The Courage to Be

by Paul Tillich

In this classic, deeply insightful book, one of the world's most eminent philosophers describes the dilemma of modern humans & points a way to the conquest of the problem of anxiety.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology, Religion, Nonfiction, Psychology, Spirituality, Christianity

Paperback

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Paul Tillich was a German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher. Tillich was – along with his contemporaries Rudolf Bultmann (Germany), Karl Barth (Switzerland), and Reinhold Niebuhr (United States) – one of the four most influential Protestant theologians of the 20th century. Among the general populace, he is best known for his works The Courage to Be (1952) and Dynamics of Faith (1957), which introduced issues of theology and modern culture to a general readership. Theologically, he is best known for his major three-volume work Systematic Theology (1951–63), in which he developed his "method of correlation": an approach of exploring the symbols of Christian revelation as answers to the problems of human existence raised by contemporary existential philosophical analysis.

Reviews

[Hans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting how as I read through more and more of the so called "great authors" I find an underlying pattern and message that is repeated over and over again. These are men and women who have journeyed deep into the darkness of the their own soul and have survived to tell the rest of us about it. To let us know that the alienation we feel is not ours alone, but of all mankind when our cultural, religious, philosophical and societal safe-guards have all failed. When we stand naked and vulnerable in the presence of the vast and impersonal universe. Lo, how small is man, how insignificant our lives, and yet when we are able to pierce through this veil of solitude with the courage to just be, then we realize we are not separate but part of this Universe, we are not alienated, but literally children of the stars.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first started reading this book because I want answers to the existential angst that plagues me and others aware of the implications of post-modern ideas. I don’t mean to say that I wanted an alternative to post-modernism; I don’t believe that is any more realistic than saying that I want an alternative to turning 32, for that’s just wishful thinking. I’m not a post-modernist, for I am not merely a product of my culture, but I am influenced by my culture. If I’m being honest with myself, there is simply no escaping thinking in part like a post-modernist, for I am steeped in a post-modern era of thought and practice. It doesn’t help to revert to modernist ‘fact-finding’ when immersed in a society that is exploring the cognitive foundation of what we call objective reality—but people attempt this regressive tactic nonetheless because it’s a familiar place. But the past is dead and done; it is worn into a deep rut, and a new path must be found. We must confess, though disheartened, that facts don’t find nearly as much as they don’t find. Enter post-modernism.

Tillich starts by differentiating between fear and anxiety. Fear is a manifestation of universal, existential anxiety; and as a leaf and not a root, fear can be more directly dealt with than anxiety. The individual fears are embodiments that can be avoided, resisted, opposed and even eliminated—while the root of fear—anxiety—is really the ever-present awareness of non-being that constantly hovers. This anxiety cannot be removed, and is a necessary part of self-preservation (“self-affirmation”) which adds to one’s valuation of life. This principle of ineradicable anxiety is one of most difficult parts of this book to make peace with (didn’t I start reading to do exactly that…decrease anxiety?). But Tillich reveals that just as torture can be accepted at the hand of a trusted physician, so existential anxiety can be courageously endured because of a deeper realization that affirms one’s sense of purpose and identity. This truth is revealed in the last quarter of the book.

There are three basic forms of anxiety: anxiety about death (“non-being”—which ultimately subsumes the other two), anxiety about meaninglessness (an empty life), and condemnation (guilt about a wrong life). One can deal practically with fears, but anxiety (no matter which sort) must ultimately be accepted into one’s ultimate sense of self-worth and one’s right to BE (again, “self-affirmation). This is what the author refers to as ‘taking it [fears, doubts, anxiety] into oneself’. In spite of anxiety, one can still do what must be done, and can remain confident that God is still holding them. This is the confidence of Being—COURAGE—that gives one the strength to stare down non-being in its many forms.
This courage, however, does not always come easy, nor or is always immediately apparent when it does arrive. Courage can be partly obstructed by one’s lack of realization that confidence in one’s own being can take place only as an ancillary to the deeper confidence in what Tillich calls “being-itself”, viz. God. Pre-mature courage often evidences itself as ‘courage to be as a part’ [collectivism], or ‘courage to be as oneself’ [individualistic existentialism]; the former missing out on a belief in self, the later missing out on a belief in the world.

I can certainly say that I comprehend our existential predicament a bit more clearly after reading this book. Never have I read a work that so faithfully scrutinized our ontology as if it were under a microscope, but did not abandon the soul under the microscope to wriggle and die. In the words of the psychologist Carl Jung, our author has stood and stared into face of the monster of the maternal abyss, and has not been mesmerized by its power, but has overcome. This understanding of the source of our anxiety and fear can help bring a renewed determination to renew the fight, and to be hopeful and courageous even when all hope seems lost. It brings new meaning to the idea that while one is alive, there is still confidence to believe that one is ‘meant’ to be alive. In the words of Robert Browning, “This world’s no blot for us nor blank; it means intensely, and means good. And to find its meaning is my meat and drink.”

