You can really begin to doubt yourself and your understanding of things when you sit here day after day reading ZeroHedge, Rick Ferri, Ben Carlson, Mebane Faber, The Reformed Broker and Barry Ritholz wondering what do I know and why would I want to compromise my integrity in such an industry.
When I reflect upon the last five-six years with all the things that have transpired (Greek/Southern Europe crisis, Sandy, Abenomics, anemic growth, Iraq/Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, China slowdown) and then I match it against the market (which has gone vertical in the last 18 months) I am flabbergasted.I know nothing. I understand nothing.
Showing posts with label existentialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label existentialism. Show all posts
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Monday, December 2, 2013
Philosophy - Existentialism
Existentialism
-
the fundamental difference between phenomenology and existentialism is whether
the stress is placed upon existence or essence.
- existentialists accord precedence to
existence.
Christian existentialists or neo-orthodox = Karl Barth,
Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, Heinrich Emil Brunner, Rheinhold Niebuhr, Martin Buber
Soren
Kierkegaard (1813-1855) - three stages of life 1.) aesthetic 2.) ethical
3.) religious
Aesthetic stage:
hedonist in search of pleasure or an intellectual interested in abstract
philosophical speculation.
The
emptiness of ennui is an enigmatic inexplicable spiritual ailment which brings
man to the abyss of nothingness, entirely discontent with his existence.
Genuine
self-hood is not found in externals, but within, in passion, freedom, decision
and commitment, that is, in subjectivity.
The
chief distinguishing feature of the inwardness of the religious life is
suffering and faith
existence
precedes essence
Christ
is the Absolute Paradox (God incarnate)
Kierkegaardian
philosophy is fundamentally in direct antithesis to Hegelianism.
For
the existential individual all is in the state of :Becoming.
Martin
Heidegger (1889- ) - dasein (being there, human Being)
-
the basic mood of man is dread (anxiety),
and the fundamental structure of man is care (concern).
-
anxiety is caused by man’s encountering indefinable nothingness, evidence of
his finitude
Jean-Paul
Sartre (1905- ) - dealt with
dualism between subjective consciousness and objective Being
Man
lacks Being because there is no God to create Being.
-
man’s essence is freedom
“God is dead”
therefore we must rely on ourselves alone.
-
man is a useless passion vainly striving in a universe without purpose
Man
seeks to become more than Being-for-itself, he also desires to be
Being-in-itself.
-
the fundamental project of man is determined by his desire to be God.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
A Developing Thought - Traditional Security Analysis as Scholastic Philosophy
In the same way traditional security analysis sought to justify rationally, ie. put a structure around, what the marketplace already accepted so Scholasticism sought to justify rationally what the church had already accepted.
The main schools of thought during the scholastic period were universalia ante rem (essence precedes existence) and universalia post rem (existence precedes essence) arguing over what came first or what comes first, essence or existence. The same can be applied to security analysis with regard to whether fundamental value comes first or market price comes first.
In the ethical/moral realm scholastics guiding light was summum bonum (absolute good) as the yard stick for devining whether something was good (a relative value basis). In security analysis there is the implied belief that there is some fundamental/intrinsic value based upon some as yet unknown future set of cash flows discounted at an appropriate rate that equals an assets true value (absolute value) which can then be compared to its current market price to determine whether it is undervalued or overvalued.
This is still a developing thought, but one I hope to explore a little more in the future.
Likewise, modern finance (Modern Portfolio Theory, Efficient Markets, CAPM) may be equated with the philosophy trends of the enlightenment (especially Hume's rationalism), and recent developments in finance practice (HFT, quantification, algos) may be equated with quantum physics or existentialism.
The main schools of thought during the scholastic period were universalia ante rem (essence precedes existence) and universalia post rem (existence precedes essence) arguing over what came first or what comes first, essence or existence. The same can be applied to security analysis with regard to whether fundamental value comes first or market price comes first.
In the ethical/moral realm scholastics guiding light was summum bonum (absolute good) as the yard stick for devining whether something was good (a relative value basis). In security analysis there is the implied belief that there is some fundamental/intrinsic value based upon some as yet unknown future set of cash flows discounted at an appropriate rate that equals an assets true value (absolute value) which can then be compared to its current market price to determine whether it is undervalued or overvalued.
This is still a developing thought, but one I hope to explore a little more in the future.
