Time’s 40th Anniversary: THE AMBIGUITY OF PERFECTION

Addressing a gathering of people noted for their professional excellence, Theologian Paul Tillich spoke of the ambiguity of perfection and found cause for uneasiness about the dimension of culture in the contemporary world. Excerpts:

“WHEN accepting the invitation, I was asked to speak about “The Human Condition in Relation to the Anniversary Celebration of TIME Magazine.” While the human condition is a subject of general philosophical significance, our interest tonight is focused on the late past and the near future. Nevertheless, one cannot say anything about the present human situation without having an image of the universal condition of man. It is my conviction that the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is “ambiguity”: the inseparable mixture of good and evil, of true and false, of creative and destructive forces—both individual and social. Sometimes I have the feeling that the American irony, including the style of TIME, shows some awareness of the ambiguity of life—as long as it does not degenerate into mere cynicism. The awareness of the ambiguity of one’s own highest achievements (as well as one’s own deepest failures) is a definite symptom of maturity. Therefore, in an assembly in which such great achievements in so many realms of life are represented, it may be justified to speak of something I suggest calling “the ambiguity of perfection.” ∙ He who is not aware of the ambiguity of his perfection as a person and in his work is not yet mature; and a nation which is not aware of the ambiguity of its greatness also lacks maturity. Are we mature as a nation, are we aware of the ambiguity even of the best in us? There are signs of such awareness in many places. The very fact that I was asked to speak about the human condition points to a lack of certainty about the excellence of this condition. An awareness of the ambiguity of our achievements is alive in those who know that the American form of democracy, though preferable to most other present political methods, is not the end of the ways of historical providence. It is alive in those who realize that our methods of education-in-breadth. though desirable, are full of dangers for the future of our culture. It is alive in those who realize that the immense success of our economic system, though justified by this success, is not an unambiguous criterion for all other systems. It is alive in churches insofar as they recognize that they are not the unambiguous and exclusive vehicle of the manifestation of the mystery of being. While the ambiguity of perfection is true of the human condition under all circumstances, there is an ambiguity which is particularly true of our present condition. It is based on the fact that our culture is onedimensional, determined by the drive toward expansion in the horizontal line: be it the push into outer space, be it the production of ever new and improved tools, be it the increase in means and materials of communication, be it the growing number of human beings to whom cultural “goods” are available—all this is one-dimensional horizontal expansion. Therefore, it is subject to the “ambiguity of expansion.” Ambiguity does not mean evil. The merely negative critics of our condition confuse the two concepts and are not able to name the positive sources from which even their own criticism derives: if everything were negative it could not even be recognized as negative. Life is not like that—its problem is deeper. It is profoundly ambiguous. ∙ The negative forces of our one-dimensional culture are extremely strong: if cultural goods can be sold and bought it is an almost irresistible temptation for contemporary creative minds to produce in order to sell. Often they resist this temptation and are in danger of being ignored by society, but who can prevent the consumers from taking the greatest creations of the past as goods for their entertainment or their social standing or as objects of conversation? Nobody can, and the consumers then miss tragically the experience of these works as expressions of ultimate human possibilities, profoundly significant for their own existence and the meaning of their own lives. We must stop running in the one-dimension. We must come to a rest; we must enter the creation and unite with its inner power. But it is hard to find such rest in a one-dimensional culture. The endless variety of possibilities, the fascination of the new, the demand to be ahead of the development make waiting and contemplating almost impossible. The market of cultural goods requires always more production and more exchange : this is what ambiguity of expansion means. It is the role of the creative critic to show the ambiguity of perfection in every culture. However, they also have to fight a continuous struggle in the one-dimensional culture. Their fight is not that of the critic in former cultures where it could lead to martyrdom; but it is the fight against being taken into the culture as another cultural good. Then the Socratic gaddy is imprisoned though not in order to be killed. He is fed even with food for his criticism but he is not free to give a judgment from the vertical dimension which may shake the culture that feeds him in its foundations.

You may think that these are words of a theologian who wants to sell the oldest cultural good, namely religion. He does not. Even if one calls the experience in the vertical dimension religious, it is not what this word usually connotes. It is not what I sometimes have called the magazine concept of religion—even the TIME concept of religion—namely, religion as one of the cultural functions of man’s spirit reported, for instance, between economy and sports, considered as the job of the “religionist”—the most anti-religious word in the English language. Religion as the experience of the vertical line is effective in every creative work, in artistic as well as scientific, in ethical as well as in political, in technical as well as in economic creations, and even in the power of playing, there is this great symbol of human freedom. Religion in this sense is the state in which we are grasped by the infinite seriousness of the question of the meaning of our life and our readiness to receive answers and to act according to them. These questions and answers are ordinarily expressed in systems of religious thought and life. But they are not exclusively bound to such expression. The vertical dimension, the dimension of depths, is present in the secular as well as in the religious realm. It is present, too, in our own one-dimensional culture, though obscured and suppressed by the forces of the horizontal and their restless drives. It is my hope for the future that these questions and answers will be uncovered and liberated far more and for far more people than they are under the human condition in the present period. And I believe that it is the duty of all those who speak for our time—including TIME —to help with passion and wisdom so that the ultimate question becomes powerful again in our Western culture and in our nation.