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I were to try to describe to someone my faith, I would call myself a "Tillichian" more than a "Christian." Unfortunately, nobody knows who Tillich is outside on PLU, so I need to say "liberal, non-literal, existentialist Protestant" instead.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Germans - especially through their German Idealism - turned Christianity and God into something new and relevant for us modern people confronted with rationality, materialism, and meaninglessness. One cannot help thinking of Meister Eckhart, Luther, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger while reading this book - with most of them directly and extensively discussed here. With these Germans, one feels that God is still up for a decision; and that we humans are continuously called up to raise up and to make such a decision - and thus to redefine history, Christianity, eternity, and so on. “The courage to be” is simultaneously an ontological, existential, spiritual, and Christian call to face up to our modern meaningless/non-being and to assume it completely; with the promise that if we do so the “God beyond God” (i.e., with the first God still up for a future decision and with the second God as trivialized/killed by both theists and atheists) will eventually show up to us and will help us overcome the current nihilism and reunite with Being.

Re-reading this 5 years later was a rather disappointing experience for me. Even if Tillich was influenced by Heidegger, he was not able to see beyond the existentialist label that almost everyone assigned to Heidegger - despite his continuous protests to the contrary. In this respect Tillich and this book are far more indebted to the materialist/atheist and irrelevant Sartre (who was quite famous for misinterpreting Heidegger in the most obnoxious way) than to Heidegger and to the openings created by his thinking. But even more fundamentally and problematic than the above issue, Tillich is operating here within Nietzsche's ontology of being/becoming and especially with that of the will to power. Heidegger spent several years showing that Nietzsche’s will to power is at the root of the most profound form of Western nihilism; that is - someone following Tillich advice most likely will end up into even deeper nihilism.



Original August 2020 review:

Discover the “God above God” – or have “the courage to be” by fully assuming our own anxieties and in particular Nietzsche's statement that “God is dead” and the ensuing collapse of all values. In other words, if we take God/Being to be just another being, then we either objectify or subjectify Him and eventually will end up with a world without meaning - as we do currently. But, if we have the “courage to be” by assuming this non-being of meaningless, then we will eventually realize that this non-being - as revealed by our anxieties - is part of Being/God, that God transcends and reveals Himself above our current dichotomies (such as subject/object), and that our “courage to be” in this non-being will lead us to the “absolute faith” in God. This “absolute faith” is superior to the other two possible ways for encountering God: mysticism or personal relationship. Death/fate and guilt/condemnation are also part of this ontological structure, anxiety, and process; but they are not as important and fundamental as the meaningless/emptiness that leads to “absolute faith”.
I found Tillich's approach and sympathy towards existentialism very interesting; that is, by taking one step further into authentic existentialism, the Christian God may reveal Himself in a profound and fundamental way. It seems that Tillich saw in this “courage to be” a new reformation process similar to the one initiated by Luther; a new reformation as demanded by our present meaningless condition. “The courage to be” is a mixture of existentialism and ontology that suppose and help each other and eventually lead one to “the God above the God of theism”.
Socrates, Plato, stoics, Luther, Spinoza, Nietzsche, and the existentialists are the explicit heroes in this book. However, Kierkegaard's and Heidegger's ideas are the main inspiration for this book; but barely mentioned by Tillich.

[Andrew]

I'm the worst sort of agnostic. And as a devoted follower of pragmatist philosophy, it's hard for me to find the vast majority of theology to be anything more than a fancy shell game carried on by intellectuals whose primary task is to close their minds off to anything that fails to qualify for their dogma-of-choice.

And yet I decided to overcome my theology phobia by reading Paul Tillich. Firstly, he states his inspirations -- the Stoics, Spinoza, and Nietzsche (seriously, how many theologians start their books by big-upping Nietzsche?). And then you realize that he's going into territory you might not be familiar with, even if he's doing so by using a lot of by now rather tired existentialist terminology. By the time he actually gets to the meat of his argument, well, it's a challenging book, regardless of your religious perspectives. The point is that you've been thinking wrong, and that the language of religion has been a giant misdirect. Fuck, it's hard to even call this "Christianity," it's something completely different. Absolutely worth reading for anyone in a perplexed position, and as an agnostic, something bracing, something that signals a way for one to have faith in one's own faithlessness.

[Rowan Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book to be a little repetitive and too academic in its tone. For the subject matter, I'd rather read Rollo May, who happened to be a friend of Tillich's. His writing is more accessible.

[Ade Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most important books I have read. It suggests a clear division between psychopathological anxiety and existential anxiety. It reflects the ancient wisdom that the full self must live with the full and certain knowledge of the abyss and meaninglessness, and that to be acceptable to oneself in the fullest sense of human potential one must first learn to love and tolerate one's own wretchedness.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should probably start and even end with: I have the courage to admit that this is way above my head. I'm not familiar with the Christian theology so cannot comment on how Tillich overrules Aquinas or others or how he brings overcoming "non-being part of being" of Existentialism to “Ground of Being”. His "God above God" sounds like Sirhindi's "Wahdat-as-Shuhud" or Sadra's ontological hierarchy/ grades of being. His "absolute faith" being “ultimate concern” seems to align with Sufi transcending of reason, although Tillich rejects any mystical experience or personal God. Maybe I misunderstood most but enjoyed reading fundamental questions of meaning and dare I read next Heidegger's Being and Time, so help me God!