Likewise, modern finance (Modern Portfolio Theory, Efficient Markets, CAPM) may be equated with the philosophy trends of the enlightenment (especially Hume's rationalism), and recent developments in finance practice (HFT, quantification, algos) may be equated with quantum physics or existentialism.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Recasting the Mould
'Our whole nineteen hundred year old Christian preaching and theology rests upon the 'religious premise' of man...But if one day it becomes apparent that this a priori 'premise' simply does not exist, but was an historical and temporary form of self expression, ie. we reach a stage of being radically without religion-and I think this is the case already, else how is it, for instance, that this war, unlike any of those before it, is not calling forth any 'religious' reaction?-what does this mean for Christianity'? It means that the linchpin is removed from the whole structure of our Christianity to date'. Bonhoeffer
We are just beginning to get used to the idea that 'Christendom' may be a historically conditioned phenomenon. It will doubtless seem to some that I have by implication abandoned the Christian faith and practice altogether. On the contrary, I believe that unless we are prepared for the kind of revolution of which I have spoken it will come to be abandoned. And that will be because it is moulded, in the form we know it, by a cast of thought that belongs to a past age.
'In the law', says Paul to the Jews, 'you see the very shape of knowledge and truth'. That was their glory-and their liability. They had it all-the very 'oracles of God', 'the splendor of the divine presence'-and yet none of it possessed any validity for them except within a certain fixed 'pattern of religion': the Law was the mould that shaped everything into acceptability. Paul, indeed, will not hear a word against the Law as such: it is 'holy and just and good'. And yet the time came when it was to prove the stumbling block to knowing the very God whose truth it existed to shape. Bonhoeffer as we have seen regarded "the religious premise' today as comparable with the presupposition of the Law which stood between the Jew and the Gospel. What looks like being required of us, reluctant as we may be for the effort involved, is a radically new mould of Christian belief and practice. Such a recasting will leave the fundamental truth of the Gospel unaffected. But it means that we have to be prepared for everything to go into the melting-even our most cherished religious categories and moral absolutes. And the first thing we must be ready to let go is our image of God himself.
Every new religious truth comes as the destroyer of some other god, as an attack upon that which men hold most sacred. It is easy for us to persuade ourselves that this is a process which lies now in the past, that Christianity has supplanted the idols of heathenism and that we now know the one true God. But in fact the debate staged on the Areopagus is a debate that is never closed. It has constantly to be reopened, as one idol is knocked down, only to be replaced by another. For the Christian gospel is in perpetual conflict with the images of God set up in the minds of men, even of Christian men, as they seek in each generation to encompass his meaning. These images fulfil an essential purpose, to focus the unknowable, to enclose the inexhaustible, so that ordinary men and women can get their minds round God and have something on which to fix their imagination and prayers. But as soon as they become a substitute for God, as soon as they become God, so that what is not embodied in the image is excluded or denied, then we have a new idolatry and once more the word of judgment has to fall.
I have a great deal of sympathy for those who call themselves atheists. For the God they are tilting against, the God they honestly feel they cannot believe in, is so often an image of God instead of God, a way of conceiving him which has become an idol.
We are just beginning to get used to the idea that 'Christendom' may be a historically conditioned phenomenon. It will doubtless seem to some that I have by implication abandoned the Christian faith and practice altogether. On the contrary, I believe that unless we are prepared for the kind of revolution of which I have spoken it will come to be abandoned. And that will be because it is moulded, in the form we know it, by a cast of thought that belongs to a past age.
'In the law', says Paul to the Jews, 'you see the very shape of knowledge and truth'. That was their glory-and their liability. They had it all-the very 'oracles of God', 'the splendor of the divine presence'-and yet none of it possessed any validity for them except within a certain fixed 'pattern of religion': the Law was the mould that shaped everything into acceptability. Paul, indeed, will not hear a word against the Law as such: it is 'holy and just and good'. And yet the time came when it was to prove the stumbling block to knowing the very God whose truth it existed to shape. Bonhoeffer as we have seen regarded "the religious premise' today as comparable with the presupposition of the Law which stood between the Jew and the Gospel. What looks like being required of us, reluctant as we may be for the effort involved, is a radically new mould of Christian belief and practice. Such a recasting will leave the fundamental truth of the Gospel unaffected. But it means that we have to be prepared for everything to go into the melting-even our most cherished religious categories and moral absolutes. And the first thing we must be ready to let go is our image of God himself.
