Markus Buntfuss on Tillich's Aesthetic

Presentation

Paul Tillich distinguishes himself by his qualities of theology, but also his ability to process his experiences and reading productively. By distinguishing between the church theologian and the cultural theologian Tillich basically described himself as hunting for traces of the Divine. Thus Tillich took material from other disciplines as heuristics for the analysis of the modern change of religion. His theory of art and perception are key for his theory of culture. The description of the problems of art and religion in the modern help each other. Art & Society (1952) asks how religious symbols could be expressed in art under the conditions of modernity. Dead symbols cannot be revived, and art cannot use forms that do not support the independent. Similar to the position of modernity in the 18th century, there is no solid tradition nor a solid form palette available. Thus a spontaneous synergy between creativity and religious sensibility can lead to new religious art. This inspirational topic, taken from the genius discussion, is coined as spiritual radicalism for Tillich. This constellation is not just illustrative, but a constitute functional role for Tillich. 

The analysis of religious modernity cannot be analyzed with the modern aesthetic. This line starts with Kloppstock in Pietismus, goes on via Herder and Schleiermacher and Lebrecht-Dewett, and Paul Tillich continues this line. But Tillich participates through rejections in this story, and thereby participates in the spirit of modernity. The avantgarde has to separate itself, esp from the bourgeois, but Tillich wants to understand how to aestheticize religion. Tillich's theory reaches back to Georg Simmel's sketches of an aesthetic religious approach. 

The aesthetic modernity and Protestant Christianity go together in the discussion. Modernity is what Tillich calls Expressionism, and begins at the End of the 19th century. Or one takes the macro-epoch, which can start with the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, or Romanticism. The terminology according to Habermas comes from the aesthetic discussion. The sense of time is modern, and there is a lost epoch and an unretrievable past; there is also an acceleration of the time experience, which are experienced as unstoppable. The claim that there is no alternative to modernity was especially an artistic claim. Only the Frontier of aesthetics is worth living at. Avantgard wanted to be ahead of the Times and prophetic leaders of society.

Tillich replicates this in the sense of rejection the bourgeois notions of art. He wanted an avantgard with a socialistic utopian streaks. The current moment, which Tillich was ready to call a kairos, was thus possibly theological. The only way of showing anything was therefore the holy emptiness. The accelerating time generated a sense for and search of alternate times; this lead to a revival of the eternity feeling. 

An expression of modern freedom is the character of the open, experimental and fragmentary work of art; because it emphasis the artistic genius. Reflexive self-consciousness permits spontaneity. This can be mapped onto the aesthetic effect, so that the receptive act becomes akin to a religious revelatory experience. Tillich calls this the Durchbruch and associates with the Boticelli painting in Berlin. The Durchbruch becomes a topos; the expressionism is tasked with fracturing the existing forms with new contents. This is indeed very modern aesthetically.

Modernity tosses out the kalistethic, so that the beauty is replaced with the investigations into the ugly, disgusting and troubling. The aesthetic of the ugly points to the experience of negativity of modernity. Alternatively, there are alternate modernities, where these contradictions are worked out and put into a relationship. The motive of aesthetic negative is found in Tillich's culture idea. This is coupled with the demonic, where the Schelling notion of Grauen blows up from the depths. There is a general ambivalence, which is prophetic-utopian and in the later works pneumatological, understood.

There is a sense of krisis, due to the radical subjectification, that points to another negativity of Modernity. The rapid changes is a complex field of structural modifications and ruptures. Simmel pointed out the identity threatening elements, and the Frankfurter Institute studied this; Adorno works out an aesthetic of this. But Tillich is anti-natural and anti-bourgeois in this context. 

Modernity is a complex dynamic of secularization and re-sacralization in aesthetics. Art and Religion as well as Kunstreligion were connected by Schleiermacher, but the Kunstreligion is also found in the modern art discourse. Is it is a replacement, or a reformulation of the confessional church into a private religion of aesthetics for the educated. Tillich rejects the Kunstreligion, because it is too 19th-century for him. The Arts have received a massive focus, so that the followers of Kant and Fichte replaced the Church with the Art. WW1 stopped this for Tillich, but that was a common historical narrative then. There were other people (Stefan George, Rainer Marie Rilke, etc ...) who saw this differently. Tillich sees Religion as the symbol for the depth structure of the Unbedingte.

Modern religion and modern aesthetic can be wrappers for Tillich's cultural religion. There is a specific affinity between them, as Schleiermacher noted. Religion loses its explanatory power for the world, and the expressions are transformed into symbolic forms, which hint toward transcendency. In the anthropological turn, the target is either the moral or the aesthetic form of the individual. Tillich worked this option out paradigmatically for the aesthetic. But under the acceleration of time, religion now needs to permanently re-actualize itself and replace its symbol palette; and the liturgical reform attempts underscore this issue. At the end is the holy emptiness, as Tillich noted.

Discussion

• FW had a moral and absolutist interpretation of Tillich; does this interact with the aesthetic approach, or are their overlaps, or do they exclude each other? The suggestion is to use a complementary explication of Tillich; take the second creator of Shaftsbury, which passes through Schelling and others through to Tillich.
• Symbols have a dynamic, but they have a life, and they can end.
• In the degeneration of the normative claims of dogmatics, especially when the sola scriptura breaks apart (e.g. Robert Laus (sp???) and the Psalms of the Hebrews), there is a reach for aesthetic terminology, while the autonomous art of the same time reaches for religious terminology. 

Details

• Markus Buntfuss, Paul Tillich und der ästhetische Diskurs der Moderne.

