Tillich, Paul



Tillich, Paul. The Socialist Decision. Translated by Franklin Sherman. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1977.

Main point: The socialist principle, symbolized as “expectation,” resolves the conflicts internal to socialism, that is, in belief, economics, culture, and politics, while overcoming the contradictions inherent in political conservatism, romanticism, and liberal democracy. But the fact that this socialist principle offers the clearest grounds for rational human hope does not necessitate its triumph in the concrete historical situation.

Structure of the argument:

There are two roots of political thought (the orientation to the origin, root of conservatism and romanticism; the orientation to the unconditional demand, future, the root of liberalism, democratism, and socialism); tension between these two things, and fundamental tension of human being/consciousness. The unconditional demand is superior to, as the ultimate fulfillment of, origin, and justice as fulfillment of power of being is superior to mere power of being. [This conditions the ultimate superiority of the socialist principle.]

Examining this requires knowledge, the product of “relationship to being but also distance from it.” (8) The argument will turn on the concept of “principle,” “the summarizing characterization of a political group,” (9) something like an essence, but dynamic; “A concept is dynamic if it contains the possibilityof making understandable new and unexpected realizations of a historical origin.” (9) It’s not merely an abstraction because “it always stands in a critical and judging relation to its reality . . . there can be no contradiction between essence and appearance, but there can be a contradiction between principle and realization.” (9) This means the understanding of a principle is grasped in a decision, from the standpoint of which one understands, and also criticizes, rather than from simply abstracting from instances. [so, hermeneutics is involved . . . something he doesn’t quite say] “A principle is the power of a historical reality, grasped in concepts.” (10)

Political romanticism hearkens back to the powers of origin, taking them as mystical, elevating pure being and the holiness of being (17); priests guard the sacred sources of origin; this attachment to powers of origin can be broken, as it is in Judaic prophetism, which elevates an ought over the “is” of the promised land, the people, etc – faces the people with an unconditional demand; and as it is in the Enlightenment, with the insistence on automony which breaks myths of origin and their claims. (liberates people from ties to place, group . . .) political romanticism “the countermovement to prophetism and the Enlightenment on the basis of a spiritual and social /situation that is determined by prophetism and the Enlightenment.” (25-6) This means political romanticism has to fight on the terrain and with the weapons of movements it attacks and doesn’t really respect. this introduces a genuine contradiction.

Discusses forms of political romanticism. conservative and revolutionary. aim to return to powers of origin. “The attempt to make tradition out of literary remembrances is the true mark of romanticism, on account of which it is called romanticism; and this is also the clearest expression of its inner contradiction.” (33) “All the more important, therefore, is the attempt to preserve or to revivify the religious tradition.” (34) includes some analysis of the cultural expression of political romanticism, the use of symbols, and the importance of the split between subject and object that determines the impossibility of epic and the predominance of the novel; the importance of lyric poetry and the cult of Stefan George. “Science and poetry, united in revolutionary criticism and apocalyptic hope: this is the cultural form of expression of revolutionary romanticism. It is a political weapon of considerable, even if transient, effect.” (41)

The bourgeois principle is oriented toward the future, enacting a double break with origin, through Jewish Christian prophetism and Enlightenment reason; bourgeois society “viewed from the standpoint of universal history, is an attack on the myth of origin and the bond of origin everywhere on earth.” (47) It dissolves all pre-existing bonds and subjects them to the power of reason. However, it also posits a kind of natural harmony as the resultant of this universal reason, which in particular proletarian experience shows to be falsified; society is not in harmony, the economy does not run as smoothly and harmoniously (and certainly not justly) as the bourgeois ideology would have it. (48-9) He has a great analysis of the critical character of this belief in harmony on p. 51. Without it, the bourgeois principle collapses into a belief in miracles, or has to fall back on pre-bourgeois powers of origin to secure social cohesion. The bourgeois principle is, however, incomplete in itself. “The bourgeois principle is a dynamic, formative principle, not a statis, supportive one. . . . It presupposes what has been created, and makes use of it for its own purposes.” (54) [in essence, bourgeois reality is parasitic on pre-bourgeois formations, in this analysis; and, it recognizes this, and so appropriates things like religion, nationalism, historicism, idealism, seeking worlds of meaning, while articulating them with the world of reason; the split between conscious and subsconcious/irrational ‘parts’ or ‘sides’ of humanity springs from the same source; these are not radical critiques of the bourgeois principle 55-6]

