This book is almost 70 years old. To set the stage, Paul Tillich wrote while Camus, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger were de rigueur. The French Postmodernists—Derrida, Lyotard, and Focault—had not yet upended the scene. Despite its context, The Courage to Be has a staying power evidenced by its third printing in 2014. There must be some truth to it.

A Phenomenology of Anxiety and Courage

The Modern world is marked by anxiety which leads to despair. This anxiety is distinguished from fear in that fear has an object where anxiety has none. The object of anxiety is “the negation of every object” (35), or non-being. This anxiety manifests in three major ways (38–53):

1. The fear of death threatens humanity’s ontic self-affirmation.
2. The fear of emptiness and meaninglessness threatens humanity’s spiritual self-affirmation.
3. The fear of guilt and condemnation threatens humanity’s moral self-affirmation.

In view of this character of despair it is understandable that all human life can be interpreted as a continuous attempt to avoid despair. And this attempt is mostly successful. (53)

Humans stand up against despair in two primarily ways. The first form is collectivist, the “courage to be as a part” (79–103). Here, humanity finds the courage to resist threefold despair by participation is a larger group of people. The second form is existential, “the courage to be as oneself” (105–42). In this form, each human finds the courage to resist despair in their own individuality.

Neither of these forms of courage are sufficient, although both are necessary. The courage to be as a part eventually leads to the “loss of the self in collectivism” (142), while the courage to be as oneself eventually leads to the “loss of the world in Existentialism” (142).

In the final chapter, Tillich speak of the “courage to accept acceptance” (143–75). Ultimately, the courage to take on the three-fold anxiety and overcome it must be rooted in “a power of being that is greater than the power of oneself and the power of one’s world” (143). This power of being is the “God above God” (167) in which theism is transcended. This courage takes the form of faith which is “the state of being grasped by the power of being-itself.”

The final two sentences of The Courage to Be bring Tillich’s argument to a point:

[A]ll forms of courage are re-established in the power 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. (175)

Some Brief Thoughts

A brief disclaimer. I’m no expert on Tillich. I know enough to understand his stature in Twentieth-Century philosophy of religion, but I’m not well versed in his Systematic Theology. The thoughts that follow are simply my initial reaction to The Courage to Be.

I can understand why The Courage to Be is a true classic. Tillich’s diagnosis of human anxiety is careful and thorough. He offers a detailed historical and phenomenological statement of the human condition, made visible and acute by the rise of Existentialism. He managed to bring Existential despair and Christian faith into a generative conversation that remained philosophically faithful to existential problems.

I expected to resist Tillich here because Existentialism generally skews toward individualism, which in its extreme form is antithetical to the Christian vision. Tillich was clear, however, in defining what he meant by Existentialism, and argued that the courage to “be as a part” (79–103) is not something to be dismissed.

Here’s what bothers me about Tillich’s answer: it is profoundly otherworldly. The centre of the Christian faith is the Word who became flesh at a unique point in human history. In The Courage to Be, the historical particulars of the faith are eclipsed by the “God above God” (167). In one sense, Tillich’s transcendent vision of the ‘ground of being’ is utterly majestic and humbling. Unfortunately, it crowds out the earthy imminence of the Word-became-flesh.

Tillich may have provided a good answer to an existential problem, but his solution is only half of the answer. Until the transcendent Word becomes imminent flesh, we’re still alone.

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Tillich, Paul. The Courage to Be. 1952. 3rd ed., Yale UP, 2014.