and fate: all attempts to argue this anxiety away are futile; everyone is aware of the complete loss of self that comes with death. Also fate implies various contingencies in our lives, and the ultimate necessity, irrationality and impenetrable darkness of fate create anxiety. The threat of death as absolute. The threat of your "fate" is relative, because death ultimately is behind it.
* Is there a courage to be, a courage to affirm oneself in spite of these anxiety-inducing threats?
* The anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness: "A belief breaks down through external events or inner processes: one is cut off from creative participation, one feels frustrated about something which one had passionately affirmed, one is driven from devotion to one object to devotion to another and again on to another, because the meaning of each vanishes... Everything is tried and nothing satisfies."
* Interesting comment here on the religious fanatic: one becomes a fanatic in order to conquer one's doubt and one sacrifices the freedom of the self to join something, but then "fanaticism is the correlate to spiritual self-surrender: it shows the anxiety which it was supposed to conquer, by attacking with disproportionate violence those who disagree and who demonstrate by their disagreement elements in the spiritual life of the fanatic which he must suppress in himself." His inner anxiety forces him to persecute dissenters. Interesting.
* The anxiety of guilt and condemnation: Man is responsible for his being, he is required to answer what he has made of himself. "He who asks him is his judge, namely he himself, who, at the same time, stands against him." This situation produces the anxiety of guilt, or the anxiety of self-rejection or self-condemnation: "It is present in every moment of moral self-awareness and can drive us toward complete self-rejection."
* In order to avoid this extreme situation one can default to anomism (as in anomie, think of it like a breakdown in morality), or legalism (following the letter not the spirit of the law morality/comportment-wise) or moral rigor (with self-satisfaction derived from it).
* All of these anxieties are connected or immanent in each other, the threat of fate and the threat of death always increases one's consciousness of guilt.
* "The simple call to duty can save from emptiness." These are extrinsically imposed obligations but they still can give people "meaning" because they are called to do/join something bigger than themselves.
* The meaning of despair: "Despair is an ultimate or 'boundary-line' situation. One cannot go beyond it. Its nature is indicated in the etymology of the word despair: without hope." Also: there is "despair within despair" in the sense that the being is aware of itself, is unable to affirm itself, but enough self-awareness remains for the person to feel the despair and yet still know that its power is irresistible. The being wants to get rid of itself and it cannot.
* "Suicide can liberate one from the anxiety of fate and death... but it cannot liberate from the anxiety of guilt and condemnation."
* "... All human life can be interpreted as a continuous attempt to avoid despair." Holy cow, heavy.
* Note that in the ancient era the primary anxiety was of fate and death; during the Middle Ages the primary anxiety was that of guilt or condemnation (or we could call it spiritual non-being), which could not even be solved by death because you would still be burdened with the sins you committed even after death. The modern era's primary anxiety is an anxiety about meaninglessness.
Chapter 3: Pathological Anxiety, Vitality, and Courage
* Non-existential anxiety, anxiety as the awareness of unsolved conflicts between structural elements of the personality.
* Anxiety turns us toward courage because the alternative is despair.
* Neurosis, however is "a way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being" (think of it as avoiding despair by "escaping" into a neurotic, reduced self that is not fully self-actualized, a reduced self-affirmation of a person to a level less than his potential). Fascinating here to think of neurotics as attempting to escape their fears while also escaping true self-actualization. Their neuroses become kind of a castle to which the person retreats to defend against all means of attack--from reality, from their therapist, etc.
* Contrast this with an average man who deals with reality more effectively but is perhaps thrown into a type of neurosis when the world around him changes or evolves too quickly, making "the average man a fanatical defender of the established order. He defends it as compulsively as the neurotic defends the castle of his imaginary world." He loses his openness to reality, experiences depths of anxiety and "his anxiety turns into neurosis." This is one explanation of the mass neuroses which usually appear at the end of an era: see for example the near pathological aestheticism in the Middle Ages or the Middle Ages-era anxiety about the demonic world; see also the modern existentialist descriptions of man's predicament which the author considers neurotic.
* Considering two forms of healing: the theological and the medical/psychotherapeutic:
* The conflict (from time to time) between philosophy and theology is a lot like the conflict between empirical medicine and medical philosophy. Interesting thought here.
* "But if one preaches ultimate courage to somebody who is pathologically fixed to a limited self-affirmation (like a neurosis), the content of the preaching is either resisted compulsively or--even worse--is taking into the castle of self-defense as another implement for avoiding the encounter with reality."