Erdmann Sturm Tillich and Politics

Presentation

Politics as Science within the system of sciences, which for Tillich was a complex science. This means that it has a social-technical and a normative science. Social-technical are bureaucracy, diplomacy and sciences of war (all sciences of being); but the normative element is missing, and that's the input of politics and gets there from the human spirit. Politics is practical sense-founding; art is theoretical sense-founding. Social relationships are the foundation, and Tillich cites Law and Community. Community is closer to irrational and content-driven. Both are forms of the conditioned (Bedingte). The transcendending is toward the ethos, the unconditional form (Unbedingte); a Law lacking this link would oscillate between formalism and Willkür. Ethics is the science of the ethos. There is no theonomic Law or Community; but there is the possibility of a theonomic ethos. Law and Community can thus be founded in the theonomic ethos, if that possibility arises. This is squarely within the cultural theology and the sense theory (the conditional sense, here). All of this remains abstract, there are no concrete decisions.

Between 1919 and 1932 Tillich wrote on religious socialism, where he made concrete statements about the politics. Der Sozialismus als Kirchenfrage (1919) argues that Christian love rejects a society that is based on economic and political egoism; he wants a community-based society, and he glosses that as Socialism. Tillich hopes for a new world of unity; Christianity can achieve a new synthesis here by supporting this development. The Kairos circle around Tillich discussed the problem of the Utopia, since the Kingdom of God cannot be realized in this world. The Kairos is supposed to replace the Utopia, which means that a demand and an expectation appears in historical time of the Kingdom of God. The demonic is both good and bad, sense-fulfilled and sense-destroying. Within history the demonic cannot be destroyed, only identified and named and politically to be placed in check. Theonomy means that an autonomous form of sense is carried through the Unbedingte; but the autonomy term is here difficult to interpret. The socialism was no new economic system, but the Kairos explication of theonomy, the demanded and expected appearance. Tillich kept fighting against the bourgeois sentiment. Die Sozialistische Entscheidung ist the last statement, where Tillich tries to get the socialism to have a sensible notion of state and power. Democracy is a hiding place for the bourgeois; democratically it cannot be decided, who should rule. The democratic principle is not constitutive for Tillich, neither power nor social state aspects require it, but a corrective principle. Tillich thus rejected the Weimarer democratic republic. 

Reich Gottes und Geschichte is a study by Tillich presented in Oxford, where he as a Lutheran analyzes the political notion of the Kingdom of God of the Calvinistic Anglican tradition (see also Eschatologie und Geschichte of Dresden, and rejects thereby his Frankfurter socialism). The Kingdom of God is a symbol of the final sense of existence, including the final victory over the demonic powers of the Past and the Present. Christus is for Christianity the mid-point of history; he is the single kairos. There might be other kairoi, which actualize that one kairos. Tillich identifies three demons: capitalism, nationalism, totalitarianism. Totalinarism is tyranny and is judged by the union of Love and Power, which is symbolized by the Kingdom of God. Tillich attacks the religious worship for the dictator, the creation of martyrs in the strict sense; Christianity should defend liberty, autonomy, because every child is potentially a child of God. All three demons pursue the Western world into self-destruction; the kairos is the positive principle that makes sense of this development. The Church has to distinguish itself from these demons and prepare for a new existence; for the Hidden Church this means that she needs to realize the Kingdom of God---Autonomy against Capitalism, Unity against Nationalism, God-likeness against the Dictatorship. The new aspect here is it the criticism of the power, and the identification of justice as worth of humans.

"Man is finite freedom." and thus rejects all utopia. Man's freedom is connected to tragedy---a line that runs from the Greek writers to Augustine and Luther. Mensch und Gesellschaft im religiösen Sozialismus (1943) discusses whether personal creative freedom is also political freedom. Tillich wanders through literature and continents to find out that personal freedom does not coincide with political freedom. Tillich again argues against representative democracy, because there are other forms of political self-decision. These other forms, such as communes, Sowjets, societies and clans, provide potentially stronger venues for creative freedom, than democracy does. Justice demands through natural law via the essential structure of humanity that no accidental differentiator has a stronger weight than the essential nature of mankind. Tillich focuses on this justice even more ontologically in his later writing.

In his systematic writing, Tillich looks at Justice one more time, the correlation of live and divine spirit. The creative work includes the creation of society, and justice is its top-most principle. But justice has ambivalences, and these arise when justice is implemented: The Presence of the Divine Spirit and the Ambivalences of Everyday Life. The ambivalences are those of : membership, equality, leadership, and law. The injustice of ambivalence is tackled by the inclusiveness of the realization of the divine spirit in the Christian churches; no one is excluded. The exclusivity of family is overcome through friendship, and friendship through larger communities. The divine spirit fights against exclusion and against identity destruction of the community. Inequalities come into being continuously---family, school, political power struggle, discussions---but under the divine spirit all are equal. In the Divine Spirit community the equality and the inequality are united; but inequality is judged, because it cannot be used to permanently damage or obscure equality. Leadership and power are necessary to lead groups; true leadership respects the individual, but the leadership is a member of other social systems as well, and represents their interests in the present time. Within the Divine Spirit, leaders can overcome by making themselves an object of their own leadership. However, Tillich sees here only the democratic idea, not a special form of the democratic system. The civil and penal laws are also oriented toward justice, but often end in injustice; externally this is because of the authorities that create, interpret and apply the laws and express the socio-economic classes involved; the interior ambivalence is its abstractness of formulation, which makes its mapping to a concrete situation problematic. The Divine Spirit can help because it can bring theonomic quality to the justice process. Every judgement expresses the spirit of the judge. The abstractness can be overcome by the theonomic inspiration of the wisdom of the judge.