[Chris M.H · Rating 5 out of 5]

That was some experience.

The ideas and concepts in this book will no doubt stay with me for the rest of my life. Paul Tillich has encouraged me to bear the responsibilities of my existential anxieties, of which a couple I had no notion of before. The Courage to Be, in spite of nonbeing is found in absolute faith, and he defines faith towards the end of the book in a completely radical way to what I’d encountered in my experience in any theism. He describes faith as the courage to accept acceptance despite nonbeing – anxiety of fate and death - not the belief in something metaphysical and unknowable, but a true human quality which we all possess and makes life worth preserving and experiencing.

Reading about the three kinds of existential anxiety from an ontological perspective I found to be extremely disconcerting but also awe inspiring. I knew that the fear of death is something only the human being must contend with but I wasn’t aware that from Tillich's perspective it’s in the background in every moment of our lives in the form of nonbeing which branches into three main existential anxieties; Ontic, Spiritual and Moral.

A couple of passages which really struck me:

“Courage resists despair by taking anxiety into itself” and “Neurosis is the way of avoiding nonbeing by avoiding being.”

What more motivation should you need to welcome and then carry your existential anxieties proudly and without shame. In my amateur view to know that we all contend with universal fears and anxieties, serves only to unite humankind in acceptance and hopefully transcendence rather than polarising groups of people.

Another part I liked – quote from Sartre:

‘“The essence of man is his experience” (…) man creates what he is. Nothing is given to him to determine his creativity. The essence of his being (…) is not something which he finds; he makes it”

I absolutely love the message from this Existential position. It confirms what I and others must feel all along, that we do truly determine our own lives, that our every action matters, perhaps far more than we can ever comprehend and that we should not fail to start or avoid any responsibility we can bear.

[Emre Sevinç · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is powerful stuff people! I must say, echoing John Vervaeke. It also cuts deep.

I learned about Paul Tillich and his most famous book thanks to John Vervaeke's Awakening from the Meaning Crisis lecture series (e.g. see this transcript).

It's difficult to categorize and describe this book, I won't even try to do it justice except for mentioning a few key observations:

- This is no light reading and I can't recommend this book easily to a general audience.
- Having said that, the language, though sophisticated, clear and complex, never becomes obscure.
- For the philosophically mature audience, the author provides ample material to think about.
- For a 71-year-old book, some discussions are outdated but the striking fact is that they constitute only a small part of the book.
- The last few sections demand some serious concentration! Not only your philosophical maturity, but also your intuitive understanding of some matters, inevitably affected by your upbringing, will be tested. You shouldn't be afraid though, because by embracing this challenge and participating in this activity, you'll probably be doing what the author preaches.

On a final note, there's no escaping from the fundamental questions posed by this book, and therefore I expect to come back to these matters in one way or another in the future again. I am thankful for such clear language and setting the frame for tackling these, independent of my agreement or disagreement in particular details.

[Adrienne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I put this book in league with Dennis Brutus (who I also adore) and his poem "Stubborn Hope." Tillich is easy to read, even when he is doing the background philosophy work. I read Tillich when I feel discouraged or disheartened. He makes me feel like the mundane struggles of life have meaning.

[Greg Bell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although Tillich's writing can seem frustratingly academic, the ideas he presents are extremely relevant. He provides a historical framework on the philosophy of courage from Plato to Spinoza and then uses that platform to posit his own reasoning as a religious philosophic. Give this some time to sink in. It's worth it.

Do not read this unless you have some momentum going already.

[Ci · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is related to Tillich’s “Dynamic of Faith” while the Faith is defined as in a state of being “ultimately concerned”. Faith is not religion, and this book is not about searching for a form of religious practice. It is certainly not explicitly promoting Christianity as the conduit for faith. Instead, it is about “Courage” and “To Be” in the ontological sense.

The “Courage to Be” is the operative mode of faith in Tillich sense. Both “courage” and “to be” are used in philosophic and theological sense, far from their common-day usage. Much of the challenge of reading this book is to remind oneself that common words such as “courage”, “to be”, “being/nonbeing”, “anxiety” and “existential” having much tighter philosophic meanings.

First, what is Courage? Starting with soldierly fortitude, Tillich moved on to the Stoic’s courage through control by reason and wisdom, then the self-affirmational Christian courage through Spinoza. But modern world has changed what conditions that challenged one’s courage — from the random fate and destiny of Homer and Seneca’s time to the retrenching of traditional modes of faith in the advance of science and secularism. Courage is the living mode for a life ultimately concerned, a state of being instead of a state of mind or a mood. It is the most vital and stable trait of a person’s life. Perhaps it is best to imagine a life that is not courageous — the negation of one’s fear through submerging into a social whole, the negation of one’s doubts through distraction created by entertainment or activities, and the negation of creative despair through noncreative, empty personal piety. Courage is engagement “in spite of” something repellant, fearful, doubtful and uncertain.

“To Be” is difficult to pin down at my first read. The concept is expounded in lengthy segments in philosophical and theological sense. “To be” confronts the anxiety of non-being, a negation of one’s self in the vast and likely uncaring universe. Existentialism is heavily discussed and differentiated. Can we say Tillich is proposing a Christian Existentialism, solving the problem through Courage instead of Nietzsche’s Will to Power?

