Listening to the contemporary world. Work on Paul Tillich

Abstract

The text of this article combines the different areas of Tillich’s argumentation referring to the interpretation of the contemporary world. On one hand, it refers to history and civilization, on the other – it is intertwined with some threads from the domain of philosophy and ethics, in order to pass smoothly to the theological paradigm. The paper situates Tillich’s thoughts in the cultural-civilisational context both of the last century and of our times. Therefore, it reveals the universality of Paul Tillich’s thought, based on the interaction with other realms of knowledge, especially with the existing reality. The text shows how the German-American builds up his “system” as the one that has not lost its relationship with the world but is acting in it in coherence with the culture, with the politics and, first of all, with the immediate existence. Tillich is presented as one of the greatest Protestant theologians of our age as well as belonging to the supreme Christian existential philosophers, as the one who has achieved the synthesis of the Christian faith in the context of the most representative philosophical trends of the epoch.