Goethe

Back in the spring of '08, one of my classes, "Love, Madness and Decay in Vienna", introduced me to some concepts in German literature. The professor touched briefly on Goethe's Faust (since he's German and not Austrian) but the one part he did mention really stuck with me. He quoted the moral of the story at the very end: "He who strives on and lives to strive Can earn redemption still." This is what makes Goethe's version of the story different from the classical legend. Rather than being damned for making a deal with the devil, it is his unending quest for betterment that makes him worthy of salvation. (sorry if that's a spoiler to anyone, but I figure if the story is over 100 years old you're not reading it for the suspense)

With the free time I have over the break I decided to read the book. A quick rundown of the story is that Mephistopheles, the devil, makes a gentleman's bet with the angels that he can corrupt any soul. He runs through a list of possible candidates and passes over a nun in a convent reasoning that a soul that has been "starved" is too easy to turn. He decides upon Faust because he is one of the best servants of the Lord. Faust is an old scientist, a renaissance man with degrees in pretty much every discipline from chemistry to law to theology. He's poured his heart and soul into these pursuits, neglecting his personal life, in the search for The Answer—something that will give him true, unfleeting happiness. The answer is nowhere to be found in worldly knowledge so he turns to the occult. Mephistopheles appears and the two make a deal that he will serve Faust and help him explore all the experiences the world has to offer on the condition that when Faust does find that true, pure happiness, Mephistopheles will collect Faust's soul. Faust believes there is no such thing as pure, unending happiness and agrees. The book is kind of flowery and long winded, but the main thing in the first half is he falls for and seduces a young maiden (after the devil restored his youth) and through this whirlwind relationship her life is destroyed, partly because of Faust's lack of concern for the bigger picture and partly because Mephistopheles screwed them both over. He then spends all of the second half of the story traveling through myth and history, meeting Helen of Troy, nymphs and other such characters. After all those adventures Faust ends up finally experiencing the happiness he had always been searching for and right as Mephistopheles comes to claim his soul the angels intervene and carry Faust up to heaven.

Now, why do I like this story? Because it defies the old saying "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions". The moral is: no matter how badly you screw up, if you try, if you strive and seek to learn and better yourself then you are not a bad person. So a person who makes a catastrophically big mistake but learns from it and never repeats it is a better person than someone who makes a much smaller mistake again and again and can't be bothered to try to improve themselves.
A girl in my dorm freshman year told me her favorite philosopher was Goethe (though she pronounced it Go-ith) because he believed in having many experiences and learning from them. That was her rationalization for having random sex with guys and when my roommate asked what she had learned from that experience she replied, "He had a big dick." That's not exactly what Goethe had in mind. There's a difference between saying that striving to know all that one can about the world and about oneself through experiencing all that life has to offer and acting on that knowledge to improve oneself makes one a good person and saying someone who likes to try things is a good person.

Mephistopheles is in the details, so to speak. If you're in a relationship that ends up really screwing over your significant other, the mark of the good person is if they give a damn, if they try to make it better or at least try to learn something because they are concerned about it not happening again. If you have lots of sex and do drugs because you want to get out of your own head, that's different from someone who really does enjoy it, who wants to test themselves against what the world has to offer, someone who want to be in their own head. I'm speaking largely from an academic perspective here, but I think some of the more worldly readers would be inclined to agree.

Also, it's come to my attention that there are more than 5 people who read my blog and actually know who I am. For those of you who follow the link from facebook, if you have something you'd like to say, please don't be shy!