26. ANGST AND THE PARADOX OF COURAGE The deepest question of all ontology is: Why is there something (i.e., being) rather than nothing (i.e., non-being)? This question is the ultimate basis of all existential wonder. For the question, Why is the world here? leads directly to the question, Why am I here? and from there to a host of questions about the meaning of life. Questions of the latter sort have been the most frequent types of questions addressed in my students' insight papers. This is particularly true once we recognize that most questions about death are also, at least indirectly, questions about the meaning of life. For the awareness of non-being first raises the question of being; and in the same way the awareness of death first raises the question of the meaning of life. In the next lecture we will examine the paradox which arises out of our search for life's meaning in the face of the inevitability of death. But today we will focus on another, closely related paradox, which arises within us any time we choose life in the face of death. According to most existentialists, any time we come face to face with the possibility of our own non-being (e.g., as when we reflect upon our eventual death), we have a natural "existential response" involving a very special kind of fear. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), a German existentialist philosopher who, with Wittgenstein, is generally regarded as one of the two most influential twentieth-century philosophers, distinguished between this special existential fear and ordinary kinds of fear in the following way. Ordinary fear is a person's empirical response to a threatening object within the world: it usually requires us either to fight the object in hopes of overpowering its threat, or to flee from the object in hopes of escaping from its threat. In both cases we can say the person who is afraid of something in the world responds by trying to push something out of the world--either the feared object or one's own self (see Figure 26.1a). By contrast, existential fear is a 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 to flee from the threat, since it seems impossible to fight against "nothing"! But in this case we flee not by seeking to escape the world, but by immersing ourselves more fully into the empirical objects of our ordinary experience (see Figure 26.1b). This may be done in many ways, such as by pursuing hobbies, watching television, becoming an avid sports fan, or even becoming a scholar and immersing oneself in books. Heidegger's point is that the usual (unhealthy) way of escaping from the threat of non-being is merely to pretend it is not there, by immersing oneself in being. Using Heidegger's distinction as an introduction, let us now look back to the ideas of an earlier philosopher, who also had much to say about the nature and function of existential fear. The philosopher who is generally recognized as the father of theistic existentialism (as opposed to the atheistic existentialism fathered by Nietzsche) is Smren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). Kierkegaard (pronounced "Keerkagore", meaning "churchyard"--i.e., graveyard) was a lonely Danish philosopher who wrote twenty-one books (as well as 8000 pages of unpublished papers) in twelve short years, and whose ideas were never well received during his own lifetime. His main philosophical ideas were developed in a series of books written under several different pseudonyms (in some of which he argued against his own ideas!). But in the last few years of his life he wrote a number of books using his own name, in which he attacked the corruptions he perceived in the Christianity of his day. Of his many interesting ideas, the only one we will have time to investigate here is his use of the Danish word "angst" to refer to what I have called "existential fear". (a) Ordinary Empirical Fear (b) Existential Fear ("Angst") [Figure 26.1: Inappropriate Responses to Two Kinds of Fear] Although angst is sometimes translated as "dread" or "anxiety", neither of these words captures the full depth of the existential fear of non-being which Kierkegaard intended this word to denote. Dread is too often associated with extreme displeasure or apprehension at the thought of facing some empirical threat, as when I say I dread going to the dentist. Likewise, anxiety is too often associated with ordinary "stress", as when students say they feel anxious about their ability to pass the upcoming examination. In order to guard against the temptation to connect angst too closely with ordinary empirical types of fear, many scholars have adopted the habit of simply using the original Danish word--a practice I shall follow today. When I do refer on several occasions to dread or anxiety, we should, of course, identify these with angst, not empirical fear. Kierkegaard's first 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, this distinction corresponds to the distinction we discussed in Lecture 18, between utilitarianism and deontology. At first, those who read the book debated over which of these two opposing points of view the author actually wished to support. But Kierkegaard's true intention was to demonstrate that either choice on its own is as absurd or incomplete as the other. For he later published another book, Stages on Life's Way (1845), wherein he argued that the aesthetic and ethical stages both point beyond themselves to a third stage, the religious, which