A Philosopher's WWII Radio Broadcasts into Nazi Germany
Of Against The Third Reich, Paul Tillich’s Wartime Addresses on Voice of America
LOVERS OF FREEDOM AND REALITY!
In the midst of tyranny, genocide, and war, a voice rang out, harangued a nation, dared to hold a people to account with certainty transcending the claims of brutal power. Mass murder cannot extinguish the truth. Paul Tillich, existentialist, Protestant theologian, and cultural theorist, recognized the agency and responsibility of the German people, his people, and to their own ears, denounced the path they had taken, castigated them, and prophetized to them (in the ancient Israelite sense of condemning - in the name of God - injustice, societal wrongdoing, offenses on the part of a nation); yet, he addressed these Germans as “friends” and held them and demanded they begin holding themselves anew to the standards of humanity, when most people (including me) would consider them enemies who in acquiesence to a montrous regime had lost their humanity irrecoverably. In doing so, Tillich demonstrated a higher order trust in the universality of conscience. The matter of truth is resonant here, because he broadcasted his speeches into Nazi Germany through Voice of America, which it’s important to note was and continues to be mandated to uphold journalistic ethics of accuracy and objectivity (in contrast to the the OSS at the time, precursor of the CIA, which was a dedicated instrument of disinformation warfare and subversion).1 Tillich knew the German people knew the truth of their own guilt and determined to subject them to intrepid reminders of ultimate responsibility.
It takes someone steeped in distinguishing the relative from the absolute (Tillich’s later-in-life “intellectual autobiography” is titled My Search for Absolutes) to dare such clarity - moral, political, historical - and certainty. Tillich found his way to the absolute, understanding the infinite extent of its exactions, and how the contingency of human existence stands in relation to the absolute. He understood as well how its false extension is a peril, how any misplaced attribution of unconditional claims to contingencies is potent with the threat of unconditioned peril: to go astray here is to fall oneself into the infernal domains of tyranny, totalitarianism, murder. Tillich had the courage of his clarity - to walk the line, to see the fine lines. The Absolute calls us to a precipice. We are asked to toe the edge. The heights are fresh for inspiration and the skies brilliant, whether of starry night or golden sun. The abyss is a step from all this promise.
A master theoretician of Kairos, Tillich heeded the call of the unconditioned; to honor absolute demands within time requires exact timing and an almost ceremonial arrangement of the right elements so that they are set and ready to fall into place: abruptly, in time, a hint of the timeless. I’ve often pondered the interplay of Logos and Kairos, obsessed with Heraclitus for his utterance of the former, always out of time, and somewhere along the way discovered in Tillich an entry into the full scope of the latter. Kairos: the Timeless reveals itself in time, as historical arrival, sudden appearance, momentary, a crack of lightning in leaden sky. A term associated with classical rhetoric,2 Kairos is not only the moment itself flashing a hint of forever in its immediacy, but words suited to the moment, truth devastating real-time with transcendence; indeed, it’s a flash from thunderous Logos, precisely-timed… lightning strikes. Kairos is the timely arrival of the eternal. Long before his broadcasts into Nazi Germany, Tillich’s thought applied his interpretation of Kairos to the possibility of a “prophetic” critique of culture; and so, in practice, primed with absolute confidence, he condemns a nation in the midst of its iniquity, his denunciation carrying the weight of the Ultimate.
To go from Nazi Germany to MAGA America is an absurdity - but there’s the joke, it is ridiculous, yet not unreasonable, given the collapse of civility and national consensus on democratic values since 2015-2016. Ridiculous, because the bombast and stupidity of Trump world outstrips in outlandish ineptitude farces of the Third Reich, from Chaplin to Hogan’s Heroes. In cultural tonality, it’s all such a joke, nasty and dumb, even as the rot infiltrates every aspect of U.S. policy and functioning domestic and foreign despite a majority of good people doing their best to shore up the institutional framework (as to the type of joke, practical and deadly, I won’t mention my forthcoming book’s title again, but mayhem is everywhere, there’s an actual countable death toll for all the ways systems have broken down in this era); a Top Ten list of outrages from MAGA Republicans’ undermining of democracy at home and around the world just since the first of the year would be consumable in accordance with the current attention economy, but said iniquity is self-evident, a concept again from antiquity (and again a rhetorical term surpassing its rhetorical sense) - Enargeia - clarity, self-evidence - one that found its way into the structure of our founding, “we hold these truths to be self-evident.” MAGA is the instrument (wielded to the gratification of authoritarian regimes) to damage if not destroy what’s left of the world order that emerged after World War II, American-led advancement of open societies and international human rights, which even when hypocritical to its ideals in means and practice paid Rochefoucauldian tribute to the virtues of democracy. Tillich helped speak the future into being, back then. Who to address now? - with all of MAGA goosestepping to Trump… SCOTUS supermajority, Speaker of the House, nepotistic RNC, on and on, vicious gleeful demolition! Joyous ruinous unreality!
Persuasion is the lesser purpose. There’s no arguing alternate truths, alternate realities. Tillich wasn’t making argument, he was standing on the indisputable. Can we - not for others across this seeming irreconciliable divide, but for ourselves - trust that our indignation has its root deeply embedded in that to which we owe our utmost loyalty? Tillich was able to lean on his discernment of absolute right and wrong; as was true then - as is true in the midst of every turmoil - the present is filled with haze and noise. Seeing through to the absolute isn’t an act of perception alone; it’s an act of bravery. It takes confidence, strength of character (held in check with scrutiny and self-criticism, to be sure) to embrace and live up to what one knows to be true. Also, saying through to the absolute is a courageous act, corresponding to what another theologian called “high moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.”3 The truth-speaker is the ultimate freedom fighter. Whether or not heeded in historical time (whether or not Tillich contributed to a turning point in the morale of the German people), it is impossible for lies or denial to prevent the truth its ground. Truth penetrates the soil of the moment. This is sowing, for those of us who wish to remember the slow, natural ways of life’s free unfolding for individuation and growth.
Voice of America (VOA) adheres to its standards in promotion of liberal democracy, ideologically specific to New Deal liberalism; the question of what is and what is not propaganda hovers over such context - perhaps to be further pursued in follow-up both to this post and an earlier discussion here:
David Zarefsky’s work on argumentation, complemented by his studies of Abraham Lincoln’s speechmaking, also contributed to my sense of Kairos indicating something more profound than the mechanics of a rhetorical device - although this suggestion might not be strictly warranted within the scope of his concerns.
Abraham Joshua Heschel and Paul Tillich are the sort of kindred spirits who in their juxtaposition are better served less by making a point of their commonality than by leaving them to their distinctions.