34. Angst and the Paradox of Courage
byStephen Palmquist (stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk)
Themost fundamental question of all ontology is: Why is there something (orbeing) rather than nothing (ornon-being)? This question is theultimate basis of allexistentialwonder. For the question, Why is theworldhere? leads directly to the question, Why amI here? and from there to a host of questions about the meaning oflife. The latter has been among the most frequent topics addressed in mystudents' insight papers. This is particularly true once we recognize that mostquestions aboutdeath are also, atleast indirectly, questions about the meaning of life. For the awareness ofnon-being first raises the question of being; and in the same way the awarenessof death first raises the question of the meaning of life. In Lecture 35 wewill examine how the inevitability of death affects the mystery that ariseswhen we search for life's meaning. But first let's focus on a closely relatedparadox that arises within us any time we choose life in the face of death.
Accordingto most existentialists, any time we come face to face with the possibility ofour own non-being (e.g., as when we reflect upon our eventual death), we have anatural "existential response" involving a very special kind offear. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), theGerman existentialist philosopher who, with Wittgenstein, is generally regardedas one of the two most influential twentieth-century philosophers (see WeekVI), distinguished between this special existential fear and ordinary kinds offear in the following way. Ordinary fear is a person's empirical response to athreatening objectwithin the world:it usually requires us either tofightthe object in hopes of overpowering its threat, or toflee from the object in hopes of escaping from its threat. In bothcases we can say the person who is afraid of somethingin the world responds by trying to push somethingout of the world-either the fearedobject or one's own self (see Figure XII.1a). By contrast, existential fear isa response in the depths of a person's being to the general human situation,especially when that situation reveals within us the presence of non-being or"nothingness" in some way. The natural human response is toflee from the threat, since it seemsimpossible tofight against"nothing"! But in this case we flee not by seeking toescape the world, but byimmersing ourselves more fully into theempirical objects of our ordinary experience (see Figure XII.1b). This may bedone in many ways, such as by pursuing hobbies, watching television, becomingan avid sports fan, or even becoming ascholarand immersing oneself inbooks.Heidegger's point is that the usual (unhealthy) way of escaping from the threatofnon-being is merely to pretend itis not there, by immersing oneself inbeing.
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(a) Ordinary Empirical Fear (b) Existential Fear("Angst")
Figure XII.1:
Inappropriate Responses to Two Kinds of Fear
UsingHeidegger's distinction as an introduction, let us now look back to the ideasof an earlier philosopher, who also had much to say about the nature andfunction of existential fear. Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is generallyrecognized as the father of theistic existentialism (as opposed to theatheistic existentialism fathered by Nietzsche). Kierkegaard (pronounced"Keerkagore", meaning "churchyard"-i.e.,graveyard) was a lonely Danishphilosopher who wrote twenty-one books (as well as 8000 pages of unpublishedpapers) in twelve short years, and whose ideas were never well received duringhis own lifetime. He expounded his main philosophical ideas in a series ofbooks written under several different pseudonyms (some arguingagainst each other!). But in the lastfew years of his life he wrote a number of books using his own name, mainlyattacking the corruptions he perceived in the Christianity of his day. Of hismany interesting ideas, the only one we will have time to investigate here ishis use of the Danish word "angst" to refer to what I have called"existential fear".
Althoughangst is sometimes translated as"dread" or "anxiety", neither of these words captures thefull depth of the existential fear of non-being Kierkegaard intended this wordto denote. Dread is too often associated with extreme displeasure orapprehension at the thought of facing someempiricalthreat, as when I say Idread goingto the dentist. Likewise, anxiety is too often associated with ordinary"stress", as when students say they feelanxious about their ability to pass an examination. In order toguard against the temptation to connect angst too closely with ordinaryempirical types of fear, many scholars have adopted the habit of simply usingthe original Danish word-a practice I shall follow today. When I do refer onseveral occasions to dread or anxiety, we should, of course, identify thesewith angst, not empirical fear.