The ethos must be the basis of Law, which is a Neo-Kantian move. Theonomic law making is the working of the Divine Spirit who utilizes the prophetic self-criticism of those that are responsible for the Law. The Divine Spirit uses the Human Spirit and its power of Self-Criticism.

Discussion

• Even Bonhoeffer was unhappy with US democracy in 1939.
• Tillich's focus on the wisdom of the judge would be replaced nowadays by the process.
• Tillich was chief editor of a newspaper paid for the by SPD, had to be forced to be a member, and left as soon as he could.
• The classical excuse for the intellectuals was that they would be above and outside of all parties and politics; there are studies for this for the German bourgeois by historians. Here Tillich was possibly a socio-economic reflex of Tillich's heritage.
• Mass-democratic is an anti-hierarchical society. 

Details

• Erdmann Sturm, Tillichs Philosophie des Politischen
• Prof Sturm's publication work has fronted the German and early Tillich by making all of the German Nachlass available, e.g. the lectures from Frankfurt, etc.

Angela Opel on Tillich's Aesthetic

Presentation

[Image: Kandinsky, Improvisation 26, 1912, Munich, Lenbachhaus.] {{FN: Tillich used him and showed this picture, which belongs into the German expressionism, but not as much as one would have hoped.}}

Art is revelation of the last reality; art can be religious if it expresses the experience of last sense or last reality. This is handled via his notion of style. The artist makes it possible, to reveal to the observer things that were not understood, known or appreciated before. The interruption of the trusted view of the world is the goal. The aesthetic claim is that the observer needs to step into the work of art. 

Tillich's treatment of works, vocabulary and styles is ideosyncratic, which makes the reception of his take difficult for the art historians. 

In terms of language, Tillich reuses technical languages of the art historians but with a morphed sense. 

[Willem van de Velde, Ruhige See -- Holländische Schiffe gehen vor Anker, 1665-70]

Tillich couples style and motives, claiming that it expresses the theological stance of a time. Style for Tillich implies motives, but that is thinking about it the wrong way. 

[Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Straßenszene, 1913]

The expressive element is important for Tillich, which he enumerates in the styles that he was interested in, brings up the depth of the elements. He then has reasons for how this applies to each style. This differs from the art historical take on expressionism, where colors and line forms and closeness of composition. Sometimes his style claims end up being mannerisms. This skips the meaning that the distortions have. Tillich needed a religious contents which was independent of the picture contents, and chose the style. 

[Caspar David Friedrich, Der Mönch am Meer, 1810]

Only Expressionism in the sense of Tillich expresses the religious ground; but what about Caspar David Friedrich, who was looking for new ways of talking about religion, esp. the landscape. At the End of the 1910s and 1920s, there is such a plurality of geneses of styles that such approaches as Tillich's cannot succeed.

[Gustave Courbet, Steineklopfer, 1849/50]

[Louis-Robert Carrier-Belleuse, Mehlträger, 1885, Musée du Petit Palais]

Tillich has a similar problem with realism (e.g. Steineklopfer). But there is also Naturalism (Mehltäger). Idealism is an elimination of realism, by transcending the reality to improve its depiction.

[Rene Magritte, La trahison des images (Ceci n'est pas une pipe), 1929, Los Angeles, County Museum]

[Joseph Kosuth, One and three chairs, 1965, New York, Museum of Modern Art]

Tillich's work with symbol of the artist is either more or less differentiated than what the art historians do.

[Jacopo Pontormo, Kreuzabnahme, 1525, Florenz, Sta. Felicita, Cappela Capponi]

[Max Beckmann, Kreuzabnahme, 1917 New York, Museum of Modern Art]

Tillich seemed dependent on Georg Simmel, Hartlaubs und von Sydow, which saw in expressionism a restart of religion. 

[Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Strassenszene, 1913]

[Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Farbentanz I, 1930/32, Ingeborg Dr. Wolfgang Henze-Ketterer, Wichtrach/Bern.]

Tillich's approach also makes it impossible to see the development of the artists, as the comparison of Kirchner's works. 

[Paul Cezanne, Stilleben vor Kommode, 1883/1887, Munich, Neue Pinakothek]

[Fritz von Uhde, Lasset die Kindlein zu mir kommen, 1884, Leipzig, Museum der Bildenden Künste]

Tillich saw less Christian truth in von Uhde than in Cezanne, even if during his life von Uhde was a much awarded and rewarded artist, even receiving a doctorate in theology, h.c., from the University of Leipzig.

[Sandor Botticelli, Madonna mit Kund und singenden Engeln, sog. Raczynski-Tondo, 1646-1485, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, SMPK]

This picture was very important to Tillich and had given him strength in WW1, and exposed to Tillich something akin to an revelation. 

However, a tondo must show something important (and not the kitchen); it is an devotional painting of the 16th century, since the private devotion requests these images. The fact that the Madonna shows the knees puts her very close, she looks over the audience to the distance, but the Christ child looks at the observer. The angels are in a turn-based song (left are quiet and look at observer, right are moving their lips). The look at the observer invites the observer in.

Tillich works both collage-like and fragmenting. His attempts of art theology cannot be fitted back into the art history. Thus he cannot participate in the art philosophy, and more background there would be necessary. Sometime Tillich simplifies, skips, or misunderstands, and thereby becomes ahistorical. 