Every new religious truth comes as the destroyer of some other god, as an attack upon that which men hold most sacred. It is easy for us to persuade ourselves that this is a process which lies now in the past, that Christianity has supplanted the idols of heathenism and that we now know the one true God. But in fact the debate staged on the Areopagus is a debate that is never closed. It has constantly to be reopened, as one idol is knocked down, only to be replaced by another. For the Christian gospel is in perpetual conflict with the images of God set up in the minds of men, even of Christian men, as they seek in each generation to encompass his meaning. These images fulfil an essential purpose, to focus the unknowable, to enclose the inexhaustible, so that ordinary men and women can get their minds round God and have something on which to fix their imagination and prayers. But as soon as they become a substitute for God, as soon as they become God, so that what is not embodied in the image is excluded or denied, then we have a new idolatry and once more the word of judgment has to fall.
I have a great deal of sympathy for those who call themselves atheists. For the God they are tilting against, the God they honestly feel they cannot believe in, is so often an image of God instead of God, a way of conceiving him which has become an idol.
The New Morality
It is impossible to reassess one's doctrine of God without bringing one's view of morality into the same melting pot. For assertions about God are in the last analysis assertions about Love - about the ultimate ground and meaning of personal relationships. There is no need to prove that a revolution is required in morals. It has long since broken out; and it is no 'reluctant revolution'. There are plenty of voices within the church greeting it with vociferous dismay. The religious sanctions are losing their strength, the moral landmarks are disappearing beneath the flood, the nation is in danger. This is the end term of the apostasy from Christianity: the fathers rejected the doctrine, the children have abandoned the morals. The great defection from God, is to be discerned, and the more they bring in and make use of God and Christ in opposition to this trend, the more the trend itself considers itself to be anti-Christian. The old way of thinking that right and wrong are derived 'at second hand' from God. They are the commandments which God gives, the laws which he lays down (as with Moses on Mt Sinai). And supranaturalist reasons - that God or Christ have pronounced it 'a sin' - have force, and even meaning, for none but a diminishing religious remnant. But equally there is no suggestion in the Gospels that the Christian ethic is for 'the religious' only. It is for all men: it is based upon the nature of man, and for the foundation of his teaching on marriage Jesus specifically went behind Moses and the Law to creation. It is for all men universally: it is not for homo religiosus.
The moral precepts of Jesus are not intended to be understood legalistically, as prescribing what all Christians must do, whatever the circumstances, and pronouncing certain courses of action universally right and other universally wrong. They are not legislation laying down what love always demands of every one: they are illustrations of what love may at any moment require of anyone. They are, as it were, parables of the Kingdom in its moral claims-flashlight pictures of the uncompromising demand which the Kingdom must make upon any who would respond to it. This insistence upon the parabolic character of the ethical sayings of Jesus should deliver us from the danger of taking them either as literal injunctions for any situation or as universal principles for every situation. The sermon on the Mount is relevant not because it provides us with an infallible guide to the moral life, but because as Martin Dibelius put it, 'we are able to be transformed by it'. What the supranaturalist ethic does is to subordinate the actual individual relationship to some universal, whether metaphysical or moral, external to it. The decision is not reached, the judgment is not made, on the empirical realities of the particular concrete relationship between the persons concerned. Man is made for the sabbath, and not the sabbath for man. Be the individual circumstances what they will, the moral law is the same-for all men and for all times. It is imposed on the relationship from without, from above: the function of casuistry is to 'apply' it to the case in question. It stands for 'absolute', 'objective' moral values and presents a dyke against the floods of relativism and subjectivism. And yet this heteronomy is also its profound weakness. Except to the man who believes in 'the God out there' it has no compelling sanction or self-authenticating foundation. It cannot answer the question 'Why is this wrong?' in terms of the intrinsic realities of the situation itself.
