"The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable"
About this Quote
The sentence compresses Paul Tillichs existential theology into a stark paradox: courage is not bravado or conquest, but the steady willingness to affirm ones being even when judgment, within and without, declares it unworthy. Unacceptable points to multiple pressures: the social verdicts that exclude, the moral conscience that accuses, the inner split that breeds shame, and the raw fact of finitude that reminds us we are fragile and temporary. Tillich names these threats as the anxieties of nonbeing: fate and death, guilt and condemnation, emptiness and meaninglessness. They make the self want to withdraw from life, to hide or numb out. Courage counters that pull by saying yes to existence without disguising its darkness.
Set against the wreckage of mid-20th-century certainties, Tillichs claim answers a crisis of significance. After war, totalitarianism, and disillusionment, cheap optimism rang hollow. He does not suggest pretending to be acceptable. He insists on a deeper truth: acceptance that includes the shadow. Such acceptance is not complacency; it is the precondition for change. Denial freezes growth, while acknowledgment opens the door to responsibility and transformation.
For Tillich, this courage is sustained by an experience of being accepted that precedes and undergirds self-acceptance. He calls it the God above God, the ground of being rather than a moral scorekeeper. The echo of Protestant grace is deliberate: one is justified though unjust, accepted though unacceptable. From that ground, the self can face guilt without collapse, finitude without despair, and emptiness without fleeing into distraction.
The line also critiques perfectionism and conformity. If worth depends on meeting external ideals or inner tyrannies, life becomes a treadmill of self-rejection. Courage interrupts the cycle by choosing truth over pretense and participation over withdrawal. It is a realism that lets one keep going, love what can be loved, and work on what must be changed, because the verdict against the self is not the final word.
Set against the wreckage of mid-20th-century certainties, Tillichs claim answers a crisis of significance. After war, totalitarianism, and disillusionment, cheap optimism rang hollow. He does not suggest pretending to be acceptable. He insists on a deeper truth: acceptance that includes the shadow. Such acceptance is not complacency; it is the precondition for change. Denial freezes growth, while acknowledgment opens the door to responsibility and transformation.
For Tillich, this courage is sustained by an experience of being accepted that precedes and undergirds self-acceptance. He calls it the God above God, the ground of being rather than a moral scorekeeper. The echo of Protestant grace is deliberate: one is justified though unjust, accepted though unacceptable. From that ground, the self can face guilt without collapse, finitude without despair, and emptiness without fleeing into distraction.
The line also critiques perfectionism and conformity. If worth depends on meeting external ideals or inner tyrannies, life becomes a treadmill of self-rejection. Courage interrupts the cycle by choosing truth over pretense and participation over withdrawal. It is a realism that lets one keep going, love what can be loved, and work on what must be changed, because the verdict against the self is not the final word.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Love |
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