Kierkegaard'sfirst book,Either-Or (1843),distinguished between two basic ways of life, the aesthetic and the ethical.The former is based on feelings and focuses on enjoying the pleasures of life;the latter is based on duty and focuses on doing what is good. As such, thisdistinction corresponds to the distinction we discussed in Lecture 22, betweenutilitarianism and deontology. Those who first read the book debated over whichof these two opposing points of view the author actually wished to support. ButKierkegaard's true intention was to demonstrate thateither choice on its own is as absurd or incomplete as the other.For he later published another book,Stageson Life's Way (1845), wherein he argued
that the aesthetic and ethical stages both point beyond themselves to a third stage, thereligious, which synthesizes and surpasses the two earlier stages (see Figure XII.2). He defined the religious way of life in terms of an attitude of "inwardness" that transcends the "outwardness" required for theoretical reasoning and scientific knowledge. InTheConceptof | 
Figure XII.2: Kierkegaard's Three Life Stages and Two Leaps |
Anxiety (1844) Kierkegaard developed his idea ofangst by analyzing the Christian idea ofsin. Angst, he claimed, is a psychological state arising naturallyout of the essential, ontological nature of man: our freedom gives us infinitepotential for the future; yet our presence in time makes us finite andignorant. In other words, angst arises out of the tension between thesensuousness of our body (rooted as it is intime) and the freedom of our soul (rooted as it is ineternity). Our ignorance insures thatthe choices we make for our own future will eventually plunge us intosin, so that angst comes to beexperienced as "entangled freedom" (CA 320)-that is, as the infinite tangled up in the finite. Sin,then, as thenormal state of thehuman spirit (see Figure XII.3), is the first of two "qualitativeleaps" we must make in order to progress through the stages of life shownin Figure XII.2. After leaping from innocence to sin (as in the story of Adamand Eve), the second leap is from sin to faith (as in the story of Abraham).The first leap corresponds to the change from the aesthetic to the ethical (orvice versa), while the second corresponds to the change from theaesthetic/ethical choice to the religious. Paganism is rooted in the aestheticstage, where the leap of sin is experienced as
fate and the leap of faith asprovidence; Judaism, by contrast, is rooted in the ethical stage, where the leap of sin is experienced asguilt and the leap of faith asatonement. Christianity surpasses both of these by actually beingrooted in the properly religious stage of absolute faith in God. Kierkegaard's analysis of angst and sin suggests that thelack of angst is the worst possible psychological state, since without angst we could | 
Figure XII.3: The Ontological Origins of Angst and Sin |
never progress to the stage ofspirit.In the original state of innocence angst arises as a response to the"nothing" (i.e., the person's ignorance) of the future: "anxietyis freedom's actuality as the possibility of possibility" (CA 313). To ignore this freedom isactually idolatry when it causes the person in the aesthetic stage of life tograsp innocence, peace, happiness, beauty, etc., as if they were good in and ofthemselves. For to do so is to separate oneself from the spiritual depths ofone's own human nature: "The most effective means of escaping spiritualtrial is to become spiritless" (385). Yet once this freedom is utilized,an awareness of sin arises, causing a new kind of angst, in the form of"anxiety about evil" (381-386). This comes in three forms: (1) thedesire to return to a state of innocence; (2) the threat of falling deeper intosin; and (3) the wish that mere repentance were enough to atone for sin.Unfortunately, the attempt of many religious people to overcome such anxiety bymeans ofoutward goodness only givesrise to more angst, in the form of "anxiety about the good" (386-420).
Thetruly religious person turns away from both aesthetic and ethical aims in orderto becomeinward."Inwardness" refers to immediate self-understanding in action (CA 408), requiring a person to beopen to the eternal in one's own self.To turntoward oneselfin this way istherefore identical to turningtoward God.As a result, it always begins by heightening a person's awareness of guilt:
In turning toward himself, [the religious "genius"] eoipso turns toward God, and ... when the finite spirit would see God, it mustbegin as guilty. As he turns toward himself, he discovers guilt. The greaterthe genius, the more profoundly he discovers guilt....
Inturning inward he discovers freedom....
Tothe degree he discovers freedom, to that same degree the anxiety of sin is uponhim in the state of possibility.... (376-377)
Such a person will then recognize that anxiety really points beyonditself to faith:
The only thing that is truly able to disarm the sophistry of sin isfaith, courage to believe that the state [of sin] itself is a new sin, courageto renounce anxiety without anxiety, which only faith can do; faith does notthereby annihilate anxiety, but ... extricates itself from anxiety's moment ofdeath. (385)
In other words, the proper response to anxiety is to stop beinganxious about anxiety, accepting it in the belief that it exists for a higherpurpose. Whereas pagan anxiety expresses itself most profoundly as fate, andJewish anxiety as guilt, the anxiety of the true Christian (whom Kierkegaardregarded as practicing the most advanced form of religion) is thereforeexpressed in the form ofsuffering(see Figure XII.2)
Kierkegaardargued that the key to solving the problem of angst is to learn to face itcourageously, with the paradoxical feelings of "sympatheticantipathy" and "antipathetic sympathy" (CA 313). Anyone who "has learned to be anxious in the rightway has learned the ultimate" (421). For "anxiety is through faithabsolutely educative, because it consumes all finite ends" (422). Despiteits apparently negative character, the suffering caused by angst is thereforeessential to our spiritual growth: "the more profoundly he is in anxiety,the greater is the man" (421). Kierkegaard had numerous otherphilosophical insights, not only concerning the human experience of angst, butalso about numerous other topics, such as the paradoxical relationship betweenhistory (the finite) and subjectivity (the infinite), and the true nature ofChristian faith as requiring a subjectivewillingnessto die. However, we will be unable to pursue these or other interestingtopics here.
Instead,I want to point out that, given Kierkegaard's analysis of angst, therelationship between dread and death is analogous to the relationship betweenlove and life: just as love is the moving power of life, so also dread is themoving power of death. Whereas the former is the power ofbeing, driving us toward theunityof opposites, the latter is the power ofnon-being,driving us toward thediversity ofopposites. In other words, dread is the driving power behind the"estrangement" Tillich regarded as the necessary prerequisite forlove (see Figure X.5). The struggle between these two powers is, in fact, whatkeeps us alive, while at the same time giving us a glimpse of our eternality inthe midst of our finitude. In other words, dread, in spite of being a primarilynegative experience, reminds us of our capacity for self-transcendence.Together, the powers of love and dread remind us that, on the one hand, we arenot athome in this world, and yet onthe other hand, we are not entirelystrangerseither. Recognizing this paradox can help us respond to real experiences ofangst in a way that is appropriate tothe eternal dimension of our lives.
