In 1952 Paul Tillich publishes The Courage to Be from his Terry Lectures at Yale: anxiety in its three forms, fate and death, emptiness and meaninglessness, guilt and condemnation, answered by the courage to accept acceptance. Tillich carries existential analysis into theology's center, and the book becomes the movement's religious classic in English.
Tagged: Existentialism
The Event
- Date
- 1952 (exact)
- Era
- The Wider Reckoning; Standard periodization of existentialist history
- Location
- Yale University, New Haven; today New Haven, Connecticut
- Traditions
- Existentialism
- Streams
- Existentialism
- Key figures
- Paul Tillich
- Key texts
- The Courage to Be
Primary Sources
- Tillich, Paul. The Courage to Be. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952.
Secondary Sources
- Gordon, Lewis R. Fanon and the Crisis of European Man. New York: Routledge, 1995.
- Kaufmann, Walter, ed. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. New York: Meridian, 1956.
- Solomon, Robert C. Existentialism. New York: Oxford University Press, second edition, 2005.
Provenance: HIST-1434; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.
Related on This Site
History Event
Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground
1864
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Jaspers's Philosophie
1932
History Event
Kierkegaard's Either/Or
1843
History Event
Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death
1849
History Event
Sartre's Being and Nothingness
1943
History Event
Sartre's Nausea
1938
History Event
Unamuno's The Tragic Sense of Life
1913
World View
Existentialism
Existentialism holds that life has no built-in meaning: each person, radically free, must create a self and accept responsibility for that creation.