It seems to me that Mephistopheles' offer was a no brainer for Faust.
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.
SSJPython · 1h ago
> 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.
libraryofbabel · 1h 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!
lo_zamoyski · 32m ago
> 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!
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.
barbazoo · 50m 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 · 47m 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.
lo_zamoyski · 13m ago
How have you come to this conclusion?
williamdclt · 1h 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 · 1h ago
I should've said the worship of the temporal (material reality, etc.) rather than the spiritual.
CamperBob2 · 55m ago
What has the spiritual ever done for us? We know nothing of gods that we didn't learn from other men.
lo_zamoyski · 13m ago
You're committing the same fallacy that many do which is to lump them all under "gods" and then make it a problem of distinguishing which of these possible beings exists.
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.
quotz · 15m ago
But men do not respect other men nearly as much as they respect the gods and the supernatural
CamperBob2 · 8m ago
Exactly, so what you're saying is that extolling spirituality is just a way to garner unearned respect.
croes · 1h ago
Metaphysics and religions don’t have answer either.
They just stop asking questions at a certain point.
geodel · 1h ago
But that is sufficient for people with limited time and resources which is most people.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
They just stop asking questions at a certain point.