The class struggle radicalizes and shatters the bourgeois principle. “In the face of the split between classes, the democratic belief in harmony as held by the bourgeoisie is shattered; in the face of bourgeois class rule, the (59) democratic belief in harmony as held by socialism collapses.” (60) The symbolic concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat represents the affirmation of earlier powers of origin to bring about that social harmony/unity. From here T. turns to an analysis of socialism, to uncover its principle, in an effort to see whether socialism can overcome the contradictions of the bourgeois principle while also, in some real sense, fulfilling its promise, which seems to be the requirement for socialism.

This leads to an analysis of socialist conflicts. Conflict is not contradiction” (66) contradiction has a subjective element and requires abandonment of the contradictory; conflict is rooted in the situation and requires overcoming. So, there’s a conflict of proletarian existence, in that the proletariat is assigned an object status in bourgeois society, but socialism exists, which presupposes the subjective existence of this class, which implies powers of origin, but the proletariat is compelled to deny these powers to combat bourgeois society, so here’s a conflict built into the situation itself. “A reversal of this tragedy is only possible of the proletariat is led to an awareness of its situation and makes a clear decision for the powers of origin, while rejecting the forces of origin that have become bourgeois, together with the bourgeois principle itself. This, basically, is the ‘socialist decision’ that is demanded of German socialism.” (68)

Then discusses

conflicted belief (expectation of a coming harmonious world, but not a continuation or slow progress from the present; “a leap that can in no way be explained in terms of present reality.” (69) something new); *** an element of prophetic proclamation; “formulates this expectation in a way that is completely defined by the bourgeois principle, i.e., as a purely immanent expectation.” (69) forced to do this to counteract the bourgeois tendency to cast expectation as entirely transcendent. “The constantly recurring alternation of hope and disappointment, of utopianism and unavoidable compromise, that fills the history of socialism, is the consequence of this inner conflict.” (69)

conflicted view of human nature (perfectible, formed by consciousness, but changeable; how? “there is nothing to mediate the leap from unreason to reason. Between reality and expectation lies an abyss.” (73) n.b. this is one of Adorno’s problems!! further consequences of the conflict include underestimation of the charismatic (74) and the “dearth of impressive symbols” (74));

conflicted concept of society (counting on the emergence of a harmonious, unified society, but without the aid of a bourgeois belief in harmony, so needing the activity of power (76), but ultimately requiring the renunciation of power, which no one can quite imagine; one consequence an ambivalence towards the state (77))

conflicted idea of attitude toward culture (79-85); “Socialism is religious if religion means living out of the roots of human being.” (79) But socialism tries to leave lots of cultural elements privatized; socialism makes an object of almost religious faith out of science, which is fundamentally insupportable (81-2); it can’t affirm classical humanism as an expression of essential universal humanity independent of particular situation (84), but it doesn’t have much cultural expression of its own to offer, as it is so estranged from any powers of origin, so it’s in the sad position of foisting others’ high culture off on the proletariat (85);

conflicted idea of community (85-89) – dissolution of communal bonds far advanced, obliged to view all communal bonds with suspicion as tools of class domination, but required to “propose a form of community in contrast to that which is disintegrating.” (87) – can’t fall back on a faith in some natural harmony; ends up in alliance with pre-bourgeois powers; “Thus every way out appears to be cut off, in this respect as with the other antinomies of socialism.” (89) ***

conflicted idea of economics (89-91); must both affirm and deny the efficiency of the rational market