* Misplaced fear is what you get when you combine neurosis with pathological anxiety of fate and death. Again, COVID-related terrors/loathings come to mind here as good examples.
* If you have anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness you can escape it through a neurosis about certitude in traditional authority, you can have a sort of pseudo-faith in an already-existing, pre-fab system of meaning. "Neurotic anxiety builds a narrow castle of certitude which can be defended and is defended with the utmost tenacity."
* Anxiety and courage are biological as well as psychological, fear and anxiety are guardians, indicating the threat of non-being to a living being and producing movements of protection, "self-affirmation on its guard." "Courage, in this view, is the readiness to take upon oneself negatives, anticipated by fear, for the sake of a fuller positivity."
* "Aristotle's doctrine of courage as the right mean between cowardice and temerity."
* Anxiety is more destructive than protective, unlike fear which can protect you from death or danger. Therefore anxiety is biologically useless.
* Courage by the biological definition looks a lot like the ancient definition of courage, which is something bestowed by Fate, and in religious terms we would use the word "grace" to define this, which is kind of interesting: the biological argument takes you to a theological argument of grace being bestowed on you as a biological entity, and you can't earn it or work at getting it--it's either given to you or not.
Chapter 4: Courage and Participation: The Courage To Be As a Part
* Self-affirmation as participation in the world, and the structural universe of being. "The self affirms itself as participant in the power of a group, of a movement, of essences, of the power of being as such. Self affirmation, if it is done in spite of the threat of non-being, is the courage to be. But it is not the courage to be as oneself, it is the 'courage to be as a part.'"
* Participating in a community of one form or another.
* This leads to not only an individual self-affirmation, but also a collective self-affirmation; see also how collective anxiety can be met by collective courage, a type of "we-self" which we can contrast against the individual ego "selves" who are the parts of a community. Note that it is difficult to say who holds this "we-self" since no one individual does; Tillich argues that it doesn't work to speak of a "we-self" or even employ the terms "collective anxiety" or "collective courage" because there is no entity which is that "we-self." The courage to be is a quality of individual selves.
* The medieval church and the feudal system both have a type of semi-collectivism, with an individualism component of individual penance. Neo-collectivist systems such as Fascism, Nazism or Communism: think of them as part of technical civilization as well as a totalitarian nation state. Both of these types of collectivism have an emphasis on "self-affirmation by participation, and the courage to be as a part." "Communism gives to those who have lost or are losing their old collectivist self-affirmation [something that Europeans had during the Middle ages but have lost in modernity] a new collectivism and within a new courage to be as a part."
* When Tillich analyzes the self-affirmation people receive as members of a totalitarian or communist collective, one gets the impression that he doesn't really fully comprehend being in that situation, that he doesn't grasp the full cynicism and nihilism of it, and that he might have benefited if he had read Arthur Koestler's Darkness At Noon.
* Neo-collective societies can absorb the anxiety of faith and death because the members are part of something bigger than the individual, likewise these systems/societies absorb the anxiety of doubt and meaninglessness for the same reason; this provide self-affirmation and protection from doubt to the individual. "In this certainty the Communist looks contemptuously at Western society. He observes the large amount of anxiety of doubt in it, and he interprets this as the main symptom of the morbidity and approaching end of bourgeois society." In these terms, it becomes a sort of existential escape.
* Likewise totalitarian societies can offer an escape from the anxiety of guilt and condemnation: the neo-collectivist doesn't need to worry so much about his personal sin, only about his potential sin against the collective. The collective thus becomes a sort of God of judgment for him. He confesses, to it he receives judgment and punishment from it, etc. [Heavy. The state becomes a religion.]
* "The courage to be as a part" in democratic conformism: See present-day America, where we have a group belief in "progress" as a key component of Western self-affirmation, see also our growing knowledge about the universe (see Copernicus and Galileo, see how Earth became small and irrelevant compared to the infinity of the universe, etc). Note how a feeling of being lost crept into the hearts of many during this period of USA history, thus part of the "courage to be as a part" in western civilization was from participating "in the productive process of history" or "as a participant in the creative development of mankind."
* Europeans ask "what is the point of all this productive activity of American society?" while the American use it as a form of creativity ("as symbols of the infinite possibilities implied in man's productivity") like Roman Stoicism without the resignation to/acceptance of fate.