However much of the discussion on existential anxiety is lost on me, I infer the “to be” is associated with the mode of being engaged in self-affirmation, through both as a part of something and as an individual. This mode of being is actively aware of the uncertainty and doubt in one’s own life, the constant destruction of non-being inherent in the individual instead of the universal. Self-Affirmation refuses to be submerged into unburdening one’s own anxiety into conventional piety or institutional ideals such as Nationalism or Democracy.

I must read this book again.

*** additional notes

I found most of the concept difficult to digest fully. At this stage, I am holding on to certain literary figures and charactered that have exhibited what I consider Courage.
In the recent television show “True Detective”, we encounter another in the character of Rust Cohle. The fact that Cohle exhibits Stoicism coincides with the starting point of Tillich’s definition of courage through the Stoics such as Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. Courage of the Stoic is a different type from Fortitude, a soldierly virtue. Instead, Courage is the control of reason and self-affirmation, taking in doubt and anxiety into itself. Cohle acts upon his reason while refuses to ease his doubt and anxiety through other social and personal means (such as his college Hart does). Cohle has no delusion of human nature, yet he orients his whole being toward something of infinitely meaning, despite having no visible allegiance to any Ideals. He is a true Stoic, courage with resignation.

Maybe Hamlet is the first character exhibiting Courage to Be, courage despite of his intense reasoning through fogs of uncertainty, doubts and non-being. On the other hand, Camus’s Meursault in “The Stranger” is not courageous in the Tillich sense since he is devoid of any subjectivity. Tillich pointed out that Meursault holds no relationship of self versus his world, no act is meaningful. The Stranger is estranged from all aspects of human conscious life, hence his courage in front of death does not count (page 133).

In the War and Peace, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky instead of Pierre Bezukhof exhibits the centered, grounded courage instead of the transitory enlightenment experienced by the latter. Andrei Bolkonsky is closer to Tillich’s Courage to Be as he moved on from a pure resignation to a state of creative through his actions in the battlefield.

[Josh Issa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tillich’s book is about finding the courage to exist in a world where we are plagued with anxieties. Our anxieties are something that cannot be ignored nor defeated easily. He argues anxiety is something much deeper than fear because fear is related to an object, so overcoming it means to overcome the object, whereas anxiety is a fear of non-being or “nothingness”. There are three types of anxiety he focuses on: of death, of meaninglessness, and of condemnation. He sees these three as challenges that must be overcome through courage to exist in the world.

He proposes that the self cannot overcome anxiety by participation in a collective (such as a religious order or collectivist ideology) because it leads to a partial sacrifice of the self to function in that. He also argues that one cannot root one’s self-affirmation to be in a radical individualism because it is unstable. Rather, anxiety can only be overcome through an absolute state of faith in the God beyond God.

My problem with Tillich always is his dryness and inability to actually interact with theology in a way that satisfies me. His symbolic and psychological analyses are just fine, never spectacular.

“The courage to be which is rooted in the experience of the God above the God of theism unites and transcends the courage to be as a part and the courage to be as oneself. It avoids both the loss of oneself by participation and the loss of one’s world by individualization.”

“The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.”

[Safa Dalal · Rating 3 out of 5]

الكتاب يستفيض عن مشاكل الوجود بما فيها من نزعات قلق واضطراب ويأس وشجاعة لإثبات الوجود وضرورة إثبات النفس بالفعل وإلخ، ولكنني أرى المشكلة تكمن في أنه لا شجاعة عند انتفاء الاختيار، فإننا موجودون لأننا لا نملك العكس، وإننا نفعل ذلك-في أغلب الأوقات- دون أي شجاعة،هكذا مثل كل الأمور الحتمية ، نعم ربما نصاب بهجمات حادة من الرغبة في اللاوجود ،انتكاسات من الهشاشة تجعل كل ما هو موجود غاية في الأذى،وإن الموضوع أحيانا ليتفاقم وينتشر ليؤثر على أغلب قرارات الحياة وغيرها الكثير من الأمور المتعلقة بهذه المعضلة الوجودية، ولكن بعيدا عن كل ذلك فإننا هنا ونتحمل ما يجري لأننا هنا.
ع الهامش:غالبا مشكلتنا تكمن في كيفية الوجود 'رغم القلق أيا كان نوعه' وليست في شجاعة أو جبن الفعل.

[Paul Bard · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tillich in "The Courage to Be" tries to overrule Aquinas, Aristotle and Plato's intelligible, logical and sensible ordering of human goods so that instead of the traditional position of wisdom and justice being the controlling greater goods of the other virtues - that is, of courage, prudence and temperance - courage overrules all other virtues as the highest good.

To this end he begins by misreading Plato's Laches as concluding without any understanding of courage (when in fact it points towards the unity of the virtues of which courage is only one). He then goes on by misunderstanding Socrates' death via Stoicism as a form of middle-class protest. Then he concludes the first chapter by simply failing to comprehend Aquinas' when he talks about contemplation as the highest happiness and reason as the ordering principle of virtues.