So: proposes a socialist principle that transcends the present conflict, resolves these conflicts, and makes something new possible; he’ll argue that socialism unites powers of origin, present in the proletariat, with the unconditional demand (proletariat as prophetic subject, in essence) – so “Socialism is grounded in the interaction of three elements: the power of the/ origin, the shattering of the belief in harmony, and an emphasis on the demand.” (100-1) Yes to presupposition of romanticism in powers of origin; yes to presupposition of bourgeois principle, breaking of powers of origin by unconditional demand; no to bourgeois metaphysical principle of harmony; the symbol of “expectation” (101) “Socialism is prophetism on the soil of an autonomous, self-sufficient world.” (101) “No one really understands socialism who ignores its prophetic character.” (101)

“Expectation is tension with a forward aim. Expectation directs itself towards what is not now, but shall be, towards something unconditionally new that has never been but is in the making. The fulfillment of being is not to be found in the unfolding of the origin between birth and death. The ambiguity of the origin makes this impossible. There are no eternal laws that regulate all social existence, laws such as political romanticism would use to justify itself theologically. Humanity is a new possibility vis-à-vis nature. . . . History is tension towards that which is to come; concretely, towards the new order of things. the prophet awaits it; socialism strains towards it, regardless of how this straining may be expressed rationally. History, in each of its moments, points beyond itself. Only in this way can history be seen as history, as tension towards the unconditionally new.” (102) Expectation is also the attitude of primitive Christianity. taming Christianity for conservatism involves suppressing longing for redemption into individualism, other-worldliness. (103) “In contrast to this theological justification of ppolitical romanticism, socialism places itself decisively on the side of expectation.” (103)

Not utopian (103) “Fulfillment is not a merely empirical concept. If it is so interpreted, utopianism necessarily results, and with it that disappointment on which all objective final expectations come to ruin.” (103) Socialism is “a nonobjectivied expectation (‘The new breaks into the old’)” (104)

That which is expected is that which will come, so as such not dependent on human activity, but also that which should come, as such, something that must come through human activity. (104) “What is proclaimed is the demanding will of God – not in the sense of a universal, timeless morality, but in the context of concrete, contemporary events. The prophet, from first to last, is linked with a unique situation, a situation that never recurs in precisely the same manner. It presses for a fulfillment that is unique. The prophetic demand concerns that toward which reality itself faces, that toward which a particular event is leading, that which is indicated by a certain constellation of factors, that which can be achieved – but can also fail of achievement. This intepenetration /(104) of demand and promise characterizes all prophetic expectation. It is normative also for socialist expectation and identifies it unequivocally as prophetic.” (105) [There’s a note right at this point; here’s the note: “The concept of the prophetic that we are using here preserves the essential structure of Old Testament prophecy in its most significant aspects. It is surprising with what similarity this structure is repeated throughout history wherever the attitude of expectation is normative. The so-called ‘false prophets’ also appear regularly. This means not someone whose predictions don’t come true, but rather someone who preaches ‘peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” [translator’s note: Jeremiah 6:14, but the word “heil” here translated as peace, maybe an oblique reference to the greetings current in Nazi Germany] for example, in an origin-related group that expects to achieve stability and power by avoiding the demand for justice. The proclaimers of an unqualified nationalism fall into the category of ‘false prophets.’” (note 4 to Part 3, The Principle of Socialism and the Solution of its Inner Conflict, pp 173-4)

Thus, waiting is not passive, but active. The demand for equality reflects the equality of all before the unconditional demand articulated in the prophetic proclamation. Here is the meaning of the fulfillment of being in the diminution of individual power: it’s against the suppression of the poor, for instance; and also against the false glorification of poverty, subservience. (106)

Origin and expectation are united (106); the expectation somehow fulfills the origin (107); “The demand cannot move life if life itself is not moving in the direction of that which is demanded. A socialism of mere moralistic demand creates utopias, and is impotent against the actual forces of society.” (107) Here brings up the symbol of providence, confidence that what is is not ultimately separated from what ought, what is coming. (108) Hegel’s philosophy of history moves in the same direction, but “Hegel spoiled his own concept by identifying a particular form of being as the tangible fulfillment of being.” (108), which exempted these forms from the unconditional demand, so lost the “ought” in the “is”, and conservative romanticism triumphed. Marx resurrected the authentic prophetic element of socialism. (109)

