In this article we discuss Faust in the context of Romanticism. Man is presented as an unstoppable force of constant change, as part of a rebellion against materialism.
Romanticism is considered a movement within the arts and literature rather than a solid philosophy, Faust is considered by many the greatest work of German literature and Goethe’s magnum opus.
Faust II is an intellectual metaphysical overview among landmarks of western culture. Like magic mountain by Thomas Mann, it tried to summarize the main topics that western culture wondered upon : history, mythology, legends, the definition of man.
Faust is the smartest of man in his impossible journey to the infinite, to the ideal, the everlasting human soul and spirit. Mephistopheles asks Faust and therefore asks us, what is it that you wish for ?
Goethe does not think that a specific wish can be a representation of our human will. Any specific or defined possession or achievement can be only material which has to do with facts. The achievement of it is only a mission, and therefore does not represent something which is eternal. A mission, you can achieve or fail. Goethe asks a question which is only typical to romanticism. What is man, if he cannot achieve eternity ?
A materialistic point of view like Aristotle’s or Spinoza, would argue that what we call will does not represent anything, because the world is made of facts, logic, extrapolation and necessity. The illusion of freedom from the materialist point of view exists just because of misinterpretation of reality. The Cartesian mechanical point of view of the world, can see our journey we call life, only in one possible way, clockwork, determinist, mechanical.
Spinoza, the uber Cartesian, would say, that when we realize that we are bound to that determinism, the only way to break free is to refuse it, not walk the path that it is leading us.
A lot of works of art discussed this particular question of freedom in the context of society, especially in the post romanticist period : Ibsen, Strindberg. Some of them illustrated the failure of the will against determinism, a modern melancholic form of tragedy, when fate becomes determinism.
This shifts in views, we can actually see as a development in thinking. If we consider everything that relates to the possibility of every man or woman, progression is the variety of those realizations.
The Ancient Greeks and the Enlightenment aimed to map and control. They invented systems which can then do so. Plato did it with the form world, Aristotle with his deterministic empiricism, Descartes with the language of math and so forth. The aim was to control the world, to inhabit it, to transform it, to minimize its necessities, according to certain parameters and in the best way possible.
Western civilization was realized, in the Enlightenment period, in the form of scientific thinking. That scientific thinking aimed to achieve actually everything, every possibility, its was a form of cognitive utopianism. Everything can be explained and understood, we can take over diseases and remote planets, even only theoretically. When I say theoretically it’s because so many people do still believe in that vision, theoretically means that only lacking resources – energy and time, is the reason we do not have full control at this moment of time.
The materialists where a group of philosophers who believed the world works like a mechanism : Claude Adrien Helvétius, Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Voltaire.
The totality of the materialist point of view formed romanticism as a response, as a rebellion towards this view of man, which in the romantic opinion reduced man to another element in nature. Of course later on Darwinism would be developed from the same materialist point of view, which later would be integrated to some nihilistic theories, which would reduce man to nothingness, in the name of science, material or race.
Darwinism also sees humans as belonging to the natural world, which leads to weird questions : should humans be treated like animals or should we treat animals like humans then ? What is the difference between treating pigs like men and men like pigs ?
We should make no mistakes, there can be no ‘proofs’ against a materialistic or Darwinist point of view, since we define a proof and/or facts as only something that is part of a materialistic point of view. Only materialists believe in facts, and facts are part of the material world.
The romanticists, as a rebel movement against materialism, would categorize man as having something different from material : emotion, love, will, the ability to concept eternity, existence as an act of free choice (Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 1843).
Goethe wanted to present this different approach already in 1808 with the first part of Faust, where he illustrates how man cannot find satisfaction as a being within the natural world.
Mephistopheles (a devilish deity) signs a contract with Faust, with the intention of collecting his soul. Faust is the wisest person in the world, he is the one who learned and experienced everything. Mephisto actually values the soul of Faust, a being which is so experienced, and so as readers Goethe makes us start understanding how difficult it is to define things a simple way, and how complex the world and humans can be.
Every journey has a start and an end. Eternity stands beyond what we call a journey with a destination, and that is the reason why Faust is asking for the impossible, he is asking for a journey without an end, a moment where the is no movement and no loning of any sort. Like Oedipus answering to the Sphinx, Faust represents mankind, us.
“Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust, Die eine will sich von der andern trennen; Die eine hält, in derber Liebeslust, Sich an die Welt mit klammernden Organen; Die andre hebt gewaltsam sich vom Dust Zu den Gefilden hoher Ahnen. O gibt es Geister in der Luft, Die zwischen Erd und Himmel herrschend weben So steiget nieder aus dem goldnen Duft Und führt mich weg zu neuem, buntem Leben! Ja, wäre nur ein Zaubermantel mein, Und trüg er mich in fremde Länder! Mir sollt er um die köstlichsten Gewänder, Nicht feil um einen Königsmantel sein.”