The revolt in the field of ethics from supranaturalism to naturalism, from heteronomy to autonomy, has been with us so long that we need not spend much time on it. It began with the magnificent grandeur of Kant's autonomous ideal, perhaps the greatest and most objective of all ethical systems. But this is really only secularized deism-and not completely secularized at that; for though Kant dispensed with the hypothesis of God to account for the source of the moral law, he brought him back, as a very crude deus ex machina, to ensure the eventual coincidence of virtue and happiness. Kant's moral idealism was living on religious capital. As this ran out or was rejected, it came to be replaced by every kind of ethical relativism-utilitarianism, evolutionary naturalism, existentialism. These systems, so different in themselves, have this in common: they have taken their stand, quite correctly, against any subordination of the concrete needs of the individual situation to an alien universal norm. But in the process any objective or unconditional standard has disappeared in a morass of relativism and subjectivism. Tillich sums up the situation in words that refer to culture in general but apply just as much to its ethical aspect:
'Autonomy is able to live as long as it can draw from the religious tradition of the past, from the remnants of a lost theonomy. But more and more it loses this spiritual foundation. It becomes emptier, more formalistic, or more factual and is driven towards skepticism and cynicism, towards the loss of meaning and purpose. The history of autonomous cultures in history of a continuous waste of spiritual substance. At the end of this process autonomy turns back to the lost theonomy with impotent longing, or it looks forward to a new theonomy.'
The moral precepts of Jesus are not intended to be understood legalistically, as prescribing what all Christians must do, whatever the circumstances, and pronouncing certain courses of action universally right and other universally wrong. They are not legislation laying down what love always demands of every one: they are illustrations of what love may at any moment require of anyone. They are, as it were, parables of the Kingdom in its moral claims-flashlight pictures of the uncompromising demand which the Kingdom must make upon any who would respond to it. This insistence upon the parabolic character of the ethical sayings of Jesus should deliver us from the danger of taking them either as literal injunctions for any situation or as universal principles for every situation. The sermon on the Mount is relevant not because it provides us with an infallible guide to the moral life, but because as Martin Dibelius put it, 'we are able to be transformed by it'. What the supranaturalist ethic does is to subordinate the actual individual relationship to some universal, whether metaphysical or moral, external to it. The decision is not reached, the judgment is not made, on the empirical realities of the particular concrete relationship between the persons concerned. Man is made for the sabbath, and not the sabbath for man. Be the individual circumstances what they will, the moral law is the same-for all men and for all times. It is imposed on the relationship from without, from above: the function of casuistry is to 'apply' it to the case in question. It stands for 'absolute', 'objective' moral values and presents a dyke against the floods of relativism and subjectivism. And yet this heteronomy is also its profound weakness. Except to the man who believes in 'the God out there' it has no compelling sanction or self-authenticating foundation. It cannot answer the question 'Why is this wrong?' in terms of the intrinsic realities of the situation itself.
The revolt in the field of ethics from supranaturalism to naturalism, from heteronomy to autonomy, has been with us so long that we need not spend much time on it. It began with the magnificent grandeur of Kant's autonomous ideal, perhaps the greatest and most objective of all ethical systems. But this is really only secularized deism-and not completely secularized at that; for though Kant dispensed with the hypothesis of God to account for the source of the moral law, he brought him back, as a very crude deus ex machina, to ensure the eventual coincidence of virtue and happiness. Kant's moral idealism was living on religious capital. As this ran out or was rejected, it came to be replaced by every kind of ethical relativism-utilitarianism, evolutionary naturalism, existentialism. These systems, so different in themselves, have this in common: they have taken their stand, quite correctly, against any subordination of the concrete needs of the individual situation to an alien universal norm. But in the process any objective or unconditional standard has disappeared in a morass of relativism and subjectivism. Tillich sums up the situation in words that refer to culture in general but apply just as much to its ethical aspect:
'Autonomy is able to live as long as it can draw from the religious tradition of the past, from the remnants of a lost theonomy. But more and more it loses this spiritual foundation. It becomes emptier, more formalistic, or more factual and is driven towards skepticism and cynicism, towards the loss of meaning and purpose. The history of autonomous cultures in history of a continuous waste of spiritual substance. At the end of this process autonomy turns back to the lost theonomy with impotent longing, or it looks forward to a new theonomy.'
Monday, March 4, 2013
The Ground of our Being
Tillich proposes replacing the images of 'height' by those of 'depth' in order to express the truth of God. When Tillich speaks of God in 'depth', he is not speaking of another Being at all. He is speaking of 'the infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being', of our ultimate concern. The word 'God' denotes the ultimate depth of all our being, the creative ground and meaning of all our existence.