synthesizes and surpasses the two earlier stages (see Figure 26.2). He defined the religious way of life in terms of an attitude of "inwardness", which transcends the "outwardness" required for theoretical reasoning and scientific knowledge. In The Concept of Anxiety (1844) Kierkegaard developed his idea of angst by analyzing the Christian idea of sin. Angst, he claimed, is a psychological state arising naturally out of the essential, ontological nature of man: our freedom gives us infinite potential for the future; yet our presence in time makes us finite and ignorant. In other words, angst arises out of the tension between the sensuousness of our body (rooted as it is in time) and the freedom of our soul (rooted as it is in eternity). Our ignorance insures [Figure 26.2: Kierkegaard's Three Stages and Two Leaps] that the choices we make for our own future will eventually plunge us into sin, so that angst comes to be experienced as "entangled freedom" (p.320)--that is, as the infinite tangled up in the finite. Sin, then, as the normal state of the human spirit (see Figure 26.3), is the first of two "qualitative leaps" we must make in order to progress through the stages of life. After leaping from innocence to sin (as in the story of Adam and 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 (or vice versa), while the second corresponds to the change from the aesthetic/ethical choice to the religious (see Figure 26.2). Paganism is rooted in the aesthetic stage, where the leap of sin is experienced as fate and the leap of faith as providence; Judaism, by contrast, is rooted in the ethical stage, where the leap of sin is experienced as guilt and the leap of faith as atonement. Christianity surpasses both of these by actually being rooted in the properly religious stage of absolute faith in God. [Figure 26.3: The Ontological Origins of Angst and Sin] Kierkegaard's analysis of angst and sin suggests that the lack of angst is the worst possible psychological state, since without angst we could never progress to the stage of spirit. In the original state of innocence angst arises as a response to the "nothing" (i.e., the person's ignorance) of the future: "anxiety is freedom's actuality as the possibility of possibility" (p.313). To ignore this freedom is actually idolatry when it causes the person in the aesthetic stage of life to grasp innocence, peace, happiness, beauty, etc., as if they were good in and of themselves. For to do so is to separate oneself from the spiritual depths of one's own human nature: "The most effective means of escaping spiritual trial is to become spiritless" (p.385). Yet once this freedom is utilized, an awareness of sin arises, which causes a new kind of angst, in the form of "anxiety about evil" (pp.381-386). This comes in three forms: (1) the desire to return to a state of innocence; (2) the threat of falling deeper into sin; and (3) the wish that mere repentance were enough to atone for sin. Unfortunately, the attempt of many religious people to overcome such anxiety by means of outward goodness only gives rise to more angst, in the form of "anxiety about the good" (pp.386-420). The truly religious person turns away from both aesthetic and ethical aims in order to become inward. "Inwardness" refers to immediate self-understanding in action (p.408), which requires a person to be open to the eternal in one's own self. To turn towards oneself in this way is therefore identical to turning towards God. As a result, it always begins by heightening a person's awareness of guilt (pp.376-377): In turning toward himself, [the religious "genius"] eo ipso turns toward God, and ... when the finite spirit would see God, it must begin as guilty. As he turns toward himself, he discovers guilt. The greater the genius, the more profoundly he discovers guilt.... In turning inward he discovers freedom.... To the degree he discovers freedom, to that same degree the anxiety of sin is upon him in the state of possibility.... Such a person will then recognize that anxiety really points beyond itself to faith (p.385): The only thing that is truly able to disarm the sophistry of sin is faith, courage to believe that the state [of sin] itself is a new sin, courage to renounce anxiety without anxiety, which only faith can do; faith does not thereby annihilate anxiety, but ... extricates itself from anxiety's moment of death. In other words, the proper response to anxiety is to stop being anxious about anxiety, accepting it in the belief that it exists for a higher purpose. Whereas pagan anxiety expresses itself most profoundly as fate, and Jewish anxiety as guilt, the anxiety of the true Christian (whom Kierkegaard regarded as practicing the most advanced form of religion) is therefore expressed in the form of suffering. Kierkegaard argued that the key to solving the problem of angst is to learn to face it courageously, with the paradoxical feelings of "sympathetic antipathy" and "antipathetic sympathy" (p.313). Anyone who "has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate" (p.421). For "anxiety is through faith absolutely educative, because it consumes all finite ends" (p.422). Despite its apparently negative character, the suffering caused by angst is therefore essential to our spiritual growth: "the more profoundly he is in anxiety, the greater is the man" (p.421). Kierkegaard had numerous other philosophical insights, not only concerning the human experience of angst, but also