* However, modernity gives rise to a greater anxiety: about doubt and meaninglessness. Also, there are strong collectivist forces at work even in American society, forcing conformity and requiring certain collective-like behaviors to ensure the smooth functioning of the "machine of production and consumption"... see also the increasing impact of "the means of public communication" (by this Tillich means modern media, which drives a strengthening of conformist elements in American culture).
Chapter 5: Courage and Individualization: T Courage To Be As Oneself
* Modern individualism: defined as the self-affirmation of the individual self without regard to its participation in the world, as such the opposite of collectivism.
* See also economic liberalism/free market capitalism; see also liberal democracy: the idea that "freedom of the individual to decide politically does not necessarily destroy political conformity."
* See also various Protestant denominations that gave individual direct contact with the Bible but still produced an "ecclesiastical conformity." This potentially resolves the problem of individualization with participation in a group: it is an individualism of following reason, defying irrational authority (not defying rational authority), and Tillich idealizes this as a sort of "fighting, daring courage" as individual action conquers the threat of meaninglessness, one accepts one's errors, shortcomings and misdeeds, one conquers the threat of guilt, etc.
* The romantic version of the courage to be as oneself, based on one's uniqueness, one's individual nature, see also bohemianism (one could call it a sort of proto-hipsterism), ultimately these two movements led to Existentialism.
* [This book really isn't about how to have the courage to be, it's more about how different eras give the individual various potential roadmaps for the courage to be.]
* Existentialist forms of the courage to be as oneself: this is the most radical form of the courage to be as oneself.
* See Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and later Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir: existentialism as a rejection of the abstractions of past philosophical movements. "Existence resists conceptualization."
* "You may have a precise detached knowledge of another person, his psychological type and his calculable reactions, but in knowing this you do not know the person, his centered self, his knowledge of himself."
* See the monastic movements of early Christianity as well as St, Augustine, also Dante's Divine Comedy, all of which explored existentialism, psychologically entering the deepest places of despair and human self-destruction as well as the highest places of courage and salvation; see also some of the Renaissance artists like Bosch, Breughel (see his Tower of Babel paintings), Grunewald, etc. These all offer examples of a type of existentialist doctrine of man, but many years before the term came about.
* Protestantism was in some ways a re-emphasis of the existentialist point of view, but also with a limitation: it ignored much of the monastic self-scrutiny of the Middle ages, focusing on rigid doctrines of justification and predestination... Protestant theologians "were not interested in the relativities and ambiguities of a human condition." These doctrines were obviously totally not existential! Then later as Calvinist thought emerged with the industrial revolution, Protestantism became completely anti-existentialist, replacing man as an existential subject with man as a rational subject.
* Kant, for example, discusses the possibility of the perversion of men's rationality by evil, which was an existentialist notion; he was then attacked by Goethe and Hegel... Hegel believed that the world is reasonable as it is, its course can be understood and justified. Interestingly even Hegel contains existentialist ideas (see his Philosophy of History, also Hegel's Essentialist philosophy), he addresses the mystery and anxiety of non-being, and he believes within existence nothing great is achieved without passion and interest, he was aware of non-rational levels of human nature...
* Existentialism as a revolt: see Schelling presenting his positive philosophy, concepts of which were used by revolutionary existentialists of the 19th century. "He called Essentialism 'negative philosophy' because it abstracts from real existence."
* Kirkegaard: heavily influenced by Schelling, see also Schopenhauer, Max Stirrner, Feuerbach, even Marx, each a type of existentialist revolt against man's existence under the system of early capitalism. "Most important of all the existentialists was Nietzsche, who... presented a picture of a world in which human existence has fallen into utter meaninglessness."
* See the artistic expressionism/existentialism of Cezanne, Van Gogh and Munch; see existentialist revolutionaries in poetry like Baudelaire and Rimbaud, see also Flaubert and Dostoevsky experimenting with the structure of the novel; Ibsen and Strindberg in the theater. With the outbreak of World War 1 "the Existentialist revolt ceased to be a revolt. It became the mirror of an experienced reality." "They realized that a process was going on in which people were transformed into things, into pieces of reality which pure science can calculate and technical science can control."
* The individual becomes an empty vessel through which sense impressions enter and the individual becomes a bearer of something which is not himself, like a space through which something else passes; weirdly, the philosophies of naturalism or scientific idealism that were meant to liberate man actually led to his imprisonment through refined psychological control, rapidly increasing organizational control of society, also by the idea that "safety" was bought at the price of man's spirit and self. A kind of depersonalization.
