Goethe Faust Pdf
Darci Carlton
Wouldn't rather be just the "Western" scholastic (indeed theistic)definition of God as "actus purus"?
So you were right to think that it was not the German word Wort he was objecting to, but indeed the Λόγος of the Gospel. After all, his Christianity is very much in doubt. There is much nonsense in the doctrines of the Church, Church history was "a mixture of error and violence" he used to say. He was a Free Mason, a Rosicrucian, a Hermetist, tinged with a smattering of Kabbalah, a pantheist, a man of the Enlightenment. A precursor of the turgid German philosophy which evolved in Marxism.
In the words of John Whiton (professor in the department of Germanic and Slavic Languages at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada): "Goethe's Faust is traditionally seen as a paean to and the epitome of German Idealism. According to this reading, Faust is the archetypal Modern Western Man who, by dint of his ceaseless striving, creates himself and his world by an act of sheer will, thereby attaining the highest goal of mankind, realizing the purpose or end of all human activity, which is seen as the self-achievement of individual perfection, the cultivation to an ultimate degree of all one's latent potential. Thus Faust becomes an absolute, so it is said, whose will is sovereign, a law unto himself, a modern Prometheus." Prometheus was the idol of Marx too (therefore of Trotzky). Whiton tried to turn around this characterization and read Goethe in Catholic key, which is possible in view of the Catholic origin of the "actus purus" @ -goethes-faust-from-a-catholic-perspective.html
Oh, I'm perfectly open to such a reading (the German Idealist, Promethean one), but I hesitate to speak dogmatically about it, and even more so about Whiton's connection to actus purus. I'm a rank amateur reader of Goethe. Actually, I'd really like to get hold of Pelikan's 'Faust the Theologian', and see what he has to say.
It is believed that Goethe first encountered the legend of Doktor Faustus as a child by attending traveling puppet plays, which were abundant in Germany in the middle 1700s.(6) Actually, plays about Doktor Faustus are still popular today, as I myself discovered on two separate trips to Munich. I encountered Doktor Faustus, once in a play with marionettes and again when he himself stood in the Marienplatz in a long dark robe covered with stars. He was wearing a tall, pointed hat and performing magic tricks with scarves and coins. Goethe wrote that he felt kinship with his character Faust. Both were men of science seeking answers to questions that became ever larger and ever more complex, questions that seemed unanswerable by humans, answerable only by knowledge itself, i.e. by God.(7) In the character Faust, Goethe captures our desire to experience all that can be experienced and do all that can be done instead of seeking pure intellectual knowledge which had often been the goal of scientists. (8)
The story of Doktor Faustus is widely varied because it has been a legend for over 500 years. It is possible that the legend of Doktor Faustus was composed in front of a fireplace one evening, and it is also possible that there was an alchemist by the name of Johannes Faustus.
The legend of Doktor Faustus was kept alive for over one hundred years by word of mouth until 1592, when Christopher Marlow adapted the legend into a play he titled. The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus. (10) Marlows play was seen by many. It was popularized and altered by the illiterate public and often took the form of traveling puppet shows.
The tale of Doktor Faustus is a German legend. The germanic origin of the story accounts for its lasting popularity. During the period in which Goethe wrote, it lent itself well to the Sturm und Drang ideals of intellectual pursuit and the duress of existence. (13) It was not coincidence that Goethe came to write about this Doktor Faustus whose pursuits and goals mirrored his own. Goethe was born and educated in the city of Frankfurt He was trained in languages, literature, and law. However, he knew very little about geography or natural history. This changed in the late 1700s when he was invited to the royal court of Weimar. Weimar was a vast country estate in Northern Germany where the intelllgencia of the day congregated: writers, actors, musicians, and scientists from all over Europe who were free to learn, explore, and experiment. (14) (Similar to Dr. Martin Arrowsmith and Dr. Gottlieb at the McGurk Institute in the novel Arrowsmith by Sinclar Lewis) Goethe had a lively interest in natural history and science, so Weimar was paradise for him. He found this environment so intellectually stimulating that he lived to be over 80 years old. (15)
Goethe professed that he was unable to learn anything from books. Therefore, he subscribed enthusiastically to the theory of the day which championed hands-on science, field observation, and precise measurement (16)
Goethe began with botany which was a prerequisite for medicine, his main interest. (17) He procured for himself his own private Gartenhaus (similar to a greenhouse) at Weimar. For several of his first years, before he became involved in administrative duties, he sowed seeds and planted trees and took great pleasure In watching them grow, something he had never been able to do in the city of his birth. (18) His extensive study of botany led him to write Metamorphose der Pflanzen (my translation: The Development of Plants) in 1790. It was the culmination of his study of botany. From botany he turned to geology. (19)
Before coming to Weimar, Goethe was interested in magic, which may have come from his own childhood experiences with the Doktor Faustus puppet plays. He was interested in the symbolic meaning of magic, using magic to express the relationship between humans, the visible world, and the invisible world that has power over us in the visible world. The use of magic symbolized obtaining and controlling the power that they believed governed their universe. Possession of these powers would allow the magician to become more than human, allowing him to experience all that could be experienced. Goethe, In his time of reason, could only dream about these superhuman qualities, but he could give the powerful gift of magic to his character, Faust(21)
In the year 1769, Goethe began a long study of the Cabalistic texts. In this same year he began planning a play about Doktor Faustus. He began by writing Urfaust, then the Fragment in 1790, and finally Faust I, which he finished in 1808.(22)
However, the actual conception of the Cabalist was the anima terrae. The anima terrae is the Earth as a heavenly body with a soul or vital principle at its center, but according to the Cabalists, the Earth was not one of the four classical elements. (24)
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