about numerous other topics, such as the paradoxical relationship between history (the finite) and subjectivity (the infinite), and the true nature of Christian faith as requiring a subjective willingness to die. However, we will be unable to pursue these or other interesting topics here. Instead, I want to point out that, given Kierkegaard's analysis of angst, the relationship between dread and death is analogous to the relationship between love and life: just as love is the moving power of life, so also dread is the moving power of death. Whereas the former is the power of being, driving us towards the unity of opposites, the latter is the power of non- being, driving us towards the diversity of opposites. In other words, dread is the driving power behind the "estrangement" which Tillich regarded as the necessary prerequisite for love (see Figure 25.1). The struggle between these two powers is, in fact, what keeps us alive, while at the same time giving us a glimpse of our eternality in the midst of our finitude. In other words, dread, in spite of being a primarily negative experience, reminds us of our capacity for self-transcendence. Together, the powers of love and dread remind us that, on the one hand, we are not at home in this world, and yet on the other hand, we are not entirely strangers either. Recognizing this paradox can help us to respond to real experiences of angst in a way which is appropriate to the eternal dimension of our lives. The failure to balance the powers of eternality (love) and temporality (death) in our lives usually results is some type of psychological disturbance, and can eventually lead even to insanity. Insanity does not come from paying too much attention to the paradoxes of human experiences; rather, it results from the attempt to run away from them to the security of either the infinite or the finite on its own. As long as the two powers are engaged in a struggle within us, our mental health will be preserved. But the loss of either eternality or temporality can drive a person insane: for the former would limit us to an application of analytic logic, thereby causing us to see the world as an unbearable diversity of fragmented and disconnected bits, while the latter would limit us to an application of synthetic logic, thereby causing us to see the world as an unbearable unity, without discrete and intelligible parts. The former describes the form of insanity that stems from an overemphasis on reason over imagination, as when paranoid schizophrenics interpret their experience within a narrow set of limits (e.g., "everyone is against me"); the latter describes the form of insanity that stems from an overemphasis on imagination over reason, as when the elderly lose themselves in the limitlessness of senility. Tillich argued that we are all guilty of losing our eternality to some extent. The best explanation for the angst we feel when we think honestly about our own death, he claimed, is that we all know deep down inside that we deserve to die, because of the unauthentic way we have lived. Too often, people's response to this guilt is merely to flee from it into the safety of philosophical arguments for immortality or a religious hope for eternal life. Yet the latter only increases the philosopher's over-dependence on logical reasoning, while the former only increases the believer's over-dependence on religious imagination. In other words, these common "solutions", though not in themselves wrong, can sometimes backfire by intensifying the loss of eternality that comes from denying one side of the paradox. The only proper response to the loss of eternality revealed in our experience of existential dread is, according to Tillich, to face the threat of non-being with an existential courage to be. In his book, The Courage To Be (1952), he described this response in the following way (p.152-153): Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact of non-being. It is the act of the individual self in taking the anxiety of non-being upon itself by affirming itself ... Courage always includes a risk, it is always threatened by non-being ... Courage needs the power of being, a power transcending the non-being which is experienced in the anxiety of fate and death, ... in the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness, ... [and] in the anxiety of guilt and condemnation. The courage which takes this threefold anxiety into itself must be rooted in a power of being that is greater than the power of oneself and the power of one's world.... There are no exceptions to this rule; and this means that every courage to be has openly or covertly a religious root. For religion is the state of being grasped by the power of being itself. Like Kierkegaard, Tillich therefore saw the threat of non-being as an existential problem whose only adequate solution is essentially religious. This word "religious" should not be misunderstood as referring to religious practices, such as going to church, singing hymns, etc. For such things can be misused to keep us away from truly religious courage. Instead, the point here is that to be religious means to be open to an experience of a Being who, by transcending the distinction between being and non-being, can alone supply us with the courage to be. This basic experience of receiving the gift of the courage to be is closely related, according to Tillich, both to mystical experiences of participation in God, and to more ordinary experiences