Socialism’s prophetic character on the terrain of rationality is its peril, and its profundity. (109) “Prophetic expectation is transcendent; rational expectation is immanent.” (110) “Prophetic expectation acknowledges factors in human life that are in principle incomprehensible; rational expectation, only factors that have not as yet been comprehended.” (110)

There’s a tension between the transcendence of the expected world, its new quality, and its continuity/ rationally, with what now is, its immanent quality, “but the tention is not an opposition” (110). “Human expectation is always transcendent and immanent at the same time. More precisely, this opposition does not exist for expectation.” (110)

Here, he lays out the essential lack of opposition in authentic expectation between transcendence and immanence!! This is vital for the “utopianism” of all my thinkers (Adorno, Irigaray, Agamben); something immanent that is leading to something utterly transformed; something transcendent that can nevertheless be glimpsed in the categories of the present . . .

“Both prophetic and socialist expectation are a witness of life to its fundamental openness. they are a protest of life against false concepts of transcendence that inevitably call forth, in opposition, false concepts of immanence.” (111) re Heidegger?

“The tension between the prophetic and the rational elements in socialism is not a contradiction, but rather a genuine expression of a living expectation; it is that which constitutes its essence.” (112)

Then follows some analysis of Marx’s contribution to the analysis of socialism and its requirements, which does not seem as suited to my purposes, no doubt brilliant, and finally a demonstration of the way the socialist principle resolves the contradictions in socialism.

In the analysis of Marx, here’s this quote, re historical dialectic, making the point that everything that happens has to go through human action: “. . . the fulfillment of being is not dependent on human arbitrariness. It is the inner meaning and the aim of every particular historical process. It is the impulse of history in each of its moments. again, this does not mean, however, that history can be viewed as an objective process that will inevitably reach its goal, a goal which thus would be locatable in time and space. that is utopianism, and such an interpretation of history is utopian in all its parts. the impulse of history cannot be converted into a succession of external events. what actually takes place contradicts the impulse of history just as much as it corresponds to it. there is no universal history as a theodicy, demonstrating the successful transmutation of the ‘ought’ into the ‘is.’” (122)

His purpose is to defend Marxism against a kind of dogmatism that becomes either too mechanistic or utopian.

“The socialist principle is able to resolve the inner conflict of socialism. But since the conflict of socialism is rooted in the conflict of the proletarian situation, such a solution must be based on an overcoming of the ocnflict in the proletarian situation. the socialist principle is able to resolve socialism’s antinomies only when, and to the extent that, it serves as the expression of powers in the proletarian movement through which the proletariat’s own antinomies are overcome.” (127)

So, some practical political discussion of potential alliances, what’s possible, realistic in the present situation, . . .

“Expectation is always bound to the concrete, and at the same time transcends every instance of the concrete. It possesses a content that is dependent on the spiritual or social group involved, yet it transcends this content.” (132) xcf. Adorno

principle undergirds a more sophisticated understanding of human nature than that of pleasure and pain principles (133), which is crude and wrong; the notion of the spiritual and vital center, not a “doubling” of being in consciousness, but “the subordination of the origin to the demand” (134); forces that determine consciousness; “Psychoanalysis . . . points to connections between spiritual forms and the vitalities of life, a connection that corresponds to the authentic Marxist view of history, undistorted by bourgeois influence. These matters are unresolved at present.” (134)

the principle makes possible a better theory of needs; people have a “complex of vital, erotic, aesthetic, and religious impulses” that often make the spiritual impulses more powerful than the material/physical (136); this turns out to be a very different notion of human nature from the bourgeois, as well (137) “For the proletarian movement draws its fighting power not from the enlightenment of individual proletarians, but from that in the origin which is back of the rational forms through which it expresses itself. It is not the most enlightened, the so-called ‘most progressive’ consciousness that influences hisotyr. It is the consciousness whose energies flow from the fullness and depth of being, which it brings to light.” (137) [in T’s view, this hasn’t been harnessed yet to the benefit of socialism, and the fulfillment of socialist expectation]