* Existentialism as a movement evolved further in the 20th century to represent a more vivid and threatening meaning of the word. It now penetrates all educated classes. [It went from being a rejection of the established thought to becoming the established thought.]
Modern existentialism is a courageous acceptance of the meaninglessness of our situation. The rejection of existentialism isn't just "the ordinary difficulty of understanding those who break new ways in thinking and artistic expression which produces the widespread resistance to recent existentialism" ... Note also the violent reactions against modern art in collectivist societies like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union as well as in conformist societies like the USA in the first half of the 20th century: this shows that they feel seriously threatened by the insights of existentialism. Ironically, these are also neurotic defense mechanisms on a societal level.
* Church theology has an obligation to not default to conformism or collectivism as it has during certain periods of church history, it should identify Christian courage as "the courage to be as oneself," not "the courage to be as a part." Although neither of these forms of courage gives us the final solution.
* "The courage of despair, the experience of meaninglessness, and the self-affirmation in spite of them are manifest in the existentialists of the 20th century."
* Per existentialism: God is dead and with him a whole system of values and meanings is dead; this "is felt as both a loss and as a liberation. It drives one either to nihilism or to the courage which takes non-being into itself."
* "On this basis existentialism, that is the great art, literature, and philosophy of the 20th century, reveal the courage to face things as they are and to express the anxiety of meaninglessness." See Kafka's Mr. K, from The Trial, but also see the staring at the abyss, and the confronting of meaninglessness and despair in plays like Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller or the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire: "It is astonishing that these plays are attended by large crowds in a country whose prevailing courage is the courage to be as a part in a system of democratic conformity." Great point, but I'd say the majority of people going to these types of plays are going to be East Coast "elite" types or at the least the kind of people who aspire to be "just as cultured" as an elite.
* Tillich has some interesting and surprising views on modern art, particularly surrealism and expressionism: he sees them as an actual revelation of (and a facing down of) anxiety and loss of meaning, he sees these works of art as honest in a profound way. He considers modern art not propaganda but revelation. "The art propagated by both totalitarianism and democratic conformism is dishonest beautification... It removes every danger of art becoming critical and revolutionary. The creators of modern art have been able to see the meaninglessness of our existence; they participated in its despair. At the same time they have had the courage to face it and to express it in their pictures and sculptures. They had the courage to be as themselves." This is some striking shit right here.
* Martin Heidegger and his concept of "resolve." "Nobody can give directions for the actions of the 'resolute' individual--no god, no conventions, no laws of reason, no norms or principles. We must be ourselves, we must decide where to go."
* Sartre's proposition that "the essence of man is his existence"..."One could call it the most despairing and the most courageous sentence in all existentialist literature. What it says is that there is no essential nature of man, except in the one point that he can make of himself what he wants."
* There are less radical points of view among existentialists, see Carl Jasper's or Gabriel Marcel, but "existentialism in philosophy is represented more by Heidegger and Sartre than by anybody else."
* Contrasting the creative courage which enables someone to express existential despair with non-creative cynicism (one could maybe think of this as a modern hipster's cynicism and I'm too cool sarcastic witticisms, etc.): "They try to undermine every norm put before them... They courageously reject any solution which would deprive them of their freedom of rejecting whatever they want to reject." (One could also argue that this is cowardice: the exact opposite of the courage to be.)
* The basic question is "what is the self that affirms itself? Radical existentialism says it is what it makes of itself. The absolute freedom of the self.
* The existentialist sense of the courage to be from the later decades of the 19th century was undermined for millions of people because it broke down under the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century.
* A basic summary of the chapters 4 (the courage to be as a part) and 5 (the courage to be as oneself), is that seeking the courage to be as a part of something greater than the individual leads to the loss of self in collectivism, while an exclusive effort towards the courage to be as oneself leads to the loss of the collective or the world in existentialism. Thus we arrive at the question of chapter 6: "Is there a courage to be which unites both forms by transcending them?"
Chapter 6: Courage and Transcendence: The Courage to Accept Acceptance
* [This was a difficult chapter!]
* The mystical experience and the courage to be: "In mysticism the individual self strives for a participation in the ground of being which approaches identification." [I'm presuming he means here identification with the divine] "...all mystics draw their power of self-affirmation from the experience of the power of being-itself with which they are united."
