Then I pointed to somebody whose work, also deriving from Heidegger, integrates aspects of all of these together in kind of a profound way. Tillich is deeply influenced and aware of what he calls ‘depth psychology’, the kind of psychology in Jung, he of course is deeply aware of Heidegger. I don’t think that Tillich was aware of Corbin, but he is deeply aware of the symbol in an imaginal instead of a merely imaginary way.
Tillich takes the meaning crisis seriously, he writes perhaps his most well-known (and I think it’s a masterpiece) book, The Courage to Be, as a response to the meaning crisis. Like Jung and Corbin, and for very related reasons, he’s deeply critical of literalism and fundamentalism throughout, but he takes it deeper. As I mentioned, he really deepens it in terms of Heidegger’s critique of ontotheology and he comes critical of literalism and fundamentalism as forms of idolatry in which we are attempting to have rather than become.
So there’s some excellent books on the relationship between Jung and Tillich, a series of ongoing work by John Dourley; I recommend two books to you, The Psyche as Sacrament which I tweeted about in my book recommendations, I would also recommend his later book, Paul Tillich, Carl Jung, and the Recovery of Religion, but make no mistake, Dourley is not talking about a recovery in a nostalgic sense. He writes another book called A Strategy for a Loss of Faith where he is trying to get beyond classical theism. So I recommend Dourley’s work as a comprehensive way of bringing about a deep dialog and a kind of integration between Jung and Tillich.
Tillich sees the main response to the meaning crisis, and here’s how Tillich is not just theorizing: he is trying to give us guidance on how to live. Let’s remember that this really matters, because you know, the way Tillich resisted the Nazis. What Tillich talks about in The Courage to Be is *courage*, now he’s careful to note that this is a kind of existential courage that ultimately allows us to confront and overcome meaninglessness in its depth, but also to more practically respond to perverted response to the meaning crisis itself, like Nazism and its gnostic nightmare.
This process of encouragement—now, he is like Aristotle, he’s not talking about something as simple as just bravery (facing danger) or fortitude (the ability to endure), no, for Tillich courage is a virture. There’s something of wisdom in courage. Courage involves within it that central feature of wisdom, which is seeing through illusion into reality. The brave person face danger, but that’s all we can say about them. The person with fortitude endures difficulty, but that’s all we can say about them. The courageous person sees through the illusion and the distortion of fear or distress to what is truly good and acts accordingly.
Episode 50: Tillich and Barfield
Sad I missed this in March. Have heard some Vervaeke on Curt Jaimungal’s channel.