'To predicate personality of God', says Feuerbach, 'is nothing else than to declare personality as the absolute essence.' Feuerbach believed that true religion consists in acknowledging the divinity of the attributes, not in transferring them to an illegitimate subject. Bultmann, in answering Barth, says, 'I am trying to substitute anthropology for theology, for I am interpreting theological affirmations as assertions about life.' This is dangerous ground, because to say as Feuerbach says, that 'theology is nothing else than anthropology' means that 'the knowledge of God is nothing else than the knowledge of man.' The question inevitably arises, if theology is translated into anthropology, why do we any longer need the category of God? Is not the result of destroying supranaturalism simply to end up with naturalism, as the atheists asserted?
Bonhoeffer insists, 'God is the "beyond" in the midst'; 'The transcendent is not infinitely remote but close at hand'. Tillich insists it is necessary to push beyond naturalism and supranaturalism. The naturalist critique of supranaturalism is valid. It has torn down an idol and Christianity must not be found clinging to it. But equally Christianity must challenge the assumption of naturalism that God is merely a redundant name for nature or for humanity. The necessity for the name 'God' lies in the fact that our being has depths which naturalism, whether evolutionary, mechanistic, dialectical or humanistic, cannot or will not recognize.
The question of God is the question whether this depth of being is a reality or an illusion, not whether a Being exists beyond the bright blue sky, or anywhere else. Belief in God is a matter of 'what you take seriously without any reservation', of what for you is ultimate reality. Tillich's great contribution to theology - the reinterpretation of transcendence in a way which preserves its reality while detaching it from the projection of supranaturalism. Tillich makes the point that though it may be difficult to avoid concepts of a super-Being in religious thought and education, 'they are at least as dangerous as they are useful'.
God as the ground, source and goal of our being cannot but be represented at one and the same time as removed from the shallow, sinful surface of our lives by infinite distance and depth, and yet as nearer to us than our own selves. This is the significance of the traditional categories of transcendence and immanence.
God, since he is Love, is encountered in his fullness only 'between man and man'. God, the unconditional, is to be found only in, with and under the conditioned relationships of this life: for he is their depth and ultimate significance. Whether one has known God is tested by one question only, 'How deeply have you loved?' - for 'He who does not love does not know God; for God is love'. This links up with what Bonhoeffer was saying about a 'non-religious' understanding of God. For this ultimate and most searching question has nothing to do with 'religion'. It rests our eternal salvation upon nothing peculiarly religious. Encounter with the Son of Man is spelt out in terms of an entirely 'secular' concern for food, water, housing, hospitals and prisons, just as Jeremiah had defined the knowledge of God in terms of doing justice for the poor and needy.
Our contention has been that God is to be met not by a 'religious' turning away from the world but in unconditional concern for 'the other' seen through to its ultimate depths, that God is 'the personal ground of all that we experience'. God is the depth of common non-religious experience.
A statement is theological not because it relates to a particular Being called God, but because it asks ultimate questions about the meaning of existence.
'To predicate personality of God', says Feuerbach, 'is nothing else than to declare personality as the absolute essence.' Feuerbach believed that true religion consists in acknowledging the divinity of the attributes, not in transferring them to an illegitimate subject. Bultmann, in answering Barth, says, 'I am trying to substitute anthropology for theology, for I am interpreting theological affirmations as assertions about life.' This is dangerous ground, because to say as Feuerbach says, that 'theology is nothing else than anthropology' means that 'the knowledge of God is nothing else than the knowledge of man.' The question inevitably arises, if theology is translated into anthropology, why do we any longer need the category of God? Is not the result of destroying supranaturalism simply to end up with naturalism, as the atheists asserted?
Bonhoeffer insists, 'God is the "beyond" in the midst'; 'The transcendent is not infinitely remote but close at hand'. Tillich insists it is necessary to push beyond naturalism and supranaturalism. The naturalist critique of supranaturalism is valid. It has torn down an idol and Christianity must not be found clinging to it. But equally Christianity must challenge the assumption of naturalism that God is merely a redundant name for nature or for humanity. The necessity for the name 'God' lies in the fact that our being has depths which naturalism, whether evolutionary, mechanistic, dialectical or humanistic, cannot or will not recognize.
The question of God is the question whether this depth of being is a reality or an illusion, not whether a Being exists beyond the bright blue sky, or anywhere else. Belief in God is a matter of 'what you take seriously without any reservation', of what for you is ultimate reality. Tillich's great contribution to theology - the reinterpretation of transcendence in a way which preserves its reality while detaching it from the projection of supranaturalism. Tillich makes the point that though it may be difficult to avoid concepts of a super-Being in religious thought and education, 'they are at least as dangerous as they are useful'.