Thefailure to balance the powers ofeternality (love) and temporality (death) in our lives usually results is sometype of psychological disturbance, and can eventually lead even toinsanity. Insanity does not come frompayingtoo much attention to theparadoxes of human experiences; rather, it results from the attempt torun away from them to the security ofeither the infinite or the finiteon itsown. As long as the two powers are engaged in a struggle within us, ourmental health will be preserved. But the loss ofeither eternalityortemporality can drive a person insane: for the former would limit us to anapplication ofanalytic logic,thereby causing us to see the world as an unbearable diversity of fragmentedand disconnected bits, while the latter would limit us to an application ofsynthetic logic, thereby causing us tosee the world as an overwhelming unity, without discrete and intelligibleparts. The former describes the form of insanity that stems from anoveremphasis on reason over imagination, as when paranoid schizophrenicsinterpret their experience within a narrow set of limits (e.g., "everyoneis against me"); the latter describes the form of insanity that stems froman overemphasis on imagination over reason, as when the elderly lose themselvesin the limitlessness of senility.
Tillichargued that we areall guilty oflosing our eternality to some extent. The best explanation for the angst wefeel when we think honestly about our own death, he claimed, is that we allknow deep down inside that wedeserveto die, because of the inauthentic way we have lived. Too often, people'sresponse to this guilt is merely to flee from it into the safety ofphilosophical arguments for immortality or a religious hope for eternal life.Yet the latter only increases the philosopher's over-dependence on logicalreasoning, while the former only increases the believer's over-dependence onreligious imagination. In other words, these common "solutions",though not in themselveswrong, cansometimes backfire by intensifying the loss of eternality that comes fromdenying one side of the paradox.
Theonlyproper response to the loss ofeternality revealed in our experience of existential dread is, according toTillich, to face the threat of non-being with an existentialcourage to be. In his book,The Courage To Be (1952), he describedthis response in the following way:
Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact ofnon-being. It is the act of the individual self in taking the anxiety ofnon-being upon itself by affirming itself ... Courage always includes a risk,it is always threatened by non-being ... Courage needs the power of being, apower transcending the non-being which is experienced in the anxiety of fateand death, ... in the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness, ... [and] inthe anxiety of guilt and condemnation. The courage which takes this threefoldanxiety into itself must be rooted in a power of being that is greater than thepower of oneself and the power of one's world.... There are no exceptions tothis rule; and this means that every courage to be has openly or covertly areligious root. For religion is the state of being grasped by the power ofbeing itself. (CB 152-153)
Like Kierkegaard, Tillich therefore saw the threat of non-being asan existential problem whose only adequate solution is essentiallyreligious. This word"religious" should not be misunderstood as referring to religiouspractices, such as going to church,singing hymns, etc. For as we saw in Lecture 33, such things can be misused tokeep us away from truly religious courage. Instead, the point here is that tobe religious means to be open to an experience of the Being who, bytranscending the distinction between being and non-being, can alone supply uswith the courage to be.
Thisbasic experience of receiving the gift of the courage to be is closely related,according to Tillich, both to mystical experiences ofparticipation in God, and to more ordinary experiences of apersonal encounter between man and God.Such experiences are rooted in a recognition that the presence of non-beingwithin usestranges us from our truenature, and that this problem can be solved only if we are willing to be"grasped by the power of being itself" (CB 153). For only when we "participate in something whichtranscends the self" (161) will we be prepared to experience the mostprofound manifestation of the courage to be, in the form of the "courageto accept acceptance" (159-166). This courageous self-affirmation is notmerely "the Existentialist courage to be as oneself. It is the paradoxicalact in which one is accepted by that which infinitely transcends one'sindividual self." Nor does this ultimate acceptance require us to deny ourguilt, for "it is not the good or the wise or the pious who are entitledto the courage to accept acceptance but those who are lacking in all thesequalities and are aware of being unacceptable" (160-161).
Atthe beginning of the process of accepting acceptance, we experience thecourage to be as the bare "courage of despair [angst]" (CB 170):
the acceptance of despair is in itself faith on the boundary line ofthe courage to be. In this situation the meaning of life is reduced to despairabout the meaning of life. But as long as this despair is an act of life it ispositive in its negativity.
By living our life in the paradoxical power of the courage to be, wewill eventually be ready to welcome death itself not as a tragic confirmationof angst, but as the final step in this life-long process. Along these lines,Tillich claimed that Plato's arguments for the immortality of the soul were"attempts to interpret the courage of Socrates", who had clearly recognizedthat "the courage to die is the test of the courage to be" (164). Wewill look more fully at the experience of death itself in the followinglecture. For now, however, it will suffice merely to summarize Tillich's theoryof courage in terms of the following map:
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Figure XII.4: Courage in the Face of Non-Being
Thereligious basis of the courageous acceptance of life in the face of death, ofbeing in spite of the dreadful prospects of non-being, is made explicit in thebiblical notion of the "fear of the Lord". The Old Testamentreferences tofearing God are toooften watered down to the point where they are taken to mean nothing more thanbeing careful to obey the Law lest we be punished. But they refer far moreprofoundly to the fact that the God of the Old Testament, as the Being whoholds all beings in His hand, is the ultimate source of lifeand death; as such, anyone who iscourageous enough to approach this Being must do so with the utmost reverenceand awe. As Mitchell put it: "Fear of the Lord is being in awe, aware ofthe shocking, silent, presence of God" (IPW 75) -a comment reminiscent of Otto's notion of awe in thepresence of the numinous (see Lecture 31). Throughout the Bible thisfundamental, other-worldly fear is depicted as an existential response to thehuman situation which, if weacceptit, will give us otherwise unattainable strength to cope with the fearfulsituations that arise in the ordinary world. This could indeed be regarded asthe basic message of the Psalms and Proverbs: "The fear of the Lord is thebeginning of wisdom" (e.g., Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 1:7) means we willlearn best how to respond to the threatswithinthe world only when we have courageously responded to the threatoutside the world. In other words, angstand wisdom are best regarded, paradoxically, as two sides of the same coin.
