Tillich on the prophetic role of art, existentialism

(from Mark Jenkin‘s street installations via WC)

Most people don’t think of mashing up existentialism, art, and prophecy.

But most people aren’t Paul Tillich.

Check out Paul Tillich on existentialism and modern art:

I distinguish three meanings of this term: existentialism as an element in all important human thinking, existentialism as a revolt against some features of the industrial society of the nineteenth century, and existentialism as a mirror of the situation of sensitive human beings in our twentieth century. Of course the main emphasis will be on the last meaning of this term. I believe that most creative art, literature and philosophy in the twentieth century is in its very essence existentialist. And this is the reason why I have proposed to address myself to existentialist elements in recent visual art. I believe that the people for whom visual impressions are important will perhaps understand what existentialism means better by looking at modem art than by reading recent philosophers.

Art as discourse on par w/ philosophical writings is an impressive assertion coming from a dude that spent his life in academia writing and speaking on theology.

Tillich goes on to give some background on the formation of existentialism:

Man was considered to be only a part, an element in the great machine of the Newtonian World, and, later on, an element in the great social process of production and consumption in which we all are now living. The protest against this view was a protest of the existing man, of man in his estrangement, his finitude, in his feeling of built and meaninglessness. It was a protest against the world view in which man is nothing but a piece of an all-embracing mechanical reality, be it in physical terms, be it in economic or sociological terms, or even be it in psychological terms.

Tillich goes on talk about the discursive, prophetic role of art:

These artists, therefore, who took away the cover from our situation, had a prophetic function in our time. I do not like all of them, either. But I know they created revealing works of art to look at which is the joy of participating in a level of reality which we otherwise can never reach.

Art framed as prophecy is a pretty incredible meme that I need to think about some more.

That line “participating in a level of reality which we otherwise can never reach” is really sticky.

Tillich goes on to criticize the church:

The churches believed they had all the answers. But in believing that they had all the answers they deprived the answers of their meaning. These answers were no longer understood because the questions were no longer understood, and this was the churches’ fault. They did not do what the existentialist artist did. They did not ask the questions over again as they should have out of the experience of despair in industrial society.

The churches did not ask the question, and therefore their answers, all the religious answers Christianity has in its creeds, became empty. Nobody knew what to do with them because the questions were not vivid any more as they were in the periods in which, these answers were given. This, then, is my last statement about the whole thing. I believe that existentialist art has a tremendous religious function, in visual art as well as in all other realms of art, namely, to rediscover the basic questions to which the Christian symbols are the answers in a way which is understandable to our time. These symbols can then become again understandable to our time.

We are a question-starved society and religion isn’t helping.

In addition to art, I’d argue that science, somewhat ironically, also serves this ‘religious function’ more effectively than religion.

Religion has too many answers and not enough questions…it’s art and science that have all the good questions.

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I have mad respect for Tillich and think his wedding of Christianity with Existentialism is brilliant:

Theology formulates the questions implied in human existence, and theology formulates the answers implied in divine self-manifestation under the guidance of the questions implied in human existence. This is a circle which drives man to a point where question and answer are not separated….

-Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p 61

If any of this resonates, Tillich’s book ‘The Courage to Be’ is awesome. Check him out.