In short, Tillich is trying to be progressive and instead being regressive. Good on him.

Unfortunately the traditional balance of goods with courage as thymos based in the heart is simply the self-evident nature of things; and by stripping away the supportive intellectual superstructure and apparatus of tradition, using existentialism, Tillich not only fails to arrive at greater aliveness and authenticity, but he creates an anxiety-inducing failure to explain human conduct, by misinterpreting the work of reason as the work of courage.

Tillich presents his cure of anxiety as intellectual courage, which for him is the same thing as faith. In a typically protestant move, he protests and strips away the intellectual apparatus that Aquinas carefully erected to unify faith and reason.

So basically Tillich is selling us on the God of courage and integrity, which is fine if you want to get through the working day, but if you want to know ultimate truth, then the God of wisdom is the only right way to go.

So, a limited book explaining a limited (but integrous and pleasant) concept of God. Not worth reading and not very entertaining.

[Nicholas Lyell · Rating 1 out of 5]

The whole thing ends up being tautological (courage comes only when you feel despair and meaninglessness and take them into your courage), parochial (only Christianity works for this abstracted, non-theistic pan-entheism), and philosophical word-salad (this is apparently his most accessible work?). Along the way, he makes huge historical sweeps about the spirit of various ages, backfills his theory into each, and ignores all of world and philosophical history outside of Christian Europe with a dash of Judaism.

It all seems written to prove to other academic colleagues who are atheists, that they are, in fact, Christians. At least if they are/want to live a fully courageous life.

If you are thinking about reading it, start with the last chapter. To the extent you find it readable, interesting, or meaningful, read the rest. Otherwise, skip it.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grinnell College's Psychology Department was oriented towards laboratory work. I, being a vegetarian, couldn't participate in much of it. Fortunately, the theoretical side of the field was being handled by the new Religious Studies Department which had a number of psychotherapists as adjuncts and instructors in addition to philosophically inclined senior faculty. My interest in any case was with questions of meaning, those kinds of "psychological" problems which everyone has--or should have at least had. I read Tillich's The Courage to Be in RELST296/Existentialism along with some Victor Frankl, J.P. Sartre, Dostoevsky and Nietszche (my favorite self-help author).

[Mack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one hell of a book, compadres. I don't think I've ever read something that so concisely and incisively describes the history of man's existential anxieties and the ways he's tried to deaden or cure them. It'd be wildly impressive simply as an overview, but the fact Tillich's own commentary is so eloquent and straight-for-the-jugular makes it doubly so. If you spend any time worrying and wondering about the situation we humans have found ourselves in, I really think you owe it to yourself to give this a read.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tillich is one of the giants of 20th century theology and this book is probably the work most accessible to people. The cultural condition he diagnoses is on target, discussing our anxiety in the face of meaninglessness and death. In the face of this, we find God who is beyond our notions of God; God is not a being among other beings but is the ground of being, Being itself. As Tillich says at the highpoint of the book (page 184-the end), "The God of theological theism is a being beside others and as such a part of the whole of reality. He certainly is considered its most important part, but as a part and therefore as subjected to the structure of the whole. He is supposed to be beyond the ontological elements and categories which constitute reality. But every statement subjects him to them..." He goes on. I could quote the rest of the book.

I think Tillich's work is a must-read in the face of Christians who picture God as just the most powerful being and skeptics who ask why we don't jettison "God" if we've jettisoned other gods. Both these pictures of God are simply wrong. David Bentley Hart's work corresponds with Tillich here as he also argues that Christians and atheists both picture a God too small. God is not a part of nature or creation, God is beyond all that. In the midst of the doubt and anxiety in our culture, we have the courage to encounter and embrace and have faith in this God; as Tillich ends the book "The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt".

I'd recommend Christians of all stripes, from liberals to conservatives, give this book a read.

[Marcas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite heavy and often boring, but historically sophisticated, sharply focused on life's central existential questions and Tillich does offer a high resolution map through which to navigate our dominant culture.

Our anxiety is a spiritual one, contrasting with former anxieties in history. There are benefits to our great individualism, but it does create a new kind of anxiety.

Secularist people in particular, left and right, come up with their materialist hero-projects in large part because they cannot live with the existential anxiety behind distinct fears. Tillich is like Becker in this critique, but like Dr Richard Beck, he has a more comprehensive alternative and a Christian faith that frees us from an attachment to anxiety and offers a way to live beyond stoicism, emotivism, or any other isms which rely on the immanent world.

He addresses the critiques of people like Nietzsche firmly, falling neither into the 'god' of sentimentalism nor supposing that the true God is dead. The true God is the God beyond Nietzsche's god and commands our complete existential attention.

His focus on ontology takes us beyond the categories of psychology, which curiously enamour our dominant materialist culture. This is the level upon which the conversation must take place: Being and becoming, as implied by Tillich and fleshed out comprehensively by the great Irish philosopher, Dr William Desmond.