Ifwe do not merely ignore the basic ontological question raised at the beginningof this lecture, then we seem to have a choice between two possible answers:either the existence of the world is meaningless and the courage to be has nobasis, or else there is a God who is, paradoxically, beyond the verydistinction between something and nothing, and who thereby lends meaning toboth being and non-being, thus forming the ultimate basis of faith, and so alsoof our courage to be. But as Kant, Kierkegaard, Tillich, and many otherreligiously-minded philosophers have pointed out, this God cannot lend meaningmerely by being adoctrine imposed onus by the social pressures of a religious community; rather, we mustexperience God as a reality that givesus power to cope with the paradoxes of life, providing us with faith in theface of doubt, peace in the face of turmoil, acceptance in the face of guilt,and courage in the face of dread.
35. Death and the Mystery of Life
Oneof my students once defined silence as the state of no longerneeding to ask any questions. Thissuggests an interesting paradox in the claim that the final goal of philosophyis to experience inner silence, since one of the philosopher's main tasks is toraise questions whose answers areusually not immediately apparent. Yet I believe it expresses a deep insightinto the nature and purpose of doing philosophy. If silence is actually aquestionless state, then have we merely been wasting time raising so manydifficult philosophical questions here in Part Four and throughout theselectures? Not at all! Such questionsmustbe raised, or the deeper levels of silence can never be enjoyed: for thequestions stir up in us the wonder that draws us out beyond the noise of theworld to meet themeaning of theworld. Wittgenstein expressed this basic paradox by saying the meaning of lifeis found outside of life, which is why he believed we cannot speak about thatmeaning. Our inability to give scientifically verifiable answers to most philosophicalquestions does not, however, mean the questions (or our attempted answers) are meaningless. For their final purposeis not to be answered inwords-thismay or may not be possible-but to help us discover the meaning of life and ofthe world in thesilence that suchquestions tend to induce.
Inthe previous lecture we learned about the paradox of courage in the face of thedread of non-being. This leads us directly to the ultimate philosophicalquestion, for the inevitability of our own non-being-that is, of our owndeath-raises the question of the meaningof life; and this question itself directs our attention toward the ultimatesilence beyond life. As far as we can judge by what we observe when a persondies, death marks the end of our capacity to use words, and thereby ushers in asilence unlike anything we have experienced during life. The mystery of what,if anything, happens after we die is one of the primary sources of the"angst" we all feel from time to time-this being, as we have seen, oneof the primary concerns of existentialist philosophers. This angst hastherefore driven ordinary people-even those who know nothing aboutphilosophy-to propose various ideas about what happensafter death.
Isthere a life after death? If so, what is it like? There are four basic ways ofanswering such questions, though each type of answer, of course, has manyvariations. We can analyze these four ways of envisioning the "afterdeath" experience as arising out of two questions: (1) Does ourconsciousness of our own identitycontinue after we die? and (2) Will we acquire anewbody after ourpresent body dies? With these questions in mind, we can map the fourtraditional answers to the question of life after death onto the 2LAR cross, asshown in Figure XII.5. This is probably not a "perfect" 2LAR, sinceit is highly unlikely thatall fourpossible answers describe whatactuallyhappens after death. Although two or three of these views might besimultaneously true in different ways, most people feel constrained to chooseonlyone as the best hypothesis. Solet's compare these four possibilities in a bit more detail.
Thetheories of extinction and reincarnation both agree that the part of me thatenables me to remember who I am (often called the "mind" or"soul") will not survive my death; but they disagree as to whether ornot
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Figure XII.5:
Four Basic Ways of Conceiving Life After Death
I will acquire a new body. If not, then I will simply cease to exist(--): my individuality will discontinue altogether-though in some versions ofextinction, such as the mystical application of Aristotle's "spark of thedivine" (see Lecture 6, especially Figure II.9), something other than mybody and mind continues to exist. If, by contrast, I do acquire a new body,then I will reappear asanother person(-+), whose memory will be discontinuous with my present memory. People whobelieve in reincarnation often claim we can learn to become conscious ofmemories from our "past lives". We have to learn how toregain such memories precisely becausethere is normally noconsciouscontinuity between our different reincarnations, even though there may be somedeeper spiritual "core" connecting the lives of these apparentlydifferent persons.
Thosewho, like Plato, believe in the immortality of the soul are actually closer tothose who believe in extinction than to those who believe in reincarnation.For, although the immortality theory disagrees with both of these two theoriesby claiming that we have a soul (i.e., a capacity for continuous, consciousmemory) that survives our body's death (+-), it actually agrees with theextinction theory's claim that our dead body will not be replaced with a newone, as the reincarnation theory believes it will. This might seem rathersurprising, especially to those who view Plato's belief in the immortality ofthe soul as the ancient Greek equivalent of the Christian belief in life afterdeath. The latter, however, is not based on any logicalarguments for the necessity of the soul'simmortality, but on a religioushopethat people will be saved from extinction through divine intervention in theform ofresurrection.