God as the ground, source and goal of our being cannot but be represented at one and the same time as removed from the shallow, sinful surface of our lives by infinite distance and depth, and yet as nearer to us than our own selves. This is the significance of the traditional categories of transcendence and immanence.
God, since he is Love, is encountered in his fullness only 'between man and man'. God, the unconditional, is to be found only in, with and under the conditioned relationships of this life: for he is their depth and ultimate significance. Whether one has known God is tested by one question only, 'How deeply have you loved?' - for 'He who does not love does not know God; for God is love'. This links up with what Bonhoeffer was saying about a 'non-religious' understanding of God. For this ultimate and most searching question has nothing to do with 'religion'. It rests our eternal salvation upon nothing peculiarly religious. Encounter with the Son of Man is spelt out in terms of an entirely 'secular' concern for food, water, housing, hospitals and prisons, just as Jeremiah had defined the knowledge of God in terms of doing justice for the poor and needy.
Our contention has been that God is to be met not by a 'religious' turning away from the world but in unconditional concern for 'the other' seen through to its ultimate depths, that God is 'the personal ground of all that we experience'. God is the depth of common non-religious experience.
A statement is theological not because it relates to a particular Being called God, but because it asks ultimate questions about the meaning of existence.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Behold, I Am Doing a New Thing
Old refers to that which passes away and shall not be remembered any more - the destiny of everything created.
At the beginning of our period (the Enlightenment) we decided for freedom. It was a right decision; it created something new and great in history. But in that decision we excluded the security, social and spiritual, without which man cannot live and grow. And now, in the old age of our period, the quest to sacrifice freedom for security splits every nation and the whole world with really demonic power (ie. Hitler and WWII).
We have decided for means to control nature and society (ie. science). We have created them, and we have brought about something new and great in the history of all mankind. But have excluded ends. We have never been ready to answer the question, "For what?" And now, when we approach old age, the means claim to be the ends; our tools have become our masters, and the most powerful of them have become a threat to our very existence (nuclear weapons).
We have decided for reason against outgrown traditions and honored superstitions. That was a great and courageous decision, and it gave a new dignity to man. But we have, in that decision, excluded the soul, the ground and power of life. We have cut off our mind from our soul; we have suppressed and mistreated the soul within us, in other men, and in nature. And now, when we are old, the forces of the soul break destructively into our minds, driving us to mental disease and insanity, and effecting the disintegration of the souls of uncounted millions.
From the very beginning of our period we have decided for the nation, as the expression of our special way of life and of our unique contribution to history. The decision was great and creative, and for centuries it was effective. But in that decision we excluded mankind and all symbols expressing the unity of all men. Now, in the old age of our period, the most powerful nations themselves claim to represent mankind, and try to impose their ways of life upon all men, producing, therefore, wars of destruction, which will perhaps unite all mankind in the peace of the grave.
Our period has decided for a secular world. That was a great and much needed decision. It threw a church from her throne, a church which had become a power of suppression and superstition. It gave consecration and holiness to our daily life and work. Yet it excluded those deep things for which religion stands: the feeling for the inexhaustible mystery of life, the grip of an ultimate meaning of existence, and the invincible power of an unconditional devotion. These things cannot be excluded. Now, in the old age of our secular world, we have seen the most horrible manifestation of these demonic images; e have looked more deeply into the mystery of evil than most generations before us; we have seen the unconditional devotion of millions to a satanic image; we feel our period's sickness unto death.
Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations, "Behold, I Am Doing a New Thing" (1949)
At the beginning of our period (the Enlightenment) we decided for freedom. It was a right decision; it created something new and great in history. But in that decision we excluded the security, social and spiritual, without which man cannot live and grow. And now, in the old age of our period, the quest to sacrifice freedom for security splits every nation and the whole world with really demonic power (ie. Hitler and WWII).
We have decided for means to control nature and society (ie. science). We have created them, and we have brought about something new and great in the history of all mankind. But have excluded ends. We have never been ready to answer the question, "For what?" And now, when we approach old age, the means claim to be the ends; our tools have become our masters, and the most powerful of them have become a threat to our very existence (nuclear weapons).