[Ferda Nihat Koksoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Işıklar asla sönmemeli,
Müzik hep çalmalı,
Görelim diye nerede olduğumuzu,
Lanetli bir ormanda kayıp,
Karanlıktan korkan,
Asla mutlu ya da iyi olamamış çocuklar. (G.Orwell)

Varolma cesaretinin kökleri, -Tanrı şüphe kaygısında yok olduğu zaman ortaya çıkan- Tanrı'ya uzanır.
Tanrı'ya dair şüphe olan o köklü şüpheyi içine alan cesaret, Tanrı'ya dair teist düşünceyi aşar, anlamsızlığı ve umutsuzluğu da içine alan Tanrı'ya varır.

[Tuqa Mohammed · Rating 4 out of 5]

الشجاعة من أجل الوجود موضوع هذا الكتاب عن القلق بنوعيه المرضي كما يسميه البعض والقلق الوجودي و طرق التعامل مع كلا نوعين .

[Raoul G · Rating 5 out of 5]

'The Courage to Be' is Paul Tillich's most famous book and was, according to the introduction by Harvey Cox, quite popular even among laypeople. But this doesn't mean that this is an easy read. Tillich is a philosopher after all, and even though the concepts he deals with, such as anxiety, death, guilt, meaning, faith and others are important and his language is quite concise, the nature of the subjects require quite abstract thinking at times.

The first chapter is quick tour through the history of philosophy concerning the meaning of courage. Here he looks at Plato, Aquinas, Seneca, Spinoza and Nietzsche. His own definition of the 'courage to be', which lends the book its title, is probably closest to Nietzsche's 'will to power' and Spinoza's 'conatus '. Tillich is talking about something beyond the subject-object divide. It is not something psychological in our minds, it is in ourselves, in our whole being. Affirming life is putting your consciousness in line with your being which is already pulsating with that reality of the courage to be.

In the second chapter he explains this in more detail saying that "courage is self-affirmation 'in spite of,' that is in spite of that which tends to prevent the self from affirming itself". In an existentialist fashion, he thus defines being against the backdrop of nonbeing. This also leads him to a discussion of anxiety, which is "the state in which a being is aware of its possible nonbeing".
This discussion of anxiety was one of my favorite parts of the book. According to Tillich anxiety is an existential condition and not just something certain people experience. He describes three forms in which anxiety manifests itself in our lives:
There is ontic anxiety, which is related to fate and death, moral anxiety, which has to do with guilt and condemnation, and finally there is spiritual anxiety, which regards emptiness and, in its absolute form, meaninglessness.

These three main forms of anxiety are often intertwined but still Tillich traces each of them back to a period in history when they were predominant. The ontic anxiety was prevalent in the ancient world, which conceived of the human life as in the hand of the gods and subject to fate.
"... the individual's feeling of being in the hands of powers, natural as well as political, which are completely beyond his control and calculation - all this produced a tremendous anxiety and the quest for courage to meet the threat of fate and death."
In the medieval period the ontic anxiety was partly overcome by the christian beliefs promoted by the church, in a life after death and in God's providence. But in this period the moral anxiety grew stronger. This anxiety was related to guilt and the possibility of condemnation if one fails to live up to the standards of the divine.
"The anxiety of condemnation symbolized as the 'wrath of God' and intensified by the imagery of hell and purgatory drove people of the late Middle Ages to try various means of assuaging their anxiety..."
The reformation helped to engage this anxiety and partially relieved people of moral anxiety. But it was not until the age of Enlightenment that the third type of anxiety, spiritual anxiety, became dominant:
"The breakdown of absolutism, the development of liberalism and democracy, the rise of a technical civilization with its victory over all enemies and its own beginning disintegration - these are the sociological presuppositions for the third main period of anxiety."

The third chapter is a discussion about pathological anxiety and its relation to the existential anxiety Tillich is talking about. Here he also points out the differences in the roles of the priest and the therapist in helping people address these two different types of anxiety.

What comes next is a look at different approaches of overcoming anxiety through participation. Here Tillich describes and gives historical examples of primitive collectivism, semi-collectivism and neo-collectivism. Neo-collectivism is probably the most interesting one of these. It arises in a historical period of extreme individualization as a response to the anxiety of the own finitude, guilt and meaninglessness. The nazism, communism and fascism of the 20th century are examples for this. They try to repress individualism in a totalitarian way:
"In this way the anxiety of individual nonbeing is transformed into anxiety about the collective, and anxiety about the collective is conquered by the courage to affirm oneself through participation in the collective."

In the fifth chapter Tillich takes a closer look at Existentialism. Existentialism, just as depth psychology, affirms that the individual is not just a part of the whole, but that there is something unique about every person and her subjectivity. Furthermore, as Sartre points out, man is condemned to a radical freedom: the freedom to decide who to be and what do with one's life. This is the central claim of Existentialism: existence precedes essence. There is no essence, no idea of what we as humans ought to be that we receive from a divine authority and there is no meaning arising out of nature. There is only the meaning we create by living in a meaningful way. This of course is also a huge responsibility that one is tempted to renounce. In Tillich's analysis, this is what happened in the 20th century with a massive return to collectivism (nazism, communism, fascism). Here the individual's freedom is given up, but even the giving up of the freedom in this way is a decision freely taken and one for which one is ultimately radically responsible for.