[Der Deutsche Werkbund]

All art has a context. Tillich's theology of art has such a context as well. He saw pictures in the magazines in the trenches, as well as the reading of Simmel, Hartlaub und Eckart von Sydow. Already in Berlin up to 1924 does Tillich include art in his lectures.  

In the USA, Tillich lost a bit of the immediate contact to the art world, even though he lectured at the Museum of Modern Art. But there is a gap from 1936 to 1952 that Tillich basically misses, including Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Rauschenberg, etc.

Tillich helped with an exhibit of religious art at the Chicago Art Institute. He was a member of a commission in 1955 that chose 58 depictions of religious art 

[Sog. Hemstedter Crucifix, 1060, Essen Werden]

[Roy Lichtenstein, Engagement Ring, 1961.]

[Tom Wesselman, Still Life, 1963, New York Museum of Modern Art (?)] 

[Robert Rauschenberg, Inside-Out, 1962, Düsseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen]

These were some of the first times that Tillich got back into the art discussion.

[Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950-52]

[Willem de Kooning, Woman Accabonac, 1966]

Tillich wants depictions of something, and this is supposed to be the ungrounded.

Tillich also did not statues, because he could walk behind it, which he thought was not what happened in old Greek Temples.

Tillich did not want to see people objectified. 

[Naum Gabo, Spiral Theme, 1941, London, Tate Modern]

[Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1948, New York, Museum of Modern Art]

Tillich never discussed abstract art, with the exception of this work by Gabo, which Tillich chose to explain some of his types. 

A synthesis of holy and profane is a helpful stance, even if Tillich was insufficiently versed as an art historian to participate in these discussions. 

Discussion

• The Werkbund noticed that the objects are neither useful nor aesthetic, which William Morris and the arts & crafts movement brought up after the first Weltausstellung. Design wants functional things that are aesthetically satisfying, which helps the person in their self-development, and they need to be affordable (esp. Morris). The Neue Sachlichkeit argues that ornamentation that is non-functional is ethically wrong.
• Tillich saw his efforts as an integrative effort, because he wants to be pedagogical that show this spread across the disciplines. He knew that he was reaching across the boundaries, and it is effective and changes its perspectives; an approach that Tillich used for his systems.
• 
  

Details

Angela M. Opel, Von Botticelli zum Expressionismus ... und fast bis zur Pop Art: Paul Tillich, Bild-/Werk und Kontext.

Michael Murrmann-Kahl on Falk Wagner's Tillich Interpretation

Presentation

Falk Wagner had tackled the Tillich Problem in his Munich Antrittsvorlesung of 1972 (= Absolute Positivität: Das Grundthema der Theologie Paul Tillichs), which is both an interpretative key for Tillich as well as for Falk Wagner. Both share a basic impulse to construct a cultural theology based on the notion of spirit.

FW felt close to Paul Tillich and he wants to give the key to the interpretation. Apparently there is a basic structure to Tillich's theology, and FW wants to present it. There is an asymmetric relation between the Unbedingt and Bedingt; there is not absolute form that can exhaust the contents of the independent. Tillich argued that theology cannot be a sister of Culture, but must be embedded into Culture. Tillich's idea of Sense and Autonomy is one that is final and wont turn itself infinite; theonomy is saving the individual from this. FW applies this matrix as modern cultural theology, and gets the pneumatology into the focus, because that is where relationships and society come in. The constitution of the self-reflexivity requires an absolute external. Tillich is trying to overcome the self-reflexive aporetic situation, because the self cannot presuppose itself for the explication. This explains the focus on the alienation, which tackles the self-setting of the self-constitution. Jesus as the New Being is a self-reflexive consciousness is capable of transcending the finality.

Tillich receives no criticism of Falk Wagner, which means that FW agrees. But 1.5 years later in the Religionsbuch tackles FW the intended divine ground as being independent of the dependent. However, all talk about the independent takes its departure from the human; and this tries Tillich to escape by focusing on the ontology. But the start from the independent can only succeed, if the infinite contents and final forms can be held. FW agrees with the start from independent, but sees Tillich accepting a unfounded focus on the ontological prior. The religious consciousness talks about the independence, but that does not constitute it. Religion is a transcending of the other cultural systems, but the ontological problem means that FW cannot follow Tillich here. The premise is never shown to be the case. FW felt that his work up to 1988, with its trinity conception, supported a better premise, even if the pneumatological work-out agrees. Here, FW puts out his Hegel against Tillich's Schlegel.

FW later tackles the problem of Tillich's creation theory, if sin and freedom coincide. Creation and Christological foundations to social ethics are impossible, as Tillich showed. Since the ground of being must be subjected to humanity, Jesus of Nazareth expresses in the Christ to the negotiated freedom that replaces the Titanic freedom of God vs Man. FW then agrees with Tillich, that the Christological freedom reconstitutes it for humanity. Religion cannot become a separate sphere; religion is rather supposed to be inside of moral and ethics, which checks the absolutism of human cultural shapes and efforts. FW interprets Tillich's pneumatology as working in the world. But Tillich cannot differentiate between successful versus unsuccessful cultural actions.

Now looking from Tillich at FW, there is the question of whether FW's approach is sufficient. To propose the theme for someone like Tillich who kept reworking his terms seems impossible; thus FW's approach is more friendly than the present can be. The increase of sources shows this even more (and were not available to FW). FW's Tillich interpretation requires the aporetic of the self-explication of the self-referential consciousness in the tradition of Fichte. Gunter Wenz for example denied such a connection. And Dieter Henrich's paper on Fichte on which FW based his work has been followed little since then. Thus, whether Fichte & Henrich can help explain Tillich must remain open.