We have decided for reason against outgrown traditions and honored superstitions. That was a great and courageous decision, and it gave a new dignity to man. But we have, in that decision, excluded the soul, the ground and power of life. We have cut off our mind from our soul; we have suppressed and mistreated the soul within us, in other men, and in nature. And now, when we are old, the forces of the soul break destructively into our minds, driving us to mental disease and insanity, and effecting the disintegration of the souls of uncounted millions.
From the very beginning of our period we have decided for the nation, as the expression of our special way of life and of our unique contribution to history. The decision was great and creative, and for centuries it was effective. But in that decision we excluded mankind and all symbols expressing the unity of all men. Now, in the old age of our period, the most powerful nations themselves claim to represent mankind, and try to impose their ways of life upon all men, producing, therefore, wars of destruction, which will perhaps unite all mankind in the peace of the grave.
Our period has decided for a secular world. That was a great and much needed decision. It threw a church from her throne, a church which had become a power of suppression and superstition. It gave consecration and holiness to our daily life and work. Yet it excluded those deep things for which religion stands: the feeling for the inexhaustible mystery of life, the grip of an ultimate meaning of existence, and the invincible power of an unconditional devotion. These things cannot be excluded. Now, in the old age of our secular world, we have seen the most horrible manifestation of these demonic images; e have looked more deeply into the mystery of evil than most generations before us; we have seen the unconditional devotion of millions to a satanic image; we feel our period's sickness unto death.
Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations, "Behold, I Am Doing a New Thing" (1949)
Thursday, January 24, 2013
More on Depth
It is comfortable to live on the surface so long as it remains unshaken. The depth of suffering is the door to the depth of truth. The pain of looking into one's own depth is too intense for most people. They would rather return to the shaken and devastated surface of their former lives and thoughts.
The prophets of all time can tell us of the hating resistance which they provoke by their daring to uncover the depths of social judgment and social hope.
Our attempt to avoid the road which leads to such a depth of suffering and our use of pretexts to avoid it are natural. One of the methods, and a very superficial one, is the assertion that deep things are sophisticated things, unintelligible to an uneducated mind. But the market of real depth is simplicity. For you ought to know that nothing of real importance is too profound for anyone. It is not because it is too profound, but rather because it is too uncomfortable, that you shy away from the truth.
Every step into the depth of thought is a breaking away from the surface of former thoughts.
Note: Keep in mind that Tillich was addressing a deeply traumatized post-war crowd, and had himself, the disillusionment of the German people in his mind.
The prophets of all time can tell us of the hating resistance which they provoke by their daring to uncover the depths of social judgment and social hope.
Our attempt to avoid the road which leads to such a depth of suffering and our use of pretexts to avoid it are natural. One of the methods, and a very superficial one, is the assertion that deep things are sophisticated things, unintelligible to an uneducated mind. But the market of real depth is simplicity. For you ought to know that nothing of real importance is too profound for anyone. It is not because it is too profound, but rather because it is too uncomfortable, that you shy away from the truth.
Every step into the depth of thought is a breaking away from the surface of former thoughts.
Note: Keep in mind that Tillich was addressing a deeply traumatized post-war crowd, and had himself, the disillusionment of the German people in his mind.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
The Depth of Existence
Most of our life continues on the surface. We are enslaved by the routine of our daily lives, in work and leisure, in business and recreation. We are overwhelmed by innumerable dealings, both good and bad. We are more driven than driving. We do not stop to look at the height above us, or to the depth below us. We are always moving forward, although usually in a circle, which finally brings us back to the place from which we first moved. We are in constant motion and never stop to plunge into the depth. We talk and talk and never listen to the voices speaking to our depth and from our depth. We accept ourselves as we appear to ourselves, and do not care what we really are. Like hit-and-run drivers, we injure our souls by the speed with which we move on the surface; and then we rush away, leaving our bleeding souls alone. We miss, therefore, our depth and our true life. And it is only when the picture that we have of ourselves breaks down completely, only when we find ourselves acting against all the expectations we had derived from that picture, and only when an earthquake shakes and disrupts the surface of our self-knowledge, that we are willing to look into a deeper level of our being.
Paul Tillich, Sermon on "The Depth of Existence," in The Shaking of the Foundations
Paul Tillich, Sermon on "The Depth of Existence," in The Shaking of the Foundations
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)