Reflections on Goethe’s Faust
Five Lessons and Reminders for Modernity from the German Masterpiece
I recently had the opportunity to read Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, a beautifully lyrical, witty, and masterfully executed exemplar of a Romantic Era closet drama. It’s an engaging tale that follows the disillusioned Dr. Faust as he makes a wager with the devilish Mephistopheles agreeing to forfeit his soul should he ever express the desire for a moment to stay due to its beauty or the satisfaction it brings him. In exchange, Mephistopheles agrees to aid him in experiencing all the delights, powers, and passions that temporal existence can offer him, but his subservience lasts only so long as Faust never grows attached to them or ceases to strive for new and better ones. This wager and its outgrowths are the basic narrative structure of this story, but the drama is jam-packed with interesting themes, philosophical ruminations, settings, references, and motifs.
A frequent interpretation of what Faust is in fact about, at least a common one made by many literary scholars, is that the play is Goethe’s representation of the Romantic hero, a character that rejects the primacy of Enlightenment rationality in favor of experiential or emotional insights. The Romantic hero is one who reaches the highest pinnacle that a human can ascend to not through the rational inquiry favored by continental rationalists like Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz but rather through action, experience, and the active pursuit of beauty, passion, and transcendence. However, as I was reading I observed that Goethe’s embodiment of the Romantic hero can be read as more than just a narrative of striving to actualize humanity through action and experience. It also presents a good picture of the duality of human striving by making readers contend with the collateral damages that can swiftly accrue when you set out to have your fill of the world and all that it has to offer. In reflecting on these themes, I jotted down a few thoughts that were prompted by my reading of the first part of Faust.
1. It’s foolish to consider yourself complete.
“I state the modest truth to you. While every member of your race — that little world of fools — likes best of all to think himself complete I am the portion of that part which once was everything, a part of darkness which gave birth to Light that haughty Light which now disputes the rank and ancient sway of Mother Night…” ~Mephistopheles
As Mephistopheles references in this passage, believing yourself to be a complete person is extremely attractive. As much as I might pay lip service to areas where I need to grow or skills that I should develop, in my life and everyday decision making I tend to behave as though I already possess what I need to be successful and act properly. Many thinkers from the secular existentialists to psychologists to religious writers have affirmed that the human person is continually under construction. While many people verbally affirm that the human person is an emergent entity and mutable in many ways our behavior does not reflect this belief.
The danger in believing or behaving as if we have reached the totality of what we can become is that we tend to shut ourselves off to areas where growth is required. In closing ourselves off, we are failing to learn about ourselves, especially how we engage with and respond to the world around us. This judgment of completeness also presupposes on our part that individuals can fully and clearly ascertain who and what they are. Theories around unconscious phenomena suggest that there are indeed areas of ourselves that are not apparent to us, and perhaps that hidden part of us is often the larger part of ourselves. We might be better off if the starting place for our moral, intellectual, and spiritual development assumes growth is necessary and that there are aspects about ourselves to which we are blind.
2. Striving and desire are the blades that cut both ways.
Faust is described as a man learned in philosophy, law, medicine, and theology. Yet, he considers himself none the wiser or fulfilled, and this dissatisfaction prompts him into making his ill-advised wager with Mephistopheles. When first encountering Mephistopheles he pridefully declares “What, poor devil, can you offer? Was ever human spirit in its highest striving comprehended by the like of you?” Faust’s striving for the esoteric and the elusive apex of humanity has made him prideful because he no longer sees himself as bound by the moral, religious, superstitious, or conventional constraints on human transcendence. His striving has also brought him a decent amount of success and power. He is lauded by citizens for his brilliance, holds a prestigious post at a university, and has apparently acquired some skills in sorcery, but the achievements leave him empty. He doesn’t value anything that he has achieved. More than that he doesn’t believe there is anything worth valuing in the world aside from striving. His disenchantment and nihilism provoke his reckless confidence when he says to Mephistopheles:
If you should ever find me lolling on a bed of ease, let me be done for on the spot! If you ever lure me with your lying flatteries, and I find satisfaction in myself, if you bamboozle me with pleasure then let this be my final day. This bet I offer you!
He goes on to exclaim:
If ever I should tell the moment: Oh, stay! You are so beautiful! Then you may cast me into chains, then I shall smile upon perdition!