Tillich's theory of sense is replaced by a logical-categorical speculations of Hegel. But this system of logic became questionable to FW during his Viennese time, and that torpedoes the Tillich criticism, and maybe the intention of the sense can be reconstituted.

Culture must transcend itself, and needs an internal criterium to separate the successful from unsuccessful cultural constructions.

Tillich's historical changes are lost under the FW reconstruction.

What are models where FW's or Tillich's can take place? Tillich has the model of a kairos-motivated avant garde. Wagner wants the model of the Protestant academy, where the reflexion of individuality and society can be done. In consequence, they want the special religious sphere of morale and ethics to go away. A realization of Christian religion without the churches seem impossible, thought, as the EKD Study #5 indicates. The walk outside the church skips the problem that religious communication needs to have its own place, in order to be applicable in non-Church contexts.

Discussion

• The fracturing of God into the three reasons--pure, practical and judgement--repeats with Habermas due to the criticism of the dialectic of Enlightenment, that the three reasons are no longer combinable.
• Tillich's global theory of religion means that it cuts across all the transcendentials.
• Ansbacher Anschlag and God using the NSDAP to pursue their purpose
• Tillichs Ergriffensein vom Unbedingten is both wide to be applicable across the differentiated systems, but is not specific enough to distinguish success from failure. Just transcendending cannot be qualified.
• Tillich in 1932 (right after the Preussenschlag) argues strictly against NSDAP for the mythology of foundation and blood & soil and the use of force. Unfortunately Tillich leaves the blood & soil rooted. Thus he calls the democracy of Weimar a pseudo-democracy. He wants mythology to be fractured, but not eliminated, by the prophetic stance. The Dresden kairos term could have been used to sort out the NSDAP reaction because the Christus as central point of history; the prophetic principle by itself could have also been utilized in this context.

Details

Michael Murrmann-Kahl, Falk Wagners Tillich-Interpretation als Schlüssel zum Verständnis seines Werks.

• Falk Wagner, Metamorphosen des Protestantismus (1999).

Martin Fritz on Tillich's anthropology

Presentation

Apologetical effort of showing that Christian belief is plausible and sensible. With Kant the idea of the proof of existence of God was rejected; so Schleiermacher pointed toward religion as a sensible stance. Tillich turned to anthropology in the late 1920s, which caused theory structural adjustments.

Tillich always felt the apologetic aspects as very important, organized Vernunftabende to practice; after WW1 the spirit and sense religious philosophy. Cultural acts is a sense act; which presupposes meaningfulness; which points back to the sense of sense. This all is a "silent belief" (schweigende Glaube) that is religious belief or Religion. Contradictions or rejections of sense would make life impossible.

When Tillich then turns to anthropology in the 1920s, and starts small with the occasional showing up of the term "Mensch", then an investigation into the being of Man. By 1930 there is a lot of talking of humanity, human existence; "Mensch" is described as transcending the mere existence. The anthropology influences how law, economics, science and culture should be considered. In the USA, from 1934-35, Tillich worked in eight lectures about this issue.

1927/8 was the time Max Scheler's Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos & Helmut Plessner, started the new philosophical anthropology. Tillich however does not appear to have read Plessner. 1934 Tillich demanded a translation of Max Scheler's book into the English language. All empirical of Scheler is not interesting to Tillich, and he worries about their revocability. But there are other sources, for example Heidegger's Sein & Zeit, which seems to have impress Tillich heavily. Heidegger's ontology wants to find Being via the human being; but Tillich only took over some of the great lines at most. For Tillich Heidegger is part of the existence philosophy---Marx, Freud, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Dilthey, Simmel. Tillich had already included Schelling and Kirkegaard, thus often there is a relabeling, even if motives come across.

In the main, Tillich's anthropology has multiple motives. There is the idea of the krisis of the modernity, endangerment of humanity through technical processing of all living and dead, akin to the way Troeltsch worried about rescuing the soul from the mechanization. Here belongs the often-quoted Ludwig Klages, who saw an opposition between spirit and soul; Scheler had a more integrative tack here. There is a general Anti-Cartesianism, which is used to argue against the distinction of the dualism of soul and body. The In-der-Welt-Sein model couples across that dualism for Heidegger. A new human image what can fight dehumanization is worked out in terminology of the lectures in his 1930s. Tillich will write "Der Mensch ist endliche Freiheit." to avoid any labeling and dehumanization.

The attempt, to show the vital against the mechanization, causes in the end for Tillich an endangerment of spirit, because the union of the vital and the spirit is thus problematic (and Scheler and the Gestaltpsychology had offered solutions here). This will result in the combination of vitality and intentionality in the Systematic Theology. But Tillich seemed to grow unhappy with the cultural theology of his earlier years, because Religion is not restricted to sense, but also locatable in being; man is not just cultural, but also animal. Scheler and Heidegger allowed Tillich to excavate a deeper foundation, by analyzing the basal structures of the being of man, instead of just the analysis of the human spirit. The Religious is now locatable in all parts of existence, in "daily life", not just the sense-parts. 

