> As Wilson writes in his expansive and somewhat baggily written introduction, now—amid increasingly dire ecological and political conditions—we can see our own world in Faust more clearly than ever before. For Faust, he writes, is “about a world which had taken leave of God but did not know how to live.”
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.
barbazoo · 7m ago
> But rationalism and materialism do not have answers to the existential questions and crises that humans face.
That's the crux of it. Nothing and no one has those answers. Some isms acknowledge that, most don't.
superb-owl · 4m ago
There's a middle ground between claiming you have a final answer, and ignoring the question entirely.
The best spiritual disciplines provide a _framework_ for exploring existential questions.
libraryofbabel · 31m ago
Well, yeah. That’s just the central problem of modernity and it’s been the preoccupation of the last two hundred years of philosophy and literature: c.f. existentialism and many other isms. Nietzsche and Dostoevsky and a legion of other philosophers and novelists address this exact question. There’s a lot of answers out there that don’t require signing up to an old religion, you can go and take your pick!
williamdclt · 37m ago
That's very handwavy and unconvincing TBH. I can't imagine who'd argue that humans "worship" rationalism and materialism, that's a pretty big stretch of the word.
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
SSJPython · 33m ago
I should've said the worship of the temporal (material reality, etc.) rather than the spiritual.
CamperBob2 · 11m ago
What has the spiritual ever done for us? We know nothing of gods that we didn't learn from other men.
croes · 49m ago
Metaphysics and religions don’t have answer either.
They just stop asking questions at a certain point.
geodel · 37m ago
But that is sufficient for people with limited time and resources which is most people.
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.
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.
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
They just stop asking questions at a certain point.