* Fascinating to read a quote like this from a mid-20th century Protestant theologian: "The ascetic and ecstatic mystic affirms his own essential being over against the elements of non-being which are present in the finite world the realm of Maya. It takes tremendous courage to resist the lure of appearances. The power of being which is manifest in such courage is so great that the gods tremble in fear of it." He sounds more like Ramana Maharshi or Sri Ramakrishna here, waxing about the impermanence and untrustworthiness of reality--it is a far cry from the concrete, "what God/Christianity can offer do to help me with my day-to-day life" kind of theology you get in a standard Protestant church sermon.
* "In the strength of this Courage the mystic conquers the anxiety of fate and death. Since being in time and space and under the categories of finitude is ultimately unreal, the vicissitudes arising from it and the final nonbeing ending it are equally unreal."
* The Divine-human encounter and the courage to be.
* Luther and his frequent use of the word trotz, "in spite of", in spite of negativities which he had experienced, in spite of anxiety, etc. "...he derived the power of self-affirmation from his unshakable confidence in God and from the personal encounter with him." Courage, in spite of all of "the negativities of existence." "Neither popes nor councils could give him [Luther] this confidence."
* Luther, Calvin and the Reformation are a big deal to Tillich. To him the apotheosis of Courage is the Protestant acceptance of acceptance in the face of guilt, or condemnation, or sin. The concept of the elect and of predestination kind of made you frozen out of any real role in whether you went to heaven or not, but you still had to carry on "in spite of."
* Accepting that one can be accepted (by the divine, by God) in spite of one's unacceptability, in spite of one's fundamental sinful nature. This is what Tillich considers to be the true meaning of the Pauline/Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith. Another version of this might be the psychoanalytic patient who participates in the healing power of the helper by whom he is accepted even though he feels himself to be unacceptable (therapeutically speaking, this is the Carl Rogers idea of unconditional positive regard). "The healer, in this relationship, does not stand for himself as an individual but represents the objective power of acceptance and self-affirmation. This objective power works through the healer in the patient." To Tillich, one needs a self-transcending courage to accept this acceptance, one needs the courage of confidence.
* Interesting quote here, distinguishing Christianity from the ancients: "Socrates, who in the power of his essential self conquered the anxiety of death, has become the symbol for the courage to take death upon oneself. This is the true meaning of Plato's so-called doctrine of immortality of the soul.... [Socrates] makes it clear that the courage to die is the test of the courage to be.... The popular belief in immortality which in the western world has largely replaced the Christian symbol of Resurrection is a mixture of courage and escape. It tries to maintain one's self-affirmation even in the face of one's having to die. But it does this by continuing one's finitude, that is one's having to die, infinitely, so that the actual death will never occur. This, however, is an illusion and, logically speaking, a contradiction in terms. It makes endless what, by definition, must come to an end.... The courage of Socrates (in Plato's picture) was based not on a doctrine of the immortality of the soul but on the affirmation of himself in his essential, indestructible being. He knows that he belongs to two orders of reality and that the one order is transtemporal. It was the courage of Socrates which more than any philosophical reflection revealed to the ancient world that everyone belongs to two orders."
* Continuing: "This presupposition is not accepted by Christianity. According to Christianity we are estranged from our essential being. We are not free to realize our essential being, we are bound to contradict it. Therefore death can be accepted only through a state of confidence in which death has ceased to be 'the wages of sin.' This, however, is the state of being accepted in spite of being unacceptable. Here is the point in which the ancient world was transformed by Christianity and in which Luther's courage to face death was rooted. It is the being accepted into communion with God that underlies this courage, not a questionable theory of immortality. The encounter with God in Luther is not merely the basis for the courage to take upon oneself sin and condemnation, it is also the basis for taking upon oneself fate and death. For encountering God means encountering transcendent security and transcendent eternity. He who participates in God participates in eternity. But in order to participate in him you must be accepted by him and you must have accepted his acceptance of you."
* "Luther had experiences which he describes as attacks of utter despair (Anfechtung), as the frightful threat of a complete meaninglessness. He felt these moments as satanic attacks in which everything was menaced: his Christian faith, the confidence in his work, the Reformation, the forgiveness of sins. Everything broke down in the extreme moments of this despair, nothing was left of the courage to be. Luther in these moments, and in the descriptions he gives of them, anticipated the description of them by modern Existentialism. But for him this was not the last word. The last word was the first commandment, the statement that God is God. It reminded him of the unconditional element in human experience of which one can be aware even in the abyss of meaninglessness. And this awareness saved him."