How does Tillich put all of this together? The nucleus is "Im Menschsein erhebt sich das Sein über sich selbst." It is freedom from mere being. Which is taken from Scheler, in the term of the world-openess. The environment is transcended toward the world by the human being, by inserting it into the model of the world. This causes a separation of the self and the world, which the human can analyze. The human has an interest in the being, and is a pressing issue. But these questions can miss the world, which is the price of freedom. Humans are essentially freedom, but existentially it is alienation, subjection and force. This process allows the transformation of old terms of the Reformation into a new space of meaning. The essential term is an ideal, which we need to compare to the real. Especially noteworthy is the combination of philosophical and theological; the philosophical wants to rescue the spirit and the humane in the essence; but in the existence, all aporetic aspects of life are checked for their religious possibility. Thus, the idea of salvation becomes anthropologically understandable for all. Because the idea of the finality is essentially transcended with the idea of infinite, but existentially unavailable. This is very similar to the structure of meaningfulness and sense earlier. This stretches the worry from the non-sense, to the non-existence, in its expressiveness. All these worries express the finality of humanity.

The scheme of existential questions and Christian answers is a pattern that Tillich began working with at the beginning of the US exile. 

The widening and restructuring of the approach is clear in its apologetic structure, its Anschlussrationalität. This is generated by intuitive introspection---this is the phenomenological inheritance. By iterating through the aporetic conditions, Tillich identifies the plurality of needs for salvation, which the symbols can then be used to respond to (with the correspondence approach). Thus, Christianity can answer questions that have actually been asked, not such that no one wants to hear about. This allows inner religious evidence as well.

The problems with the correlation approach are serious, however.

• The phenomenological inheritance is too problematic. 
• There is a laziness of explanation of Tillich does not help; even though it is supposed to be concrete, the vocabulary remains abstract. The elder Tillich is even less interested in explication.
• There are also traces of systematic destruction, where Tillich brings the old terms without integration; especially the question-answer scheme remains external.

Tillich's anthropology needs but deserves explication (such as the book of Martin Fritz, as the speaker notes), and can open up new vistas on the Systematic Theology. The aporetic approach is helpful, without pinning the human onto a sinful state (as Adorno argued), but rather accepting the problems that life brings. The hermeneutic circle of correlation is admitted by Tillich, but the plurality of sources from the history of philosophy lessens the Christian dependency. Clearly, if Christianity is about salvation, then the sketches of the need for salvation must be plural and multi-focal.  

Discussions

• There is a question of whether Tillich finds integration in Scheler, who might also be more dualistic; and whether Tillich is not closer to Jaspers than to Heidegger, and criticizes Heidegger from the position of Jaspers. But that would require more detailed analysis.
• Maybe Tillich is more experimental, so that dimensions of the finality can be probed and analyzed. However, the Symbol comes from the Sense part of the phase; and there are indeed analyses of finality, as a theory of finality eventually.

Details

Martin Fritz, Hier muss vollkommen umgelernt werden: Paul Tillichs Hinwendung zur Anthropologie.

Jan Rohls on Tillich and Dialectic Theology

Presentation

Tillich in WW1 was shocked by the social gaps between the officers and the soldiers. He thus became a socialist in the political sense afterwards; he referenced his Christentum und Socialismus talk. He did not equate socialism with the existing parties, but was looking for the best current expression. Capitalism and Nationalism need to be overcome.

1919 in Berlin he was working on a theology of culture, which he presented at the Kant Society. How do the religions functions relate to cultural functions. The cultural functions have a religious sub-element, which caused fractures of the form. From this religious socialism position, Tillich could only reject the Tambacher talk of Karl Barth ("the Swiss guys")---the concept of God being the biggest problem. Tillich gave a counter-talk in Berlin later, which argued that Christianity and Socialists need to be shown to be coupled in a conceptual way. The Swiss approach was for Tillich to Calvinistic as powerful might and world-destroying appearance of God. This was too much like Cromwell for Tillich. Either, the Predestination or the Justification needs to be the contact for the Unbedingte. The justification as a yes-and-no supercedes for Tillich the majesty-approach of the Swiss cavinists.

Tillich visited Hirsch and Barth and Göttingen. Barth was not consistent but religious, Tillich consistent but pagan. 1923 discussion with Barth and Gogarten, were Tillich wants the position of negation to be seen. Tillich agrees with the dialectical approach. Theology of crisis a la Barth, but misses an element of crisis, because the line of revolutions is itself not revolutionized. The dialectic has found a positive spot to reconstruct the dialectical process--which is a trick. The critical paradox points back to a dialectical paradox. The dialectical position is itself subsumable of the "no", thus requires a "yes-and-no" for his position, which puts him into the requirement of Justification. Grace without judgement is impossible, other than Barth has it. Neither nature nor the spirit can be seen as completely negative (which is against Hirsch' ethical position). Neither can autonomy per se be problematic, as the dialectic requires for its explication the autonomy of the theologian.

The dialectic attack on the objective absolute is completely acceptable and to be supported; but there still remains a position that has to be taken to launch that attack. Similar is true for history; because the dialectical "revelation of the krisis" is historical as well. Thus only Jesus of Nazareth is one historical position that is permitted; which gives a positive paradox. The empirical fact is thus only a reference. The dialetical theology is thus a moment, a necessary moment, but not as the final statement of theology.

Barth sees Christ as the positive paradox; for Tillich, says Barth, this is not so.

1924 Tillich goes to Marburg, where he encounters the "New Orthodoxy" as he later called it. In Marburg was it Bultmann and Heidegger, who represented it. Tillich and Bultmann discussed Tillich's talks Zweifel und Rechtfertigung. The dialetical theology is still praised by Tillich, esp. the Commentary of Romans. Tillich ties Barth back to the Blumhardts and Ragaz and Swiss Socialism. But Barth and Gogarten put all movements of the judgement, the permanent "No" of God to all human doing.  Barth preserves the majesty of God which cannot be filled; only the separation of the Sin is available to the creature. Autonomy is always objectionable, whether with Goethe, Idealism or Romanticism---the krisis eats them all. History is all human. The revelation replaces the religion with Barth, because it is unexpected, and God breaks into the world across the separation. Even faith is impossible for the human and comes from the revelation.

