To Be or Not to Be

To be or not to be, while overused and cliché, really is THE question. The ultimate concern, or big question, that each of us has which we give a part of ourselves to and up to our entirety is not without risk. The more we invest in it, the more there is to lose. The anxiety surrounding our being or a lack thereof is so great, that Tillich, in his book The Courage to Be, writes that courage is the most important virtue that all other virtues depend on.

To set the foundation, Tillich describes three types of anxieties in history: anxiety of fate and death, anxiety of guilt and condemnation, and anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness. In ancient Western history, people were concerned about their fate that “no one could escape” from (Tillich, 6). In the Medieval period, the Catholic Church was known for freeing people from the anxiety of guilt and condemnation with sacraments and confessions. The Protestant churches answered the anxiety with salvation through grace. In recent times, the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness has become the question. Harvey Cox, past Hollis Chair of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, writes in his introduction to the third edition of Tillich’s The Courage to Be that as far as the U.S. goes, the answer is typically through work. We try to cure the anxiety through working a passionate job that changes lives and make a difference. Being is scary and difficult, so to live up to the challenge of a “continuous affirmation of being” (Tillich, 4), similar to Spinoza’s “conatus”, Augustine’s “restlessness” and Nietzsche’s “will to power,” one must have courage. Courage, Tillich argues, is the pinnacle of virtue that is the fundamental to human’s very existence and being.

Tillich, Paul. The Courage to Be. Edited by Harvey Cox. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2014.