Thetheory of resurrection must be clearly distinguished from each of the otherthree theories. As the direct opposite of resurrection, extinction is properlyregarded by those who believe in resurrection as being our natural fate, shouldresurrection not occur. By contrast, the other two theories share withresurrection common factors that sometimes overshadow their differences. Likeimmortality, resurrection assumes a person's conscious powers will continue,more or less uninterrupted, after death. And like reincarnation, resurrectionassumes a person will have a new body after the present body dies. But inopposition to Plato, resurrection focuses primarily on the body, assuming likeAristotle that,without a resurrected body, the soul itself would also die. And inopposition to reincarnation, resurrection views thenew body as a newkind ofbody, not justanother body of thesame kind. The pictures that sometimes appear in religious literature, ofbodies floating out of their graves up into the sky, misrepresent the realmeaning of resurrection. For in the New Testament, a person's earthly body isdescribed as a mere "seed" in comparison to the fully matured"spiritual body" to be given after death (see 1 Corinthians15:35-44). That is, our conscious life in the present body will somehow beunited in acontinuous way with thisnew spiritual body (++), so that all our unrealized potentials in this lifewill blossom and bear fruit in the life to come.
Althoughwe do not actuallyexperience our owndeath from within our present life, we do experience other people's death asthe ultimateend of their life as weknow it. As a result, none of us can know for certain untilafter we die which of these four viewsbest describes what lies on the "other side". Perhaps this is whyphilosophers are often less interested in the questions death raises about apossibleafterlife than in thequestions it raises aboutlife itself.Plato, for example, insisted that the fear of death is appropriate only forthose who are still bound to the "cave" (cf. Figure II.7).Transcending this fear by "learning how to die" is one of the basictasks any good philosopher must perform. Plato was referring here, I believe,to the lifelong task of learning how to livewith the darkness of the unknown, even before we die; for when wedo so, we discover that this absolutely realmystery paradoxically shedslighton how we should live. In other words, byraisingthe question of the meaning of life, death points us directly toward theneed to live what existentialists call anauthenticlife.
Thepsychologist Abraham Maslow referred to the authentic ortrulyhuman life as thelife that attains "self-actualization". This now common term hasoften been wrongly criticized for promoting a selfish, "do your ownthing" lifestyle that permits a person to ignore the needs of otherpeople. However, this is a gross misunderstanding. For Maslow and many othershave been careful to point out that theinwardfocus of self-actualizing people does not mean they care only about their ownegotistical interests, but that they are self-transcending people, whose understanding of themselves has led themto reachoutward to others in loveand compassion. Interestingly, one source of the misunderstanding of such termsis that the self-actualizing life is itself essentially paradoxical. The morehe studied self-actualizing people, the more Maslow came to realize that theyare people who canresolve paradoxeswithin themselves: instead of beingeitherselfishor unselfish, they aresomehowboth (see e.g.,TPB 139). Socrates' famous "knowthyself" carries essentially the same message: we know ourselves not inorder to become self-enclosed solipsists, but in order to become self-giving saints. And the more we knowourselves (i.e., the more apparentlyselfish we are), the more we are capable of knowingothers (i.e., the more unselfish we can be).
Learningto transcend ourselves in this way will prepare us to accept death with openarms as agift. For we can view deathas theultimate gift only if we havelearned to livewith death-that is,to live with our own non-being through such acts of self-transcendence-while weare still alive. As we saw in the previous lecture, the importance ofrecognizing the presence of non-being in all beings was one of the key insightsof the existentialists. The ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, expressed asimilar insight when he claimednon-beingis actually more useful thanbeing (TTC 11). For example, a window would beuseless for seeing through if not for theblankspace in between the edges of the frame. And a cup would be useless forholding liquids if it were nothollowinside. Such examples show that whatiswould often be unable to fulfill its proper function if it did not make use ofwhatis not. Likewise, people shouldview their own death as a natural part of the life process.
Thetwo ways of describing transcendent reality, as either "being-itself"or "nothing" (see Figure VI.2), suggest two corresponding ways ofviewing the "natural" relationship between life and death. I wouldguess nearly all of us feel more inclined to hold one or the other of these twoviews. According to Lao Tzu, a person who treats death as a natural part oflife will no longer need to search for the "infinite", or"eternal life". Viewing death as the ultimate end of all life, hebelieved such a search is bound to fail, and will only succeed in producinganxiety (see Figure XII.6a). Yet the anxiety we feel at the prospect of our owndeath need not cause us to give up the search for the infinite, provided weview death as aboundary, with theobject orpurpose of our quest lying on the other side (see Figure XII.6b).Only in this latter sense does it make sense to regard death as agift that can truly be affirmed as anatural partof life. If there isnothing after life but death and extinction, then regarding death as a naturalpart of life makes no more sense thanregarding thewall as part of the window,or the spaceoutside the cup as partof the cup. A boundary ispart of thething it defines; but the space outside the boundary is wholly other.
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(a) Anxiety asthe Boundary (b) Death as the Boundary
Figure XII.6: Two Views of Life and Death
Whicheverview of death is correct, the issue raised by Lao Tzu highlights the centralparadox of life itself: anessentialpart of the human task is to seek after the infinite, yet this search is boundto fail because death makes life itself finite. But the search"fails" only if success is judged in terms of analytic logic. If weaffirm the paradox, if we affirm (withLao Tzu) the presence of non-being within all being, if we affirm (with theexistentialists) our finitude in the very process of seeking the infinite, thenwe have grounds for hope thatmeaningwill break through in the midst of our struggle. Even if this breakthroughoccurs only after our death, it legitimates the search within this life.Indeed, Lao Tzu's real point is not that the search itself iswrong, but that we should not expect todiscover the infinite in a form we cangraspwithin this life.
