Hubris

I had the fortunate/unfortunate task of giving the first presentation on the subject of Hubris. This semester differs from the last (and by way of apology, I didn't finish my journaling last semester due to the birth of my twins) in that rather than follow the long line of Reason v. Passion through a series of old books, we're looking to address smaller themes as they relate to man's struggle to define himself... through a series of old and some new books.

My subject was hubris and the texts were Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus", and Euripides' "The Bacchae". The idea for both was man challenging the power of the gods, and being punished for doing so.

The seminar was led off by Michael who described his experience as an anthropologist in West Africa and a similar myth in the regions depicting man's downfall at the hands of the gods when he challenges them. What was interesting was the notion that this myth permeates many cultures and traditions of story-telling. We seemed, as a species, very concerned about our limits in the face of God.


We also discussed the idea of Prometheus, the god who gave man fire and was punished for doing so. We spoke about him in relation to Robert Oppenheim's quote "Now I am become Death". Truthfully, we didn't discuss the text of the Bacchae much at all, except to note that it was a poor (read old) translation, and that the plot concerned corrections to the excesses of human power; the relationship between kings and gods.

For this entry, I'm going to focus mostly on Faustus, because it's a theme that will come up again and again as we read the later texts.

The first thing that caught my eye was the notion of Faustus as a renaissance man, or rather, a man of the renaissance. This notion, new to the age, of the emergence of the individual, is actually a tough one to pick out on it's own, because it's still so prevalent today. The notion of the world centered around man, and of the internal world of man himself, is hard to separate from my understanding of man and the world. It's hard to imagine that other ideas exist. But here, in this nascent period, were very new, very radical ideas.

And Faustus is a very modern character. He's obsessed with his inner life and his accomplishments. He is driven by ambition and self-gratification. His relationship to the gods is also new in that he can negotiate it, rather than have it handed down in absolute terms.... or at least he thinks he can. Even other people are there for his pleasure and whim.

Where he seems to depart the philosophers of the past, is in his blindness, willful blindness it should be said, to morality, to good and evil.

When Mephistopheles first appears, he is so hideous and distasteful, Faustus demands the he change his shape and "return an old Franciscan Friar." These surfaces are important to Faustus. That Meph appear to be good is all Faustus requires. It makes you question his ability to discern true knowledge from trivia as the play progresses.

And indeed, this happens, for it seems that Faustus believes that true knowledge lies in magic: "'tis magic, magic, that hath ravished me". Why magic, over law, medicine, philosophy or religion? Is the ability to conjure Helen of Troy as an object of beauty and desire a real power? or does the act's requisite skill construe true knowledge? But I think that that is the point: what is our goal here? what makes us happy? Well, certainly, lovely women, outsmarting kings and knaves, gaining riches and power and fame are "fun", but is this all the point of our lives? Is it worth our souls to achieve some or all of these things?

Faust does fly into space to see earth from above, which I suppose at its' time must have been quite a thought. As we know that Copernicus had only recently published his theories about the universe, the very challenge to the religious hegemony about the construction of space must have seemed shocking at the time. But what of it? He did nothing of consequence with his knowledge. We figured out how to split the atom... knowledge... but it's what we did with it that makes us question ourselves.

Maybe that's the point of the allegory, like all these allegories about challenging the gods: it's what we do with our knowledge that matters. It's the care we take with our discoveries that will build us an empire or bring us to rubble. Neither Faustus, nor Marlowe for that matter, question what Faustus does with his ill-gained knowledge, only that he bargained with the devil to get it. It's seems like a sign of the immaturity of our species that we're more concerned with parental disapproval than consequence of our actions.

God can't place the world at our feet and then chide us for figuring it out. It must be a question of what we do with it all.

Perhaps the nuclear bomb represented the beginning of man's maturity and separation from his parental figure. Maybe the bomb represented the death of God, and the ascendancy of man to god-hood. "I am become death", Oppenheimer quotes. Perhaps he really meant "I am become God".

As for Faustus, he deserved hell, not because he made a deal with the devil and never repented to god, but because he didn't do anything that smelled of greatness with the power and knowledge he found.