Tillich rejects the solo-No, because the truth of that "no" is "yes" to that truth. Single-sided negation is impossible, thus each dialectical position requires some small acceptance. The revelation does not be isolated, otherwise it is temporally contingent. This would eventually play into the hands of orthodoxy.

1929 Tillich replaced Max Scheler. 1933 Barth and Tillich discussed the SDP in letters. Tillich supported the Bekennende Kirche, but still rejected Barth's and the dialectical theology. Tillich had a hard time to show that he was neither orthodox nor dialectic to the Americans. In order to be dialectic, Barth would have to be yes and no; the paradox is good, but the supranatural is weakening it and unhelpful. The independence of God in Barth's theology prevents a dialectic. The mystic is wrong, because it postulates a commonality of the divine spirit; the liberal theology,  a commonality of _______. Barth rejects all other forms of theology as well and all religious philosophy. Humanity means the separation, not a possibility of seeing God; Barth plays down the historical importance of New Testament research work.

Tillich sees that the safe-keeping of the majesty God as supra-natural torpedoes the dialectical effort. The safe-keeping itself should be dialectic, then. This explains to Tillich why the old friends of Barth---Gogarten, Brunner, Bultmann---all went elsewhere with their efforts. Barth must be nominalist, and he must focus on the contingency of the double-predestination. Bultmann and Brunner go for anthropological constants, with Brunner either dogmatically (with Gogarten), or Bultmann with Heidegger. Tillich goes farther and attributes the asking for God as a base-revelation of God.

Tillich focuses on Barth in his analysis of the dialectical theology, which he eventually called pseudo-dialectical. Tillich saw a turn in 1940, when Austria was annexed and the fight against the NS had become necessary. Barth was now fighting against the NS directly, not against the Gleichschaltung der Deutschen Kirche. This revokes the rejection of religious socialism.

By 1948, the victory of the neo-orthodoxy was obvious to Paul Tillich, when Tillich was visiting with Germany.

Discussion

• Bultmann and Brunner go for anthropological constants, with Brunner either dogmatically (with Gogarten), or Bultmann with Heidegger. Tillich goes farther and attributes the asking for God as a base-revelation of God.
• The Barth of 1920 would have never agreed to a democratic state from a theological point of view; by 1940 that becomes obvious.

Questions

Details

Jan Rohls, Paul Tillich und die dialektische Theologie.

Stefan Dienstbeck on Tillich's Late Work

Presentation

The criticism of Tillich's late work was always that the earlier take on the sense was helpful, but the sense of the Being in the ontology seems like a lapse back to before his own work; esp a re-metaphysical approach.

Early on Tillich had rejected the combination of truth and being. Truth is always correlated with thinking, which means recognition of truth. Truth can there not be objective, since concrete cannot be the absolute (an early and lasting distinction).

But the "Sein-Selbst" (Being as such) can come back in the 1960s in the Systematic Theology; this association with God in an unmediated form is not only a loss of symbolism, but rather comes across as a metaphysical Setzung. The Being of God is however not a subsumption among other forms of being; thus the relationship between Being and Being-as-such is necessary. Because an analogia entis would be problematic, while a word relationship would be ok.

Unfortunately Tillich allows both interpretations in his late writings. Tillich wants to cast God as a structure of being (I, 276) and supports the analogia entis (I, 278) directly. However, if one returns to the earlier phases of Tillich's thinking, then insights are possible.

Typologically there are other views of Tillich: 1919 he provides an idealistic stance, with thetical expressions and no doubtful statements. One principle of thinking should still allow difference; abstract and concrete need synthesis for its realization in absolute. The process is not visible in this way; there are only singular moments of stability. 

When writing to Emanuel Hirsch, however, doubt begins to tackle the unangefochtenen Wahrheitsbegriff, it is not removable from the life of the spirit (1917). Doubt must extend toward the idea of theology itself. The new starting position is the individual subject as the doubting person. The doubt is unstoppable and reaches all sense; doubt accompanies all individual actions, including belief and trust. Doubt becomes the mode of faith. Faith is no longer supported by an external absolute, and the individual has to describe the process of justification by themselves. Sense comes around by jumping into action in spite of doubt. 

After truth and sense as the basis of the systemic foundation, the modus of observation shifts. Tillich stays faithful by changing the perspective, but keeps the object constant. The perspective comes from the meta-theory of the system Tillich is designing. The theme does not change, it is always explication of the absolute and the concrete, under the perspective of the concrete. The target then is the possibility of theology at all; Tillich is a thinker of principles, even though he works it out in the context of concrete issues. If the topic is not clear and obvious, then a multi-faceted approach of perspectivity is necessary, since a perspective always focuses on some parts and does not show others. Only abstraction and complexity reduction can project the totality, with a loss of concreteness.

The idea of the moment is one way in which way the dynamicity is handled; the slice of reality gives an impression, but never catches the entirety of the process. The lack of objective capturing of the reality is implicated in this problem. The plurality of moments supports their relativity; but the individual moment is true, because the relativity is included and externally forwarding in its self-restriction. The principle is always visible in every form; truth is one view, an absolute one; sense is another, a concrete one. The aporetic tendencies however slosh along with the model. By seeing the systems as expression of these perspective moments pushes those aporetics out of the system analysis. Each system is relative, as is then to be expected, yea, unavoidable. (The issue of a meta-system does not arise, since that is not processable in relative form.)