Wemust therefore always be careful not to think we can resolve the paradox oflife by making something less than infinite the source of our life's meaning.For example, I cannot count the number of students who have written insightpapers claiming "happiness", or perhaps "satisfaction", isthe purpose for which people ought to live their lives. Yet the problem withthis view is that, as we learned from Tillich in Lecture 30, once happiness isreached, itends. Those who livetheir lives in order to fulfill their own desires inevitably end with a senseof emptiness and meaninglessness,evenif they are lucky enough to have those desires fulfilled. Satisfaction isnot ultimately satisfying. So the paradox is accentuated to the point ofabsurdity if we direct our lives toward a finite end. Lao Tzu's advice, comingfrom a person whose basic message was that we must live in the presence of themysterious (i.e.,infinite)"Tao", should not be taken to imply that there is nothing infiniteworth searching for; rather, it implies that the ultimategoal of the quest for the infinite is to teach us that it ispresentnow in the midst of ourfinitude, so that we cangive up thequest in order to rest in that presence.
Thelesson we learn by facing the paradox of death, in other words, is that thesearch for the infinite must be pursued in the context of a recognition of thefinitude of life as we know it. The needfor a recognition of both human finitude and an eternal context beyond humanlife is an insight recognized by most religions. For example, one of the manyways the Bible expresses this paradox comes in Isaiah 40:6-8:
... All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower ofthe field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
When the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of the Lord stands forever.
This "word" here is the same word John spoke about at thebeginning of his Gospel; and it is, paradoxically, a word that can be heardonly in the depths of silence: "'In the beginning was the Word....' TheWord did not come into being, butit was.It did not break upon the silence, butitwas older than the silence and the silence was made of it" (HMD 90-91).
Thelatter quotation suggests that life is to death as words are to silence.Similarly, just as life ends in death yet draws its meaning from the mysterythat death veils, so also, as I mentioned at the beginning of this lecture, thequestions of philosophy end in a silence that no longer has use for questions.Life is, in fact, full of such mysteries and paradoxes. The few we have touchedupon here in the fourth part of this course only represent the tip of theiceberg. Our dreams, for example, put us in touch with a huge area full ofmystery and paradox. If we had more time we could look in greater detail intosome of these other dark and interesting aspects of our lives. Indeed, Idevote an entirely separate course to the subject of dream interpretation andthe unconscious aspects of self-knowledge (seeDW). So instead of developing that topic any further here, we shallreturn in the final lecture to the question this course began with, in order toexamine how it too reveals the paradoxical mystery at the heart of human experience.
36. What isPhilosophy?
Thiscourse began with a discussion of the question "Whatis philosophy?" Some of you offered some interestingsuggestions, demonstrating that even before taking this course you had somegood ideas about what philosophy is. Perhaps this is becauseevery thoughtful human being has aphilosophy of one sort or another, though many never bother to work it out veryprecisely. The problem is that most people never get beyond the stage of having"my philosophy". That is,although many, if not most, people have established forthemselves a particular philosophical point of view, very fewpeople seriously work at expanding that personal point of view in such a waythat it can be regarded as having a legitimate range of applicationbeyond their own personal opinions. Yetthis step is crucial if we are ever to understand whatphilosophy really is. My philosophy must go beyond the stage ofbeing "my philosophy" andmust becomephilosophy before I canrightly say "I am a philosopher". That crucial step is one I hope youhave begun to take while studying this course.
InLecture 1 I said I hoped by the end of this course you would knowless about philosophy that you did atthe beginning. Some of you laughed at this suggestion. Others seemed to beconfused. Still others thoughtI wasconfused. Most of you probably thought it was just a joke. But in fact, I wasquite serious. At several points during this course I have argued against naiveversions of relativism, on the grounds that certain boundary linesare absolute. More adequate versions ofrelativism always recognize that the very possibility of "relativity"depends on something that is, by comparison, "absolute". In physics,for example, the theory of relativity was able to acknowledge therelative character of events in ourtime-space world only after physicists agreed to treat the speed of light as a"constant" (i.e., as anabsolute).I now want to add that the ultimate purpose of all philosophical inquiry is tobecome more and more aware of such absolutes; for the more we do so, the morefully we can appreciate the beauty of the "mystery" we have beentalking so much about here in Part Four. Indeed, the final ontological paradoxis that this mystery makes itself known first asmy philosophy, but gradually reveals itself to be the source ofphilosophy itself. In other words, it isboth absolute and yet the source of all relativity.
Toexplain how this can be so, I like to compare philosophy to a huge diamond withmany facets carved into it. At first, all I am aware of is that my ownperspective, the facet I can see most clearly, is true. When I take a stepback, I recognize that other facets on the diamond-other legitimateperspectives-are equally true. This might seem to justify a belief inrelativism: your facet is true for you and mine is true for me. However, when Istep back far enough to see the whole diamond, I suddenly recognize that there is a pattern: eachfacet is related in such a way that thewholedoes, in fact, display an absolute (fixed) design, in spite of the greatdiversity of the individual facets. Those who continue to view philosophy asentirely a matter of subjectiveopinion,and fail to see its potential for bringing us to an objectivetruth, are merely chaining themselvesto their particular facet of the diamond, much as the prisoners in Plato's cavecan see nothing but the shadows on their particular section of the wall. But ifyou have begun to take the step from a philosophy that suitsyou to a philosophy that can be true foreveryone, then I think you will havelearned at least something of the importance of the principle of recognizingyour ignorance: we can never seeallthe facets of the diamond at once, no matter how far back we step! When youhave learned to distinguish between "myphilosophy" and "philosophy",and when you have begun to transform the former into the latter, you will thenbe prepared to begin constructing a truly philosophical answer to the question"What isphilosophy?"
