Tillich and the Courage to Be - Part Three

I've been incredibly busy at work the last few weeks - six trials over less than two weeks. I have one this week, but it shouldn't be too bad and it is nice to turn my attention to Tillich again - continuing my journaling of reading The Courage to Be again.

After his discussion of "Courage and Fortitude" Tillich, in The Courage to Be, turns to the "Courage and Wisdom: the Stoics." Tillich says that Stoicism is the "only real alternative to Christianity" in the Western world.

The Courage to be in Stoicism is based on the centrality of Reason in being. But this is not reason in the sense of logic. Tillich says

Reason for the Stoics is the Logos, the meaningful structure of reality as a whole and of the human mind in particular.... [R]eason is man's true or essential nature, in comparison with which everything else is accidental. The courage to be is the courage to affirm one's own reasonable nature over against what is accidental in us. (Courage at 12-13.)

The enemies of this Reason are desires and fear. The Stoics, Tillich says, knew (long before FDR said it) that what we have most to fear is "fear itself." Each day we live brings us closer to death. The "final hour" doesn't cause that - it is intrinsic to life itself and the fear of death arriving (since it always is anyway) is illusory.

There is a distinguishing here between natural and unnatural desires. They are not saying all desire is bad or needs to be extinguished. But "natural" desire, they argue, is limited. Our desires that come from "false opinions" are unlimited and transcend our needs and therefore "any possible satisfaction." The truly wise person affirms their participation in the universal and therefore transcends the fear of death or even "the gods."

There is also an interesting distinction between God's reaction to suffering and the human one. The Stoic, Tillich says, believed that God is beyond suffering while human beings are able to suffer but can rise above it. Human beings need not "let suffering conquer the center of his [or her] rational being." In this way the wise human is actually "above" God who is "beyond" suffering, not above it. Tillich says this distinction (between being "beyond" and being "above") illustrates the main difference between the "resignation" in Stoicism and the "salvation" qualities in Christianity.

What Tillich says the Stoic doesn't explain is how the human being becomes "wise" or Reason-Centered. They acknowledged that most people were not wise but instead were "fools" in relation to their system - in the bondage of desires and fears. Most people, they thought, were in conflict with their essential nature of Reason and therefore "unable to affirm their essential being courageously." (p. 16.) What is missing, Tillich says, for the Stoic is that absent from the Stoic's despair is personal guilt. He notes Socrates saying that he has never done anything wrong in public or private life. The Stoics had a "general attitude of superiority" and does not see the universal fall from essential rationality as a reason for guilt. The courage to be of the Stoic is the courage "to affirm oneself in spite of fate and death, but it is not the courage to affirm oneself in spite of sin and death." (p. 17.)