* "This leads to a last question: whether the two types of the courage to accept acceptance can be united in view of the all-pervasive presence of the anxiety of doubt and meaninglessness in our own period."
* "... the concept of faith has lost its genuine meaning and has received the connotation of 'belief in something unbelievable.'"
* "The question then is this: Is there a courage which can conquer the anxiety of meaninglessness and doubt? Or in other words, can the faith which accepts acceptance resist the power of non-being in its most radical form? Can faith resist meaninglessness? Is there a kind of faith which can exist together with doubt and meaninglessness? These questions lead to the last aspect of the problem discussed in these lectures and the one most relevant to our time: How is the courage to be possible if all the ways to create it are barred by the experience of their ultimate insufficiency? If life is as meaningless as death, if guilt is as questionable as perfection, if being is no more meaningful than none being, on what can one base the courage to be?"
* "... the acceptance of despair is in itself faith... In this situation the meaning of life is reduced to despair about the meaning of life.... Cynically speaking, one could say that it is true to life to be cynical about it. Religiously speaking, one would say that one accepts oneself as accepted in spite of ones despair about the meaning of this acceptance. The paradox of every radical negativity, as long as it is an active negativity, is that it must affirm itself in order to be able to negate itself."
* "The act of accepting meaninglessness is in itself a meaningful act. It is an act of faith."
* Nonbeing opening up being: the space of being includes non-being as well: "Nonbeing belongs to being, it cannot be separated from it."
* "There are no valid arguments for the 'existence' of God, but there are acts of courage in which we affirm the power of being, whether we know it or not."
* Interesting thoughts here on theism: Theism as kind of a cheat code, people use it for rhetoric to produce serious and morally trustworthy feeling in an audience, it's also "atheism light" for people who are afraid of atheism or afraid a world without a God in whatever form. It can also be a way to express a profound emotional state or the highest ethical idea.
* "God above God": only if the god of theism is transcended can the anxiety of doubt and meaninglessness be taken into the courage to be. The God above God is the object of all mystical longing, but mysticism also must be transcended in order to reach him. "Eastern mysticism is not the solution of the problems of Western existentialism, although many people attempt the solution."
* Tillich appears to think that theism makes God too concrete; God cannot be an object or subject, he's above this kind of framing, above this kind of being understood. In every Divine human encounter the God above the god of theism is present although paradoxically hidden.
* See also the paradoxical nature of prayer, of speaking to somebody to whom you cannot speak because he is not "somebody"! This is another example of a paradox which helps us conceive of the God above the God of theism.
* "The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt." In other words, once we've gone past absolute defeat, as soon as God disappears for us, we have a possible shot at coming into contact with the true divine. This reminds me of Saint John of the Cross, one has to lose all hope in the dark night of the soul...
* [One of the problems with this book (and this topic in general) is the degree of symbolic language and specialized vocabulary which must be used to explain ineffable, difficult-to-describe subjects. This makes the book quite difficult for lay readers.]
Vocab:
Ontological: having to do with the classification and explanation of entities.
Ontology: is about the object of inquiry, what you set to examine. Ontology concerns claims about the nature of being and existence.
Ontic: relating to entities and the facts about them; relating to real as opposed to phenomenal existence.
Nominalism: the doctrine that universals or general ideas are mere names without any corresponding reality, and that only particular objects exist; properties, numbers, and sets are thought of as merely features of the way of considering the things that exist. Important in medieval scholastic thought, nominalism is associated particularly with William of Occam.
Entelechy: the realization of potential; the supposed vital principle that guides the development and functioning of an organism or other system or organization. Plural noun: entelechies.
Telos: an ultimate object or aim.
The Essential Paul Tillich: see his famous sermon "You Are Accepted" and his book The Protestant Era
Also here's a link to a free PDF of Tillich's book The Courage To Be
Plato's dialogue Laches
Jacob Boehme: Aurora, The Signature of All Things, Mystical Writings
Jean-Paul Sartre: No Exit (play), The Age of Reason
T.S. Eliot: The Wasteland
Franz Kafka: The Castle, The Trial
Camus: The Stranger
Martin Heidegger: Being and Time
Albrecht Durer: Knight, Death, and the Devil (engraving: a representation of the spirit of the Lutheran Reformation and of Luther's courage of confidence: his form of the courage to be "in spire of" the sufferings that necessarily follow in the performance of one's duty)
