Goethe's Faustian Life
commonwealmagazine.org
commonwealmagazine.org
Man has a natural inclination to worship something. For most of human history, that has been the divine/supernatural/metaphysical. Nowadays, rationalism and materialism have become the main objects of worship. But rationalism and materialism do not have answers to the existential questions and crises that humans face.
Similar to Christ saying that "man cannot live on bread alone", man cannot live on materialism alone - spiritual nourishment is a very real and necessary thing.
They just stop asking questions at a certain point.
The sentence is otherwise correct.
What definition of the word do you use?
That man has a natural inclination to it is another pretty big assumption, whether "natural inclinations" are even a thing at all has been debated for centuries
But this fails to distinguish between a being and Being. You and I are beings, beings among many. The pagan gods, personifications of various natural phenomena, were like us, in this sense: they were beings among, only more powerful. Being, on the other hand, is the verb to be. You exist, I exist, all the beings of the world exist. The pagan gods, I submit, do not exist, save as fictions.
So how do you relate to your existence? We all exist, so it isn't particular to you. And you are not the cause of your own existence, here and now. Rather existence is something prior to any particular existing things in the order of causes. This cause, this existence, this Being itself, is God, and you can know quite a bit about it, analogously, through unaided reason and without appealing to authority.
> What has the spiritual ever done for us?
That question is premature for you.
Also, facts are true without any cause. There is no cause of why 2 + 2 is 4. It just is what it is. (One might call it “being”.)
There appear to be a few dubious presuppositions at play here.
The first is religious indifferentism. That is, that is makes no difference which you pick, or that what you pick is simply a matter of "what's 'right' for you". The question of truth never enters the picture. This makes religious belief a matter of utility: I believe X because I derive some kind of perceived or real benefit from believing X.
The first problem with religious indifferentism is exactly that it is indifferent to the truth. If you believe something because of the utility it provides, it means you don't really believe in that thing. You believe in the utility of the thing. So while a Christian will believe that Christ is God Incarnate because he believes this to be true, an indifferentist wouldn't really believe Christ in God, but he might "use" that belief. There is a lack of integrity, a kind of bad faith, at work here. The pretense of this lack of integrity never produces any peace or alleviates the misery of nihilism plaguing the indifferentist. He's still where he started.
While Nietzsche and others had valuable insights (and misconceptions), he and most others did not themselves find a solution to the basic problem of nihilism.
It's possible for people to believe two conflicting things at the same time. Especially in this context.
Like someone could be psychologically dependent on believing that Christ rose on the third day even though the rational part knows that that's biologically impossible. This isn't a bug, it's a feature
Religions deliberately target things like this where there's cognitive dissonance. Because once there's cognitive dissonance it creates this weird emotional reaction for people. When they go the religion route they're just chasing this high
Of course it could also be humility rather than indifference to truth. Who is to say that any of us possesses the whole truth? At best individuals see only some small part of it. On the other hand I believe very strongly in the utility of many religious virtues, such as charity, humility, forgiveness, etc., because there's abundant proof of their benefits.
That's the crux of it. Nothing and no one has those answers. Some isms acknowledge that, most don't.
The best spiritual disciplines provide a _framework_ for exploring existential questions.
uh really? Barbarism and brute force have succeeded many times.
This paintbrush is far too wide. I think many of us have, at least from time to time, felt something between an inclination and need to worship, and many of us feel that all their lives, but I would assert (and die upon this hill) that many lose that [inclination..need].
Personally, I felt it most strongly in my late teens up until my mid twenties when my questioning of everything was at its strongest and my, uh, personality? resolve? acceptance? not sure... was insufficient counter. Like The Stranglers said, I wish(ed) I was a believer, they spend less time being sad.
Eventually, my mechanistic reductionist self made peace with both the many unknowns and the utter ridiculousness of life. The universe is a cold, harsh place, and even our little goldilocks corner of it has an overwhelming imbalance to it, a ruthless "unfairness", at least when viewed through the lens of a humane equity.