Youmay have noticed that this entire course has, to a large extent, been anattempt to answer this basic question. With that in mind, let me suggest onelast answer. When we consider how philosophy is different from other academicdisciplines, its virtually unending concern with self-definition stands out,suggesting that philosophy may be defined as "the discipline whose purposeis to define itself"-or more simply, "philosophy is the self-definingdiscipline." For when any other discipline asks the question of its ownnature, it strays into the realmof philosophy. A history teacher is doing philosophy, not history, when he orshe asks students to reflect on the very nature of history. But throughout thiscourse we have discovered that the focal point of most (if not all) goodphilosophers is precisely this question:whatam I doing when I practice philosophy? Of course, defining philosophy asthe self-defining discipline relates only to itsform; the content (i.e., the details of how philosophy actuallygoes about defining itself) has been the topic of this entire course.
Havingnow finished my attempt to introduce you to philosophy in such a way that youcan begin to participate in its self-definition, I shall take this opportunityto summarize the entire course by relating the myth of the tree of philosophyto the account of mystery given here in Part Four. We began this course bytreating metaphysics as theroots ofthe philosophical tree; in so doing we found in Part One that, in order tostudy these roots without killing the tree, we had torecognize our ignorance. Without establishing an area ofnecessary ignorance,nothing could be mysterious, sinceeverything would have to be regarded as a "knowable object". Therewould be nothing hidden. No roots. In such a case we mightthink we understand the words we use, but we would inevitablycommit one of two mistakes: we would conclude either that all mystery isnonsense (as does the skeptic), or thatwe could (or have) actually attain(ed)knowledgeof that mystery (as does the dogmatist).
Bothskepticism and dogmatism result from a failure to gain a proper understandingof the logicaltrunk and thescientificbranches of thephilosophical tree. For as we learned in Part Two, logic teaches us that,instead of giving up the mystery by treating it as either meaningless orknowable, the mystery itself has its own kind of logic. Having distinguishedbetween knowledge and ignorance, we learned how to use analytic logic tounderstand words describing the former and synthetic logic to understand wordsdescribing the latter. In this way we clearly defined the boundary betweenknowledge and ignorance. Just as the branches of a tree show us, as it were,the natural purpose or implications of the trunk, so also logic remainsabstract and meaningless unless we use it to gainknowledge ("science"); in so doing, as we found in PartThree, we can discover some of theimplicationsthe mystery has for what is not mysterious. The latter is the task ofwisdom, and can be fulfilled only if weknow where to place theboundary linesaround different kinds of knowledge, and when it is appropriate tobreak through those boundary lines. Inother words, only by learning tolovewisdomcan we honor the mystery for what it is, while at the same time allowing it toenlighten what need not be mysterious.
Finally,by treating our meaning-filled experiences as theleaves of the philosophical tree, we have learned in Part Four howwe can actually becomepersonallyacquainted with this mystery, through opening ourselves to experiencingthe wonder of silence. By allowing the mystery toinvade us rather than trying to take it by storm, by allowing it tograsp and possess us rather than trying to grasp and possess it, the diversityof our knowledge can be unified by the power of the mystery. The paradoxes oflife then cease to be so troublesome. They are still paradoxes, for the realityof our ignorance is not diminished butintensifiedby our experience of the mystery. The difference is that we now have within usan ultimate concern enabling us tocopewith the fact that there are some things we can never hope to know. Kant aptlyexpressed this ability to cope with ignorance when he wrote (CPrR 148): "the inscrutable wisdomthrough which we exist is not less worthy of veneration in respect to what itdenies us than in [respect to] what it has granted."
Thecapacity towonder in spite of, orevenbecause of, our ignorance isactually one of the main characteristics distinguishing a good philosopher froma bad one. That wonder ischildlikemay be why some philosophers, wishing to appear "mature", shun thetemptation to wonder. This is also why children so often make such profoundlyphilosophical statements. The difference between a child and a full-grown,childlike philosopher is that thelatter has addedself-consciousnessto the original instinct to wonder. The problem is that self-consciousnesstends to negate the instinct to wonder: self-consciousness puts up withignorance in its search for the unity of the "I", whereas wonderwants to achieve knowledge in response to its apprehension of the diversity ofthe world. Bad philosophers, as we have seen, limit the philosophical task toonly one of these two opposite goals. Good philosophers, by contrast, willcontinually seek after the best way of resolving (or at leastcoping with) the tension between thesetwo forces. One of the best ways of doing this, I believe, is to direct ourself-consciousness to the higher goal ofself-understanding.For the never-ending task of coming to "know thyself", rightly recognizedby Socrates as the ultimate goal of doing philosophy, requires us to reachever-increasing levels ofbothself-consciousnessand wonder.
Withthis in mind, I would like us to consider a passage from a book that encouragesus to hear the wonder of silence throughout the busyness of our everyday life.Anne Morrow Lindbergh's little book,Giftfrom the Sea, is a series of meditations on her holidays at an islandbeach, focusing especially on the symbolism of the activity of collecting seashells. In considering the following summary of her reflections on theprospects of returning home (GS113-116,119-120), let's interpret the "island" as a metaphor forstudying philosophy, and the "shells" as a metaphor for havinginsights.