What prompts someone to make a bet like this? Inherent in this pact is that in order to survive Faust will always be striving and seeking for the next pleasure, passion, or power yet never feeling content. He’s essentially committed himself to a life of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. On its face, the choice seems insane. Yet, the more I thought about this, I realized that it's something that many people struggle through. Out of ambition, greed, selfishness, or searching for meaning we may not make literal deals with the devil, but how many of us constantly feel dissatisfied with life because as soon as the prize is attained then we no longer value it? The thing we once longed for, worked for, and lost sleep over then turns to ash in our mouths and we spit it out in disgust. We fixate on achievement and overcoming limitations because the idea that we can’t overcome any obstacle in our path is irritating and simply not acceptable. The dilemma of ambition is that it often takes us exactly where we wish to go and gives us exactly what we want only for us to decide this achievement or acquisition too is ultimately unsatisfactory. Goethe models the suffocating effect that discontent and insatiable desire have on the individual’s joy in Faust’s dejected declaration:
That nothing perfect can ever accrue to man I know deeply now. With all my bliss which brought me close and closer to the gods, you gave me the companion which I even now can no longer do without; though cold and insolent, he humbles me before myself, and by a single breath he transforms your gifts into nothingness, and busily he fans within my bosom a seething fire for that radiant image. I stagger from desire to enjoyment, and in its throes I starve for more desire.
What else is there to say about this line? It perfectly captures the human tendency to desire more and better at the expense of present joy and contentment. What an absolute banger.
3. Our certainty in our opinions often makes us bearers of falsehood.
“You holy man! You image of a saint! Is this the only instance in your life that you have borne false witness? Have you not shown imposing power defining God, the world, and every moving thing, as well as man and all his inward stirrings with brazen face and swollen chest? But if you probe the matter to the core, you must confess you’ve never know much more than now you know of brother Schwerdtlein’s death.” ~ Mephistopheles
Are you unquestionably sure of everything that you were absolutely certain of when you were 16 years old? How about everything that you believed even a few years ago? I am not, and that is an exceptionally good thing because I was wrong about a lot of things. There are many points that I have since changed my opinion on, am actively seeking to discern more clearly, or am committing to living in uncertain tension with. In the past, however, I would and did defend my positions as absolute truth when in fact many of them were my opinions and prejudices. Mephistopheles’ question is a nettling one. How often through my brazen declarations on topics as varied as metaphysics, economics, social phenomena, human relationships, and a million other topics have I just been propagating a falsehood (albeit one I believe)? The answer is probably more often than I would like, and, undoubtedly, there are things that I currently believe to be true that are falsehoods.
What then should I do? I’m not sure, but I think this is where acknowledging the incomplete nature of my being becomes a helpful starting point. As a person, I’m not everything that I can be, and that’s fine, providing I acknowledge my incompleteness, my propensity for blindness in perceiving myself and the world, and commit to growing. Part of that process is learning where I am wrong in part or in full, acquiring the ability to say “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure, but I think X and here is why” a lot more. I’m not advocating a radical skepticism where we refuse to believe in anything so that we never “get got.” I tend to agree with Kierkegaard in his assessment that many of the truths that matter most to human wellbeing and experience are not objectively provable. I also would contend that there are degrees of truthfulness. You may believe something that is largely true but misrepresents reality in ways that can only be exposed by juxtaposing your truth with a “truer” truth that explains reality and human experience better. And I’m often not willing to reflect on my perception of truth if I am certain about everything I currently think.
4. Clinging to unforgivable acts has devastating impacts on our communities and our relationships.
“And even if our God forgives you in the end you’ll still be damned on earth until you die” ~ Valentine
Contextually, this line is uttered from a dying soldier to his younger sister, who he has just found out is pregnant while being unmarried. It’s a searing and incredibly disturbing line, one that I believe cuts to the heart of social stigmas and how they can destroy relationships. It’s a heartrending moment to observe the brother use his dying breath to condemn his sister. In his last moments on earth, he chooses to use his limited time to make sure she knows that there’s nothing that she could ever do to be restored in the eyes of her family or community.
Often religious communities receive the lion’s share of the blame for this kind of social ostracization, but this is an issue that cuts across all types of communities. Most of us whether we acknowledge it or not have unforgivable acts. For espousing values like tolerance, redemption, reconciliation, or forgiveness, how many of us have particular beliefs or actions that we find impossible to fully pardon regardless of whether the person recants, redirects, and attempts to reconcile the brokenness they caused? How often do we verbalize forgiveness in the abstract, while functionally condemning the perceived transgressor to a life of social marginalization? Never fully restoring this person’s status as a member of the community we tend to trust them less, listen to them less, and interpret their actions and words with less charity. Societally, we do this with all kinds of outsiders or transgressors like ex-convicts, ex-substance abusers, people who voice opposition to the ideology of our political or social coalitions, and those who leave our faith communities. However, we also do this on a more granular, interpersonal level. How many marriages do you know that deteriorate into chaos because one or both of the partners is clinging to some past transgression(s) of the other partner? How many broken relationships between parents and children fall into this trap? How many friendships crumble because one person does something that the other person just can’t move past no matter what the offender does to remedy it?