Believing in some greater thing does nothing to resolve or address that, though some take solace in believing in some teleology or ultimate reward. Or punishment.
Neither does anything for me and neither is necessary to my life.
> Similar to Christ saying that "man cannot live on bread alone", man cannot live on materialism alone - spiritual nourishment is a very real and necessary thing.
Hard disagree. You might say that my deep breaths and long stares in the woods are spiritual, but I will respectfully disagree. I do not worship those woods, or the lakes or camping with friends or moments of great discovery or satisfaction, whether there or at work, and I find nothing "spiritual" in them.
I accept and rejoice in their being internal affectations, basal responses, and I am quite happy with my reptilian brain. I don't need any sense of anything external or greater or other to celebrate moments of beauty or discovery or to condemn moments of cruelty and injustice.
Please do remember that there are other very different views of the world.
Materialism and our reptile brains are all we've got. I'm content with that. (Unless and until I watch the news, but that is another subject altogether.)
idrk what rationalism means here, like the hegelian type of rationalism has an answer here, the end goal is self-consciousness
Nobody worships rationalism. Using reason to understand the world isn't a form of worship. It's the opposite of worship.
> But rationalism and materialism do not have answers to the existential questions and crises that humans face.
Existential crisis is a by-product of rationalism. When advances in science essentially debunked religious claims on nature and humanity, it removed the need for god ( aka "god is dead" - uh oh existential crisis ). It's hard to reconcile god making man out of dirt and evolution. To demand rationalism provide answers to the exstential crisis is irrational because existential crisis is the "answer" provided by rationalism.
> Similar to Christ saying that "man cannot live on bread alone", man cannot live on materialism alone - spiritual nourishment is a very real and necessary thing.
Man has, does and will live on materialism alone. Whether man can lead a more fulfilling life believing in religion is another story. Do kids who believe in santa claus lead better lives than those who do not. It's up for debate.
But rationalism can't have an answer for existential crisis. You cannot reason your way out of the existential crisis because reason and logic will lead you to it rather than religion. The only way out of existential crisis is to reject reason and logic to some degree.
I'm a Christian, and your interpretation is exactly how I have always understood that passage (Matthew 4:4). It is among a small number of biblical passages that have been the foundation of my adult life.
Even if you do not believe in a specific deity, the bible and for that matter most other core religious scriptures are still a treasury of knowledge about the human condition. It's sad that so many people think they have outgrown the wisdom you find there. There are a lot of false gods.
Who in their right mind would reject an offer of unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures?
Presumably if Faust refuses Mephistopheles’ bargain, he must resign himself to a life haunted by unfulfilled longing, existential frustration, and the bitter realization that some mysteries will forever remain beyond his grasp. Or worse, his life could descend into base forms of evil and criminality, which seems likely given what he did to Gretchen.
Christ Himself rejected various temptations by Satan when he was in the wilderness.
The bargain had a quid pro quo...you get knowledge and pleasure in exchange for perpetual servitude to a bad guy. I wouldn't make that trade
So Faust enjoyed his life of pleasure and knowledge and got away with making his Mephistophelean deal.
In Marlowe's version Faust goes to hell.
I always found Goethe's ending to be unsatisfying, and prefer Marlowe's where Faust not only accepts, but embraces his fate to be a far better resolution.
Most people. Unlimited knowledge? So no mystery to life. Unlimited worldly pleasures? Sound exhausting. There is a reason why hedonism hasn't taken over the world. Frankly, "unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures" sounds like hell to me.
I've never heard of queen Victoria having Habsburg ancestry and I can't find any details on this other than AI hallucinations.
AFAIK, the only Hapsburg to come near her throne was Phillip II of Spain, husband of Queen Mary (16th C).
Ah! I just checked, and the article now contains the following: Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that Queen Victoria was of Hanoverian, not Hapsburg, descent.
I believe many are not even aware of the amount of proverbs coming from that classic:
Des Pudels Kern - the poodles core/crux of the matter
Gretchenfrage - the essential question
... And many more that I won't bother trying to translate.