Asshe packed her bags to leave the island, Lindbergh asked herself what she hadgained from all her meditative efforts: "What answers or solutions have Ifound for my life? I have a few shells in my pocket, a few clues, only afew." She thought back to her first days on the island, and realized howgreedily she had collected the shells at first: "My pockets bulged withwet shells ... The beach was covered with beautiful shells and I could not letone go by unnoticed. I couldn't even walk head up looking out to sea, for fearof missing something precious at my feet." The problem with this way ofcollecting shells (or having insights) is that "the acquisitive instinctis incompatible with true appreciation of beauty." But after all herpockets were stretched to the limit with damp shells, she found it necessary tobecome less acquisitive: "I began to discard my possessions, toselect." She then realized it would be impossible to collect all thebeautiful shells she saw: "One can collect only a few, and they are morebeautiful if they are few." Can we say the same for philosophicalinsights? Perhaps so. For Lindbergh herself generalized the lesson she learnedby saying "it is only framed in space that beauty blooms. Only in space areevents and objects and people unique and significant-and thereforebeautiful."
Thisinsight, that beauty requires space and selectivity, prompted Lindbergh toreconsider the reasons why her life at home tended to lack the qualities ofsignificance and beauty, so characteristic of her time on the island. Perhapslife seems insignificant not because it is empty, but because it is too full:"there is so little empty space.... Too many worthy activities, valuablethings, and interesting people.... We can have ... an excess of shells, whereone or two would be significant." Being on the island, by contrast, hadgiven her the space and time to look at life in a new way-as I hope thisphilosophy class has done for you. "Paradoxically, ... space has beenforced upon me.... Here there is time; time to be quiet; time to work withoutpressure; time to think ... Time to look at the stars ... Time, even,not to talk." The problem in goinghome is that in many ways the island had selected what was significantfor her (as this course of lectures mayhave done for you) "better than I do myself at home." She thereforeasked herself: "When I go back will I be submerged again ...? ... Valuesweighed in quantity, not quality; in speed, not stillness; in noise, notsilence; in words, not thoughts; in acquisitiveness, not beauty. How shall Iresist the onslaught?" She answered by suggesting that, in place of theisland's natural selectivity, she will need to adopt "a consciousselectivity based on another set of values-a sense of values I have become moreaware of here.... Simplicity of living ... Space for significance and beauty.Time for solitude and sharing.... A few shells."
Inthe end Lindbergh discarded most of the shells she had collected on her islandholiday, and took with her only a few of the most special ones. Her experienceson the island, she explained, now serve as "a lens" that she can takehome with her in order to examine her own life more effectively: "I mustremember to see with island eyes. The shells will remind me; they must be myisland eyes." In the same way, I hope this course has provided you with anew way of seeing yourself and the world. For the real reason the universityrequires you to take a philosophy course is not to train you to participate inacademic debates on technical issues, but to enlarge your capacity toexperience the unifying beauty oflife-that is, to enable you to "see with island eyes", even when theexamination is over and you have returned home, to the ordinary world of your infinitelydiverse personal concerns.
InShel Silverstein's story ofThe GivingTree, the little boy does not learn this lesson until the very end of hislife. During his life he forgets all about the carefree days of his childhood,when the tree was almost like part of his own self. Instead he goes off on hisown, in search of happiness and fortune. The boy simply ignores the silentscreams of the tree as she allowed herself to be torn to pieces by the boy'sselfish desires. Only as an old man is the little boy once again able to sitand rest with the tree, enjoying with her the wonder of silence. To some extentthis process of leaving the tree, venturing out on our own, and finallyreturning to it in the end, describes the paradoxical steps each of us mustinevitably pass through in our search for a suitable philosophy of life. Thetragedy of that story is that, unlike the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull,the main character virtually destroys the source of his wisdom in the processof looking for a meaningful life, leaving only a stump in the end. My hope isthat this course will have supplied each of you with "a few shells"to help you avoid such a fate. With these in hand, I hope each of you, eventhose who will never study any more philosophy in a formal way, will be able tolive with a continuous, silent awareness of the mysterious tree of philosophyand will always respectfully wait to receive from the endless supply of giftsshe has to offer.
QUESTIONSFORFURTHERTHOUGHT/DIALOGUE
1. A. Is it possible tochooseboth the aestheticand ethical ways of life?
B. Isitnecessary for human beings to sin?
2. A. Does angst actuallyhelp us to cope with ordinary,empirical fears?
B. Could resurrection and reincarnationboth be true?
3. A. What would a "spiritual body" be like?
B.Could anunhappy person live ameaningful life?
4. A. How is philosophylike atree?
B.What isphilosophy?
RECOMMENDEDREADINGS
1. Søren Kierkegaard,TheConcept of Anxiety, ?, "The Concept of Anxiety" (CA 313-316).
2. Paul Tillich,The Courageto Be, Ch. VI, "Courageand Transcendence" (CB152-183).
3. Abraham H. Maslow,Toward aPsychology of Being2, Ch. 10, "Creativity in Self-Actualizing People" (TPB 135-145).
4. Lao Tzu,Tao Te Ching.
5. Plato,Phaedo and BookX ofRepublic (CDP 40-98, 819-844).
6. John Hick,The FifthDimension: An exploration of the spiritual realm (Oxford: OneworldPublications, 1999), Ch. 26, "Death and Beyond", pp.241-252.
7. Shel Silverstein,TheGiving Tree (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).
8. Stephen Palmquist,The Tree of Philosophy4 (Hong Kong: Philopsychy Press, 2000[1992]).
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