Eye opening, I loved it. It seems unbelievable that the original had been written two hundred years ago and yet was so prescient of today's modern world. The continuous destruction/reconstruction of the world about us, and the inability to call a halt - to pause - in what we are doing. To be 'better' is to be new.
Faust begins as the Dreamer, alone in a garret in the dead of night - he is disconnected from the real world, contemplative from a distance but not experiencing it - academic, theoretical about its nature. He does not truly know the world, or himself.
After meeting Mephistopheles, this ambiguous character who seems to be the Devil, but could also be representative of many other things, Faust becomes the Lover - absorbing and then destroying the innocent in the passage of his own development, full of passions - a whirlwind.
Only to become his final phase, the Developer, at the height of his powers to change and manipulate the world, and in doing so, to become monolithic, the stream roller, that wipes away the vestiges of the old world (the old couple) and brings in the new. But this immediately becomes outmoded, almost as soon as it is conceived and so is necessarily destroyed in the endless pursuit of some unattainable goal - this is like Sisyphus, but rather than the punishment of the endless job of pushing the rock, it is a choice.
This image of the Modern Man, the developer, is just like a replacement for God. The power to create, and make the world anew. It must've been an incredibly attractive idea - rationality kills God, and sets Man in his place. "Hey guys, WE could do this!"... The old world - the remains of the feudal system seemed to hang on to them and slow them down, and that is why people such as Nietzsche wanted to take these ideas about humanity's power and set him 'free'. Old bonds, social structures, morals... they all came under scrutiny and Nietzsche wrote about the ubermensche, a very Faustian bunch - in fact mentioned in Faust I think - and later corrupted by the Nazi et al, who was able to see through these strictures and act 'without morals'. The will to power, the internal drive that could strike through conventional social bonds, and propel this person to new heights. Whether this person destroyed some people on the way to the top didn't seem to matter too much... the point was, that as he would act entirely for his own self interest, the overall effect on society would be good. Development would flow down from this supreme (but very human) being, in some kind of social multiplier effect. All a bit whacky now, but the train of thought from Faust to here is clear.
The complexity of the story is obviously immense, but seems to have almost unlimited amounts of examples today, whether it be acting as the Dreamer, the Lover or the Developer. Maybe there have been times when parts of society have become 'post-Faustian', rejecting the ideas of development and forward thrusting Modernism, but these seem small in comparison to the overall grand project of the modern world and its rapid change. Even 'post-Faustian' things seem to be a development, a phase, of the overall Faustian project.
Faust begins as the Dreamer, alone in a garret in the dead of night - he is disconnected from the real world, contemplative from a distance but not experiencing it - academic, theoretical about its nature. He does not truly know the world, or himself.
After meeting Mephistopheles, this ambiguous character who seems to be the Devil, but could also be representative of many other things, Faust becomes the Lover - absorbing and then destroying the innocent in the passage of his own development, full of passions - a whirlwind.
Only to become his final phase, the Developer, at the height of his powers to change and manipulate the world, and in doing so, to become monolithic, the stream roller, that wipes away the vestiges of the old world (the old couple) and brings in the new. But this immediately becomes outmoded, almost as soon as it is conceived and so is necessarily destroyed in the endless pursuit of some unattainable goal - this is like Sisyphus, but rather than the punishment of the endless job of pushing the rock, it is a choice.
This image of the Modern Man, the developer, is just like a replacement for God. The power to create, and make the world anew. It must've been an incredibly attractive idea - rationality kills God, and sets Man in his place. "Hey guys, WE could do this!"... The old world - the remains of the feudal system seemed to hang on to them and slow them down, and that is why people such as Nietzsche wanted to take these ideas about humanity's power and set him 'free'. Old bonds, social structures, morals... they all came under scrutiny and Nietzsche wrote about the ubermensche, a very Faustian bunch - in fact mentioned in Faust I think - and later corrupted by the Nazi et al, who was able to see through these strictures and act 'without morals'. The will to power, the internal drive that could strike through conventional social bonds, and propel this person to new heights. Whether this person destroyed some people on the way to the top didn't seem to matter too much... the point was, that as he would act entirely for his own self interest, the overall effect on society would be good. Development would flow down from this supreme (but very human) being, in some kind of social multiplier effect. All a bit whacky now, but the train of thought from Faust to here is clear.
The complexity of the story is obviously immense, but seems to have almost unlimited amounts of examples today, whether it be acting as the Dreamer, the Lover or the Developer. Maybe there have been times when parts of society have become 'post-Faustian', rejecting the ideas of development and forward thrusting Modernism, but these seem small in comparison to the overall grand project of the modern world and its rapid change. Even 'post-Faustian' things seem to be a development, a phase, of the overall Faustian project.
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