His analysis of power (138-144); relation of power to ability, expression of social will and unity, power as the actualization of social unity (138), willingness to consent, or else struggle to re-establish some other form of power (139), “the exercise of power appears to be just when all members of a society can acknowledge that there own will is contained in the will of the whole” (139), so the revolution has to instantiate an overarching justice (140), and this justice has to have the substance of being the fulfillment of primal being, “the fulfillment of that which was intended by the origin.” (140); not bound by the actual powers of origin and their ambiguity, rather “more adequate justice” (141), “Socialism has no cause to pursue the utopia of a society without power, a notion that derives from the bourgeois principle and depends on the belief in natural harmony. Rather, it must understand the power that it wins and defends as a realization of this justice for this time and in this social situation. So the problem of power proves to be the problem of a concrete justice.” (141) [NOTE: 20: The antithesis between power and justice rests on an abstract concept of justice and a confusion of power with force. A concrete conception of justice dissolves the antithesis and makes each factor dependent on the other. In historical life the tension between power and justice remains. the universal demand for justice is raised against power that has become force. But this contradiction does not represent either true power or true justice.” (176)]

further, on power, “It is important for the theory of revolution that the attainment of power in society always presupposes the possession of certain qualities that persuade other groups to subject themselves to the group holding power. The development of such qualities is thus just as necessary for the revolutionary process as is the seizure of (143) the power apparatus. This takes place invisibly, slowly, and in constant struggle within the group iteslf and in its encounter with other groups.” (144)

Culture. strengthening the prophetic as opposed to the priestly element in the churches. (145)´”It is only out of the tensions of the religious tradition that new religious life has ever sprung. That is the significance of the churches’ preservation of the religious powers of origin in an age that is characterized by autonomy and objectification. The socialist principle makes it possible for socialism to understand itself in terms of its own roots, and that means, religiously, and on the basis of its own prophetic element to take up a relationship again with the prophetic elements in the history of Western religion.” (146)

“The future symbolic language can be developed only through a combination of religious and secular symbolism.” (147) socialism needs powerful symbolic language.

Culture needs to thrive, by drawing on the deep wells of being. Symbols can’t be sheltered from critical reason; they have to live or die on their merits, and their merits are that they disclose to being its real depths. (150)

“Eros and Purpose in the Life of the Community” (150-153)

“. . . only what once had a genuine use can be misused.” (151) “The prophetic is always addressed to all humanity, but it always proceeds from amongst a people, exhibiting thereby the unity of origin and goal that is typical of it.” (151)

“The powers of origin possessed by woman by virtue of her resonance with eros and motherhood cannot easily be incorporated into the extremely onesided, male-oriented rationalistic system. Just as it supported the proletarian movement over against class rule, so socialism should support the women’s movement that sets itself against this tendency of the bourgeois principle. . . .” (152)

What is wrong with this picture??? Sadly, here is an impoverished treatment of eros, and the typical equation of “woman” with “eros” due to the specifically male relationship to eros in a narrow sense . . . so: everyone always has a long way to go. But, also, potentialities in feminism . . . at this time (1933) yet to be dreamt of.

Here’s his conclusion:

“Socialism can be victorious only in reliance on its own principle, in which powers of origin and prophetic expectation are combined. But expectation must play the major role. Only through expectation is human existence raised to the level of true humanity. Only under its leadership can human being and human society find their fulfillment. the hegemony of the myth of origin means the domination of violence and death. Only expectation can triumph over the death now threatening Western civilization through the resurgence of the myth of origin. And expectation is the symbol of socialism.” (162)

Can’t underestimate the importance of this analysis for the consideration of utopian thought or perhaps utopian expectation in Adorno, Agamben, Irigaray. All are concerned with expectation in various ways, and expectation as the avenue to the transformed situation. We could also use the symbol of transformation, which is perhaps more popular these days, at least in Presbyterian and perhaps wider Christian circles. Important is reliance on symbolic, connection to sources of the symbolic; rationalism in partnership and tension with this pre- or supra-rational level; future orientation; Tillich clearly deploys the concept of “utopian” as hollow, miraculous, without substance; the desirable future is not utopian, because real rather than imaginary, possible rather than impossible in principle, though as something existential, it presumably will not be, in fact, ideal.

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