of a personal encounter between man and God. Such experiences are rooted in a recognition that the presence of non- being within us estranges us from our true nature, and that this problem can be solved only if we are willing to be "grasped by the power of being itself" (p.153). For only when we "participate in something which transcends the self" (p.161) will we be prepared to experience the most profound manifestation of the courage to be, in the form of the "courage to accept acceptance" (pp.159- 166). This courageous self-affirmation is not merely "the Existentialist courage to be as oneself. It is the paradoxical act in which one is accepted by that which infinitely transcends one's individual self." Nor does this ultimate acceptance require us to deny our guilt, for "it is not the good or the wise or the pious who are entitled to the courage to accept acceptance but those who are lacking in all these qualities and are aware of being unacceptable" (pp.160-161). At the beginning of the process of accepting acceptance, the courage to be is experienced merely as the bare "courage of despair [i.e., of angst]" (p.170): the acceptance of despair is in itself faith on the boundary line of the courage to be. In this situation the meaning of life is reduced to despair about the meaning of life. But as long as this despair is an act of life it is positive in its negativity. Eventually, by living our life in the paradoxical power of the courage to be, we will finally be ready to welcome death itself not as a tragic confirmation of 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 recognized that "the courage to die is the test of the courage to be" (p.164). We will look more fully at the experience of death itself in the following lecture. For now, however, it will suffice merely to summarize Tillich's theory of courage in terms of the map given in Figure 26.4. The religious basis of the courageous acceptance of life in the face of death, of being in spite of the dreadful prospects of non-being, is made explicit in the biblical notion of the "fear of the Lord". The Old Testament references to fearing God are too often watered down to the point where they are taken to mean nothing more than being careful to obey the Law lest we be punished. But they refer far more profoundly to the fact that the God of the Old Testament, as the Being who holds all beings in His hand, is the ultimate source of life and death; as such, the one who is courageous enough to approach such a Being must do so with the utmost reverence and awe. As Mitchell put it: "Fear of the Lord is being in awe, aware of the shocking, silent, presence of God" [Figure 26.4: Existential Courage in the Face of Non-Being] (In Pursuit of Wonder, p.75)--a comment reminiscent of Otto's notion of awe in the presence of the numinous (see Lecture 23, pp.168-169). Throughout the Bible this fundamental, other-worldly fear is depicted as an existential response to the human situation which, if we accept it, will give us otherwise unattainable strength in coping with the fearful situations that arise in the ordinary world. This could indeed be regarded as the basic message of the Psalms and Proverbs: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (e.g., Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 1:7) means we will learn best how to respond to the threats within the world only when we have courageously responded to the threat outside the world. In other words, angst and wisdom are best regarded, paradoxically, as two sides of the same coin. If we do not merely ignore the basic ontological question raised at the beginning of 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 no basis, or else there is a God who is, paradoxically, beyond the very distinction between something and nothing, and who thereby lends meaning to both being and non-being, thus forming the ultimate basis of faith, and so also of our courage to be. But as Kierkegaard, Tillich, and many other religious existentialists have pointed out, this God cannot lend meaning merely by being a doctrine imposed on us by the social pressures of a religious community; rather, we must experience God as a reality that gives us power to cope with the paradoxes of life, providing us with faith in the face of doubt, peace in the face of turmoil, acceptance in the face of guilt, and courage in the face of dread. QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT 1. Could Figure 26.1 be revised to depict appropriate responses to the two kinds of fear? 2. Is it possible to choose both the aesthetic and the ethical ways of life? 3. Is it necessary for human beings to sin? 4. Does angst actually help us to cope with ordinary, empirical fears? RECOMMENDED READINGS 1. Smren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety: A simple psychologically orienting deliberation on the dogmatic issue of hereditary sin, tr. Reidar Thomte and Albert B. Anderson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), especially section 5, "The Concept of Anxiety", pp.313-316. (Page numbers refer to the original Danish pagination, as cited in the margins of this translation.) 2. Paul Tillich, The Courage To Be (London: Collins, 1952), especially Chapter VI, "Courage and Transcendence", pp.152-183. 3. Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: The Free Press, 1973). 4. Douglas N. Walton, Courage: A philosophical investigation (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986).