“Two souls, alas! reside within my breast,
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. “Faust”
And each withdraws from, and repels, its brother.
One with tenacious organs holds in love
And clinging lust the world in its embraces;
The other strongly sweeps, this dust above,
Into the high ancestral spaces.
If there be airy spirits near,
Twixt Heaven and Earth on potent errands fleeing,
Let them drop down the golden atmosphere,
And bear me forth to new and varied being!
Yea, if a magic mantle once were mine,
To waft me o’er the world at pleasure,
I would not for the costliest stores of treasure—
Not for a monarch’s robe—the gift resign.”
We can see this as a grand deceleration of war against the Enlightenment which aimed for the reduction of the human mind to formulas. Faust defines man as a being, split by conflict, dynamic, formulas in the case are worthless, paradox is inevitable and it’s always there, even when we think we see order.
Mechanic and static and replaceable vs Organic, dynamic, and unique. Cannot be expressed in formulas.
One soul, one element from the quote above, is bound by feelings, desires, passions, appetites, craves, welded and burned into us by the world of material and reasons. It is always because of something, a link in a chain.
The second souls, or element, treats the first like shadow and dust, its makes material disappear, consume in the fire, but the shadow is always there, and will prevent the second soul from soaring high. Man is then a defeated being.
The allegory of a contract between a being which is omnipotence (Mephisto) and a man (Faust), is actually a question about ourselves and how satisfaction can we have from the world. Every character in literature deals with that question, their strife and struggle relates to their will and their possible achievements. Goethe offers us his view about what a man is and what he can and should aim for.
Yearning, in contrary to longing, is a state which cannot be fulfilled with relation to objects in reality, love cannot be realized in the form of relationship because its ideal. When Romeo and Juliet or Tristan and Isolde will realize their love in the form of relationship, only a few years later, this love would make them start fighting about whose taking the garbage out. Love as an ideal cannot be realized, only be yearned for, unless in death. Therefore we have Romeo, Tristan and Werther.
“I’ve studied now Philosophy
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. “Faust”
And Jurisprudence, Medicine,—
And even, alas! Theology,—
From end to end, with labor keen;
And here, poor fool! with all my lore
I stand, no wiser than before:”
Although western culture aims for knowledge, Faust declares that he does not know anything : philosophy, law, medicine, theology. This is a statement which is against education. Accumulative knowledge is minor relative to the existential experience, because educational knowledge does not translate to essence, happiness, satisfaction.
This is where Goethe, in the name of romanticism, redefines the term ‘mind’, and therefore lays a new foundation for human anthropology in the context of western civilization, one that would later on would define Existentialism. It is very extreme, because in essence it’s not rational, at least not in terms of the enlightenment.
“I’m Magister—yea, Doctor—hight,
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. “Faust”
And straight or cross-wise, wrong or right,
These ten years long, with many woes,
I’ve led my scholars by the nose,—
And see, that nothing can be known!
That knowledge cuts me to the bone.
I’m cleverer, true, than those fops of teachers,
Doctors and Magisters, Scribes and Preachers;
Neither scruples nor doubts come now to smite me,
Nor Hell nor Devil can longer affright me.”
This goes back to Plato’s allegory of the cave. Goethe gave us Faust as a teacher, a missioner of knowledge which has seen the outside of the cave, have seen the light, and must go back to bring his insights to his students, people of the cave.
If nothing can be learned and nothing can be taught, what is then the state of the human mind ? NIHIL, it dissolves into nothingness. This statement is referring to the way the enlightenment worshiped knowledge.
“Tis written: “In the Beginning was the Word.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. “Faust”
Here am I balked: who, now can help afford?
The Word?—impossible so high to rate it;
And otherwise must I translate it.
If by the Spirit I am truly taught.
Then thus: “In the Beginning was the Thought”
This first line let me weigh completely,
Lest my impatient pen proceed too fleetly.
Is it the Thought which works, creates, indeed?
“In the Beginning was the Power,” I read.
Yet, as I write, a warning is suggested,
That I the sense may not have fairly tested.
The Spirit aids me: now I see the light!
“In the Beginning was the Act,” I write.”
The foundation of everything is the logos, the pattern, structure, logic, Faust reads, but he does not like it, then the idea, the (platonic) form comes, the potential, the possibility (aristotle). Then Faust understands that potential and idea can only be realized through creation, power, and what controls it, it is actually the action.
