Overcoming Despair and Anxiety through Faith and Courage Olivia F. Vega College

Søren Kierkegaard and Paul Tillich developed religious philosophies at vastly different periods in history. Kierkegaard emerged in 19th century Denmark as an existential thinker who emphasized the ethics of individuality while Tillich grappled with the relevance of Christianity in post-World War I Germany. However, both theologians express a profound yearning for meaningful human existence through faith. Embodying the persona of his pious pseudonym Anti-Climacus, Kierkegaard equates a lack of self-understanding to a fate worth than physical death, an infinite spiritual death, which he describes as despair. In order to overcome the various forms of despair an individual must accept God and cultivate an integrated, self-aware identity. Tillich, finding influence in Kierkegaard’s philosophy, adapts despair into a pertinent 20th century psychological concern, anxiety. He argues that anxiety is rooted in the inevitability of nonbeing. It takes extraordinary courage to overcome an awareness of death, which connotes such meaninglessness that the very act of living can become all-consuming and intolerable. The act of courage to affirm being requires individual conviction and faith in a higher power.

Through their writings in The...