Symbols are pictures of the absolute, but since these are tied to the systems, and thus relative. Systems are symbols in this sense too, because they are equally relative and attempts at depict the absolute. Since the Non-Depictable cannot be captured, the same modernization problems of temporary stability apply here as well. The absolute-per-se is not reachable; otherwise it would be a mere caricature.

In the third phase, which corresponds to the relationship between the abstract and the concrete, the Being-as-such and Being are related. The conditions of experience are apriori, and the ontological concepts belong here as well. However, apriori is just as relative as the other perspectives, and could be superceded. Kant was here looking for stable categories, Tillich wants to eliminate the absolute status of the ontological. 

Tillich wants a metaphysical theory of being, because he is concerned about extending the access patterns. The self-reflexive principle is to be universalized, so that the human concreteness is superceded, and extended to all being as such. The ontology brings the plan to include in the entirety of being. Again symbols are supposed to do the work, except for the Being-as-such.

Tillich is trying to synthesize the abstract and the concrete, then the Being-as-such must be an expression of the absolute (which differs from the absolute from the 1st system). The Being-as-such does two things: it is both abstract (see first system), but also the absoluteness (see the third system). Being-as-such also is now a symbol for itself, which may be what Tillich meant with saying it required no symbol. The oscillation comes from the systemic moments, even if not everything works out in the details.

Tillich is therefore pursuing transcendental theology; the Unbedingte is a non-grounded ground, the Being-as-such becomes an objective projection of the absolute via the symbol. The separation of absolute and the symbol allow relative but truthful expressions of the absolute. Thus there are moments of truth that make up the speech of religion.

Clearly this is a systematization, not a plan of Tillich; he may not have noticed this, and definitely did not do this consciously. 

Discussion

• Unlike Hegel, there is no absolute spirit anymore, only in perspectives; the flow of the system survives, but not the idealistic goal that has been reached. The system is a moment and an approximation, not expression itself. In that sense, he is more modern maybe then Hegel.
• The three phases are very well understandable; but the explication of the absolute as the theme is too wide and too large, since any theologian would have claimed that. 
• In Tillich's 1927 Eschatologie und Geschichte, the Being and the Sense are sibling terms; and this keeps recurring through-out the late work. But Tillich keeps old terms around, he just re-fills their contents, e.g. das Unbedingte from System #1. 

Questions

• Could Tillich have saved himself System #3 if he had just chucked the creation? Is the extension to Being-as-such only there because he is not happy with the reduction to the relationship between the self-reflexive concrete.

Details

Stefan Dienstbeck, Von der Sinntheorie zur Ontologie: Zum Verständnis des Spätwerks Paul Tillich.

Michael Moxter on Tillich's Kulturtheologie

Modernity is a promise with respect to time, to be at the height of the time, and to put away what is no longer necessary. The problem is that the continuous supercedance of modernity is thus included at the root. Paul Tillich wanted this all in the form of a kairos theology.

Religion loses some things in the modernity, but religion wins that it is understood as something that has a self, has its own space, where it can be the only topic now. The difficulty for religion is that all the services it wishes to offer--consolation, life-sense integration, etc--are also offered by other systems.

Tillich takes up the idea from Schleiermacher concerning autonomy. Autonomy and modernity combine as art for Tillich. Language of art is taking to be a separate something.

This includes being able to ask for the foundations of reasons and everything. Descartes wants to be able to reduce everything to good reasons---once in life only----; thus the Enlightenment operates with ratio, which also means "ground" or "basis".

Rationality is a calculus of consequences. But this leaves man in radical contingency. Recognition is at the level of the type, not at the level of the individual, and the fight for recognition follows.

Pascal felt that there needed to be trust and hope that this will not break apart. Cornelius Castoriadis argues that life is like magma, because it needs to have both ground and chasm.

Modernity has a general crisis of order and sense in the present.

The combination of base and baseless is complemented by the break-through. Only the broken form has contact with reality. The baseless is mirrored in the cracks and distortions on the surface. The break-through is the key of the expressionistic. But the new forms are modernized non-stop.

Religion operates at the boundary of nothingness, but then breaks across the boundary and gives an assent to live. This positive state is not kept for ever, but it is a temporary safe zone. The sense of the whole, which is not experienced, but encountered in concrete sense, gives a temporary base. Sense presupposes that meaningfulness is present ("Sinn ist angewiesen auf Sinnhaftigkeit"). Sense does not take away by its realization; its production make no less.

Paraphrasing Schleiermacher, Tillich's proposal then is that "Religion is a sense for sense." Meaningfulness cannot be turned into a presence of sense. Time drowns out all concrete forms eventually---even more so in a modern world.

The eliminated has to be marginally present anyway. The demonic is where the negativity is no longer permitted.

Intepretation

There is a double movement going on here for which Moxter wanted to sketch the grammar. There is the relationship between the base and the baseless ("Grund und Abgrund"), which is embedded into a stream of time, where the base is continuously dissolved into the baseless, leaving people in despair until they manage to regrow sense by establishing another base. The bases are all temporary, but there is the knowledge of the process, which provides meaningfulness, as it supports the faith that it is always possible to find another base for meaning.

Details

Michael Moxter (University of Hamburg), Grund und Abgrund. Zur Modernität von Tillichs Kulturtheologie.