Paul Tillich
Paul Tillich
Paul Johannes Tillichwas a German American Christian existentialist philosopher and Lutheran theologian who is widely regarded as one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionTheologian
Date of Birth20 August 1886
CountryGermany
men able language
Man's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.
plato home men
Plato ... teaches the separation of the human soul from its " home " in the realm of pure essences. Man is estranged from what he essentially is. His existence in a transitory world contradicts his essential participation in the eternal world of ideas .
men humanity essentials
man is free, in so far as he has the power of contradicting himself and his essential nature. Man is free even from his freedom; that is, he can surrender his humanity
wisdom children men
Wisdom loves the children of men, but she prefers those who come through foolishness to wisdom.
men moral abstract
In Calvinism and sectarianism man became more and more transformed into an abstract moral subject, as in Descartes he was considered an epistemological subject.
men together tragedy
Man and nature belong together in their created glory – in their tragedy and in their salvation.
destiny men decision
But freedom is the possibility of a total and centered act of the personality, an act in which all the drives and influences which constitute the destiny of man are brought into the centered unity of a decision.
destiny men accountability
Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny.
men able reason
Man is able to decide for or against reason, he is able to create beyond reason or to destroy below reason
spiritual independent men
One of the unfortunate consequences of the intellectualization of man's spiritual life was that the word "spirit" was lost and replaced by mind or intellect, and that the element of vitality which is present in "spirit" was separated and interpreted as an independent biological force. Man was divided into a bloodless intellect and a meaningless vitality. The middle ground between them, the spiritual soul, in which vitality and intentionality are united, was dropped.
mean reality men
[A] process was going on in which people were transformed into things, into pieces of reality which pure science can calculate and technical science can control. … [T]he safety which is guaranteed by well-functioning mechanisms for the technical control of nature, by the refined psychological control of the person, by the rapidly increasing organizational control of society – this safety is bought at a high price: man, for whom all this was invented as a means, becomes a means himself in the service of means.
believe men decision
Man is not what he believes himself to be in his conscious decisions.
men self years
In a man like Friedrich von Schlegel the courage to be as an individual self produced complete neglect of participation, but it also produced, in reaction to the emptiness of this self-affirmation, the desire to return to a collective. Schlegel, and with him many extreme individualists in the last hundred years, became Roman Catholics. The courage to be as oneself broke down, and one turned to an institutional embodiment of the courage to be as a part.
men creating knowing
Enthusiasm for the universe, in knowing as well as in creating, also answers the question of doubt and meaninglessness. Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge. And meaninglessness is no threat so long as enthusiasm for the universe and for man as its center is alive.