The last chapter gets really theological. Here Tillich explains his concepts of the 'God above God' and 'absolute faith'.
The God which is transcended through the 'God above God' is the cosmological God, which is the understanding of God as some kind of super-being. Tillich finds the idea of God as being unacceptable and argues for the notion of God as the ground of being. In another essay by Tillich called 'Two Types of Philosophy of Religion (1946)', which I strongly recommend, he calls this an ontological notion of God.
Following his critique of theism is this excerpt in which he defines 'absolute faith':
"Theism in all its forms is transcended in the experience we have called absolute faith. It is the accepting of the acceptance without somebody or something that accepts. It is the power of being-itself that accepts and gives the courage to be."
And:
"The content of absolute faith is the 'God above God'. Absolute faith and its consequence, the courage that takes the radical doubt, the doubt about God, into itself, transcends the theistic idea of God."

The contents of this book will stay with me a long while. Especially the last chapter is something that I will have to chew on a bit more. But I can already recognize that what Tillich gave the world through this book and other books is something precious. As Robert Neeley Bellah said: "I was one of those many whom Paul Tillich showed that Christian faith did not have to be 'belief in the unbelievable'." At least he helped me to see one possible way in which the words 'faith' and 'God' can still have meaning and power even after the 'death of God' experienced in radical doubting.

[Anmol]

I was underwhelmed by this, not because of its ideas - the "God above God" and "the God who appears after God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt" all sounds very interesting - but my problem with this text is that Tillich doesn't get to any of these ideas till the last ten pages. Too much time is spent doing a whole historical overview of Western philosophy in terms of courage - from the courage of the Stoic and the Christian, to the courage of existentialism, and up to the question of a new courage needed today to affirm God in spite of our chaotic world, to affirm Being despite seeing only non-being (becoming). What do we need to do today? Who is this God above God, and how can he be affirmed in our lives? What is the quality of this courage that is required? And how is this courage not just a recoil from embracing our meaninglessness? Tillich doesn't speak enough about that, at least in this book.

[Natasha Witmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow this was tough. Probably I shouldn’t have read it during the incredible low point in mental agility brought on by early pregnancy. Or perhaps I’m just comforting myself.

High points.
I gained some new language for thinking about ontology and anxiety.

And these.
“The courage to take the anxiety of meaninglessness upon oneself is the boundary line up to which the courage to be can go. Beyond it is mere non-being.”

“The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.”

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to preface this review by saying that it is destined to be woefully inadequate. In all likelihood I only comprehended a portion of Tillich's ideas - but even for that I am better.

Tillich clearly distinguishes fear from anxiety. Fear, he says, necessarily has an object which can be attacked and conquered by courage. Conversely, anxiety, which he describes as the awareness of potential non-being, has no definite object and thus results in human impotence. According to Tillich, anxiety can manifest itself ultimately in three forms - death (ontological anxiety), condemnation (moral anxiety), and meaninglessness (spiritual anxiety). While these are all pervasive, each anxiety corresponds significantly to different moments in history as the defining problem of humanity in that era. To Tillich, and most existentialists, spiritual anxiety is the greatest challenge for modern people. That is to say we are plagued by doubt which ultimately manifests itself in the fear that life is meaningless.

I particularly enjoyed Tillich's statement that fear and anxiety are guardians of being by indicating the threat of non-being and producing a human reaction. Anxiety, he says, turns us towards courage, because the other alternative is despair - the victory of non-being, the elimination of hope. Courage resists despair by taking non-being into itself, that is to say it must take the non-being of anxiety into itself.

It is this courage that stands in opposition to anxiety. Specifically, it is the courage to be - the act of affirming ones own being despite those elements of existence that conflict with self affirmation. Courage is the power of life to affirms itself in spite of ambiguity. This must necessarily involve a courage in participation and courage as an individual. It can't simply be human courage as a participant in a collective because this can result in meaning being solely derived from the group; the courage of an individual must be the courage to follow reason and defy irrational authority. The self, however, is only the self because it is part of the world and the courage to be thus must embrace participation.

Here, Tillich unveils existentialism as a path to the most radical form of the courage to be. This is because it demands involvement and participation instead of a theoretical or detached approach to life. That is to say it embraces meaninglessness; it calls meaningful any attempt to describe the meaninglessness of our situation. It is rebellion; it is a protest against the meaninglessness. This is important in understanding Tillich's final courage to be since it must be a courage which takes anxiety into itself.

Many attempts have been made throughout history to describe a courage that overcomes all forms of ultimate anxiety, but Tillich says they all fall short in at least one capacity. It is here that he introduces his notion of the courage to accept being accepted. Rephrased, it is the courage to accept oneself as accepted despite being unacceptable. It is not the good or wise or pious who receive the courage to accept acceptance, but those who are lacking in all of these qualities and are aware of being unacceptable. In accessing this love of self beyond oneself (I would call that grace), courage is able to overcome the anxiety of condemnation. This acceptance by God is the only and ultimate source of courage to be which is able to take the anxiety of guilt and condemnation into itself. Additionally, man can overcome the anxiety of fate and death by elevating the soul from the finite to the infinite (I would say chiefly in the theology of resurrection). Thus the doctrine of Providence reflects a courage of confidence, a courage to be which says "in spite of" even to death and takes the anxiety of fate into itself. Tillich insists that both of these require faith. Not faith as the belief in something unbelievable, but faith as the existential acceptance of something transcending ordinary experience. Thus, faith is not an opinion. It is the state of a man who is grasped by the power of being, the divine, and is able to affirm himself because he is affirmed by the power of being.

