Summary

This chapter turns to the opposite pole of the dyad—individualization and the courage to be as oneself. This element is always in constant tension with societal participation and collective constraints. One is always situated within society and one is always situated within his or her individual horizon. These two must be constantly weighed against one another. Through an overview of the intellectual history of Western civilization, Tillich argues that individualization reached its evolutionary apex in the wake of the Enlightenment and the rise of the modern, free and autonomous individual. Under this perspective, individualism is conceived as “the self-affirmation of the individual self as individual self without regard to its participation in its world” (113). Courage is two-sided and the individual side works and is in constant tension with its participatory counterpart. The courage to...