As an individual, I often am hesitant to fully pardon offensive or hurtful behavior. While I may say “It’s alright” or “I forgive you”, I am less willing to trust that person, pursue intimacy with them, or see them as being defined by something other than whatever they did that hurt or offended me. I wonder how holding on to my set of unforgivable actions is impacting my relationships. Sure, theoretically, I’m all about fostering open communication and collaboration, but practically if I am not willing to move beyond past mistakes then how is that supposed to work?
I’m not against personal responsibility. Actions, statements, and beliefs have consequences and we don’t get to avoid those just because we regret or repudiate them. However, it’s not clear to me that it's any more productive to punish people continually for something when they are interested in making a concerted effort to fix the error or are learning from the experience and altering their behavior. If we saw someone hurt themselves after doing a stupid stunt that we told them not to attempt, would we refuse to help because they need to face the consequences of their actions? What if the person learned from that experience and started intentionally working on being more cautious? Would it be reasonable for me to indefinitely typify them as reckless and irresponsible? There are a lot of moments and situations where I behave this way. When people make mistakes, I’m more than happy to judge them or inform them that I’m willing to help them fix their situation according to my plan. I feel comfortable deeming someone's failure to immediately reform behavior patterns as proof that their efforts are disingenuous. Ultimately, I’m often a lot less interested in collaboratively working through the failures of others in a way that fully restores them to the community. And that’s a problem because I need that opportunity to be fully accepted into the community again when I fail. Nobody wants to be on the fringes forever for the mistakes that they make.
5. We often love our own little worlds at the expense of the big one.
“Let the great world go to blazes while we breathe and eat in peace. It is an old transmitted custom that little worlds are spawned within the great.” ~ Mephistopheles
For the vast majority of us, it’s incredibly easy to create your own little world. From the neighborhood I wake up in, to the music I listen to on my drive to work, to the friends I choose to hang out with after work, to the Netflix show I watch with my chosen significant other in a home decorated to my particular desires, my lifestyle can more or less be the sum of my preferences. Obviously, there are constraints such as finances and health, but my point is that in American society even with these constraints it’s fairly easy to have a life focused solely on yourself or your family.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with having preferences and acting on them. Where it gets tricky is what we’re willing to sacrifice in order to have our preferences. In a world where we are forever and always incurring the costs of tradeoffs, what are we forgoing to foster our own little world? What does it mean to maintain a small world without concern for the larger one? Fundamentally, I think it just means to live selfishly. I’m often willing to sacrifice relationships in favor of my comfort. I’m willing to avoid assisting someone in order to have more time to work on my own stuff. I don’t do difficult things that don’t yield something I want. It strikes me that if I am primarily concerned with maintaining my little world or even the little world of my family, then the collaborative community is made exponentially more difficult because I loathe forgoing my preferences. It seems to me that if we care about our communities and working together for human flourishing, the starting point is a commitment to not propagate our own little world to the detriment of the larger one.
These have been my reflections on the first part of Goethe’s Faust. I hope some of you will consider reading it. It’s considered a classic of Western literature for a reason, it’s an enjoyable and fairly quick read, and it’s full of potent and beautiful quotes like the ones I’ve included (plus many more). In my opinion, good literature grapples with deep questions and it prompts us to do the same, and it presents this struggle to interpret reality in a highly imagistic and narrative structure that is often far more accessible than the dense and highly technical treatises penned by the philosophers. I also appreciate literature’s ability to communicate even beyond the creator’s intent or perspective. Sure, Goethe and I would ideologically differ in a wide variety of points, but the fact that his work is still able to cause me to reflect and inform my worldview even beyond the ways he might have intended it is powerful.[1] I believe that makes literature incredibly valuable, and potentially one of the most powerful starting points for conversations across value systems. Either way, the book is worth checking out.
[1] I’m not hating on hermeneutics or advocating for completely subjective readings of all literature. Historical context, understanding of the author’s intended message, and the technical structures of a piece of literature are all important to interpretation. I just think that the beauty of literature (and all art, actually) is that it’s more than just the sum of the creator’s intentions.