So this leaves Tillich with the question "can this faith, this courage, which accepts acceptance resist the power of non-being in its most radical form? Can faith resist meaninglessness?" The answer is yes. Actually, despair and doubt are necessary for faith. The act of accepting meaninglessness is in itself a meaningful act. It is an act of faith. It is the church under the cross which can alone do this; the church which preaches the crucified who cried to God who remained his god after the god of confidence had left him in the darkness of doubt. This is the courage to be which takes into itself the anxiety of doubt and meaninglessness. It affirms the suffering of life instead of rose coloring it in fantasy. To be part of such a church is to receive a courage to be in which one cannot lose one's self and in which one receives the world. That is to say it is a courage to be a participant and an individual.

The courage to be, finally, is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. 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 - and this courage has revealing power.

[J.D. Steens · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has two overarching themes that Tillich ties together. First, the modern age is plagued with anxiety, which is an awareness of our potential for "non-being." The three threats to "being" are death, emptiness and loss of meaning, and self-condemnation about not fulfilling our destiny. The result, despair, can be addressed only by an affirmation of our essence, our true self, which is our reason that allows us to participate in universal reason and the cosmic logos. Taking that affirmative step is one component of "the courage to be." Second, this is the realm not of the gods, but of Being itself that transcends space and time. It is the realm of "God above God," and our mystic union with it enables us to "participate in the self-affirmation of being-itself". In this "personal encounter with God," we can negate "non-being" through "divine forgiveness" and "grace," and leave our non-transcendent fears and desires behind. But this also requires us to accept our "entrance" into this transcendent realm. "It is the accepting of the acceptance without somebody or something that accepts," he says. This act of accepting requires affirmation on our part. It is a "spiritual or intellectual love". It too constitutes the courage to be.

Tillich's theology is not the stuff of biological self-affirmation dedicated to survival. That is too earth-bound, with no way to transcend our fear of death, and our boundedness to the realm of desire, including the desire to live beyond death. Humanism rejects the idea of salvation, but it does not address our existential problem because it also rejects the renunciation of this world of desire. While the affirmation of the essential self "is identical with the power of Brahman," Indian mysticism's focus on other worldly union leaves the problem of meaninglessness in this world behind. In Tillich's theology, our existential condition in this world results in neurosis where we avoid "non-being by avoiding being." Its correction means "being in this world" and requires our participation in a world beyond the self and a generosity toward others.

The reference to generosity towards others seems incidental to Tillich's theology. His focus is on a personal encounter with the divine to deal with one's despair and this seems strikingly self-oriented. While the reference to "God above God" is clear enough, a question nevertheless is why there is this reference to "God" at all? In reading Tillich, there is a sense that he has acknowledged that a theistic God in this day is not tenable so he raises the bar by creating a God above God and, for now, he has inoculated his ultimate reality from the acids of modernity. A problem here is that his theology keeps hope alive in the sense that, while there's no place in heaven for humankind, we can participate in an eternal order nevertheless. If God as personal deity no longer works, maybe God as eternal order will. On these matters of faith and grace, of course, we each find our own way. For those who are less certain than Tillich, it could be that real courage is to accept our utter finitude straight up and take our rightful place in the order of the universe that way. Rather than fighting this life, it could be that we can then experience its pleasures, including those derived from a generosity for others, as well as its pain. Is Tillich's God necessary for that?

[B. Rule · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tillich lays out the problem of meaninglessness (and what he calls broadly "Existentialism") with elegant parsimony and inexorable explication. It's one of the best accounts I've read of the history of philosophy from an existential perspective and I was doubly impressed by how compact he managed to make it. His move at the end to explain "the courage to be" as a faith in "God above God", while inspiring, left me a little confused. As best as I can tell, the "God above God" can really be nothing more than being-itself if it is to preserve the anxiety of meaninglessness within it as Tillich describes. Thus, while I admired his account, I'm not sure how satisfying his ultimate theological program can be. It appears to be simply marveling at the power (aka the sheer cussed existing-ness) of being despite all the existential despair of meaninglessness that the thinking and feeling person must derive from an encounter with the world. Maybe that the best answer there is, but also kinda depressing? I guess maybe that's his point. Also, Tillich owes enormous, unpaid debts to Kierkegaard for all of his categories of analysis. Amusingly, SK gets only a couple offhand mentions in this volume. P.S. I highlighted basically half of this book. It's good.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I had read The Courage To Be years ago when I bought it, I would have given it five stars. It is cerebral and insightful and at the time I was into such books - I was reading Erich Fromm, Kierkegaard, et.al. But I have taken up Zen Buddhism since then and I found TCTB too abstract and cerebral for my present tastes. It is a fine book to occupy your mind, but it did not encourage my heart or transform my being.