The Courage to Be
December 18, 2001
Tillich?s Response to the Madman
In some ways, Paul Tillich?s book The Courage to Be responds to Friedrich Nietzsche?s idea of ?the death of God.? To understand Nietzsche?s Madman?s announcement, one must first understand Nietzsche?s idea of God. Within the subject-object structure of reality, God as a subject makes people into objects. This objectivity of humans deprives us of our subjectivity because He is all-powerful and all-knowing. We revolt and try to make Him into an object, but the revolt fails and we become desperate. In our desperation we see God as the invincible tyrant, for He is with freedom, power and knowledge, and we are without. ?This is the God Nietzsche said had to be killed because nobody can tolerate being made into a mere object of absolute knowledge and absolute control.? (Tillich 185)
In Nietzsche, we find a predominance of the threat of meaninglessness. As a result of this threat, we see what Tillich describes as the
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