Not the plan or logic, nor conclusion or potential : only the lack of essence of actions are there. This is how Goethe characterizes romanticism. This is an anti-mechanistic point of view, Goethe discuss action, dynamics, organics, lack of essence, constant change. Later on, this organic element would become a foundation in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Thomas Mann, a main theme of late existentialism in the form of Camus’s Sisyphus (1942).
And this is also how the plot develops in Faust, only deviations and exceptions : An aimless journey, delusion, witchcraft, going against taboos, against authority, against other forces. All these going against, just triggers a man, or woman, to be in a state of constant change and constant growth. Deeds, that do not have a reason, therefore are not forced from the outside, and no purpose to determine its fate and therefore lacking definition. A journey with no destination, growth as constant change, constant dynamics.
Schopenhauer, a distinct philosopher of Romanticism, would later describe in his book, The World as Will and Idea (1819), how the world takes the form of our will.
“Ein Teil von jener Kraft, Die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute
schafft.”“Part of that Power, not understood,
Which always wills the Bad, and always works the Good.”
“The modest truth I speak to thee.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. “Faust”
If Man, that microcosmic fool, can see
Himself a whole so frequently,
Part of the Part am I, once All, in primal Night,—
Part of the Darkness which brought forth the Light,
The haughty Light, which now disputes the space,
And claims of Mother Night her ancient place.
And yet, the struggle fails; since Light, howe’er it weaves,
“Still, fettered, unto bodies cleaves:
It flows from bodies, bodies beautifies;
By bodies is its course impeded;
And so, but little time is needed,
I hope, ere, as the bodies die, it dies!”
Mephistopheles spreads chaos, against the sterile formality of life, against man’s decadent tendency to fortify himself in his habits and what is known to him. Bulgakov later uses the same character in his Master and Margarita in the same way, to show how absurd Stalin regime was. Communism was a utopia, and utopia when thought to be realized, is essential sterile, anti-life.
Philosophically Mephisto is speaking in the name of Romanticism. He is his the voice of negation, of saying no. By that is his actually the most active, non-static force, because every form which is solid and static in terms of ideas is being disrupted by this force, the opposite of ossification and paralysis, action itself. As long as there are solid forms that force keeps on acting in order to break them, the force of entropy, the origin and definite state of the universe.
Since the days of Aristotle, western culture tried to organize the world in terms of forms, disciplines, schemes, formulas, the infinitesimal calculus of Newton and Leibniz. We, says Mephisto, should stop believing that these things would ever bring us salvation and rest. The reason for that is that forms are static parts of mechanisms, and the total lack of dynamics, even in the form of ideas, are contradictory to man and life.
Order is coming from chaos, light from darkness, but the attempt of the light to rebel against darkness will always fail. The light is cast into the material world, and when light is cast into bodies and materials then the light can never be eternal. Light and order needs to be available, here, now, material, man, psychology, intellect, formula, everything that is static.
Lars von Trier portrays the romantic view in a modern way : if in our life what we really experience depends on our cravings, our desires, our passions, they would never stop, its one big addiction which never stops, an itch. Life force is coupled with its negative contra part, the absence of -something-, like wittgenstein put it : “If somebody scratches the spot where he has an itch, do we have to see some progress? Isn’t genuine scratching otherwise, or genuine itching itching?”.
What actually happens when Mephisto meets Faust, is that he is unable to fulfill their agreement. Mephisto is not used to a soul like Faust. Faust is the ultimate man portrayed by romanticism, and that man cannot be beaten, cannot be defined by a formula. Faust is interested in perfection, the moment where the soul will experience its ultimate rest, but such state does not exist for the soul according to the romantics.
And finally what is the relevance of such vision in the context of today ?
We are still living in a materialistic world : science, education, work, ideology are still there in the form of the vision of the Enlightenment. They aim for stasis, or more accurately for nihil. This is why modern life does not make us happier more than before. Some thinkers would say that this is a result of living in a society which preserves the interest of the herd as a herd, the coziness and warmth within the herd, instead of the cold and fresh mountain air. The interests of individuals are not the interests of the group.
Goethe, introduced an approach which argumentatively makes us challenge our own perceptions about light and darkness, good and evil etc’. This is a direct result of his analysis of man in the context of his society and culture. Since Sturm und drang, romanticism developed and transformed into many directions, mainly existentialism in philosophy and expressionism in art, in literature the world of Thomas Mann, DH Lawrence, Ayn Rand. They all share the same belief about the potential force in man. It is not a rational argument about the facts of the world but rather something different.
We used our intellect, so far, mostly to try to describe the world and make sense of it. Language and syntax, as elements which composites thought, are doing something quite different from mirroring the world. In the end all a man can relate to would be his own image, and intellect is just a part of it.
Romanticism idealizes man as an unstoppable force that can overcome nature, society, himself, life reflexes. The romantic Man belongs in eternity.