Faust's Divided Self and Moral InertiaAuthor(s): J. M. van der LaanReviewed work(s):Source: Monatshefte, Vol. 91, No. 4 (Winter, 1999), pp. 452-463Published by: University of Wisconsin PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30153819 .Accessed: 15/11/2011 09:49

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Faust's Divided Self and Moral Inertia

J. M. VAN DER LAAN

Illinois State University

"Ich bin du, wenn ich ich bin."

-Paul Celan

The moral character and development of Goethe's Faust has been an issue of perennial interest and contention.' Without doubt, a preoccupation with the ethical provides the play with one of its principal themes. Wolfgang Wittkowski even considered the "ethical interest" to be Goethe's focal point.2 Although it is in no way a systematic, philosophical disputation on some ethical code, the play nevertheless speaks to and interrogates the definition of morality and the possibility (or impossibility) of moral action.

Whether Faust ascends or descends morally has informed much of the thinking about the ethical content of Goethe's masterpiece.3 My reading of Faust departs from such paradigms, however, and I argue that Faust neither ascends nor descends, neither progresses nor regresses, but that he instead changes without changing, develops without developing, that he is at the close of the play no better or worse, no wiser or more ignorant than when he first began. Although my purpose here is to discuss Faust's moral char- acter, I interpret Goethe's famous play neither as an affirmation nor a re- jection of either an orthodox or an unconventional morality.4

While some may want to quibble with the assertion, it is nevertheless hard to deny that Faust, from beginning to end, is a disreputable blackguard and perfidious rogue. It does not take much to identify him as a thoroughly callous reprobate and pernicious predator, one could even say an "evil" fellow (if the adjective were not so out-moded), who operates within a moral void. Faust is, after all, the man who makes a notorious deal with the devil. If we scrutinize Faust's behavior, we find from start to finish a trail of heinous and villainous deeds. Indeed, he characteristically causes rather than alleviates suffering.

In one of the first scenes ("Vor dem Tor"), for example, Faust recounts

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Faust's Divided Self 453

to Wagner how during the plague he worked with his father not to cure the sick, but to murder them with hellish poisons:

So haben wir mit hollischen Latwergen In diesen Tilern, diesen Bergen Weit schlimmer als die Pest getobt. Ich habe selbst den Gift an Tausende gegeben, Sie welkten hin, ich muB erleben, Wie man die frechen Morder lobt.

In a subsequent conversation with Mephistopheles, Faust goes on to curse and dispense with the cardinal Christian values. He vehemently re- futes faith, hope, and love, the three fundamental virtues, and adds patience for good measure:

Fluch jener hochsten Liebeshuld! Fluch sei der Hoffnung! Fluch dem Glauben, Und Fluch vor allen der Geduld! (1604-06)

The invisible Mephistophelean spirit-choir (Geisterchor) provides a telling commentary. While the spirits indicate the consequences of his curses, say- ing that he has destroyed "the beautiful world" (1608-11), they at the same time flatter Faust for the audacity of such a desecration.

By his own admission, Faust cares not one whit about good or evil, heaven or hell, love or hate, an above or below. Again, Faust makes his radical convictions known in dialogue with Mephistopheles:

Das Driuben kann mich wenig kiummern; Schlhigst du erst diese Welt zu Triimmern, Die andre mag darnach entstehn.

Davon will ich nicht weiter hbren, Ob man auch kiinftig ha3t und liebt, Und ob es auch in jenen Sphiren Ein Oben oder Unten gibt. (1660-70)

With Gretchen, Faust behaves reprehensibly as well. He seduces her, loves her, and leaves her, abandoning her to terrible ruination. He is more- over essentially responsible (certainly as an accessory to the crimes) for the death of her mother, her brother, her baby, and for her despair, descent into insanity, and execution.

Acting on behalf of Faust (whose wish is his command), Mephisto as Phorkyas again employs the most devious and nefarious means in Part Two to procure Helena for Faust (8843-9126). Consider also the unscrupulous aid Faust later gives the emperor, the cold-hearted slaughter of the anti- emperor's army, and the brutal manner (piracy and forced labor) by which Faust builds his own empire. And let us not forget his problematic role in

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the murder of the innocent Baucis and Philemon. Granted, Faust on the rare occasion experiences a modicum of regret, but it is only in passing, for Faust always moves on, and his regret has no relation to any internal trans- formation of character or conduct.

At the end of the play, four apparitions-Want, Guilt, Care, and Need (der Mangel, die Schuld, die Sorge, die Not)-come to Faust as personified admonitions, but none of them is able to reach him in any way, except the specter Care who alone manages to enter his room. When she in turn con- fronts him face to face with anxiety, he denies her power (11493-94) and, as it were, brazenly declares: "I do not care!"

Not even "der Weisheit letzter SchluB" (11574) is all it purports to be, for it reveals instead an intrinsically flawed idea of freedom which derives from an act of daily conquest: "Nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie das Le- ben,/ Der tiglich sie erobern mul" (11575-76). Faust's vision of the future, of standing among a free people on free ground (11579-80) is likewise cor- rupted by the self-aggrandizement which defines his experience of highest joy. "Es kann die Spur von meinen Erdetagen," he boasts, "Nicht in Aonen untergehn-" (11583-84).

Faust's unethical behavior (unethical in a conventional and traditional sense) prompts the question: why is it he does not or cannot act morally? We are all doubtlessly familiar with his famous lament:

Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust, Die eine will sich von der andern trennen; Die eine hilt, in derber Liebeslust, Sich an die Welt mit klammernden Organen; Die andre hebt gewaltsam sich vom Dust Zu den Gefilden hoher Ahnen. (1112-17)

It is so well known that we tend to take it for granted. Faust gives expression to a problem of key and paramount importance, however, and we might do well to take him, so to speak, at his word. He acknowledges a rift at the very core of his being: a division of the self.

Faust states a problem which is not merely the reiteration of a phil- osophical dualism, of a division of the world into mind and matter, of "Geist und Natur" as its German variant has so often expressed it. Faust-scholar- ship has tended to understand Faust's remark chiefly in that way, however. Ralf Sudau has related the dichotomy of Faust's soul to the dichotomy of matter and spirit, for example.6 In his discussion of Faust's so-called "Zwei- Seelen-Lehre," Hans Bayer similarly explained Faust's two souls in terms of Neoplatonic and particularly Manichaean anthropology which (simply stated) conceives of a good soul imprisoned within an evil body.7 Although Jane Brown treats the duality of Faust's souls as the "opposition between Faust's natural and transcendental drives,"8 she nevetheless reveals the

Faust's Divided Self 455

same kind of thinking about Faust's divided self. To be sure, such dichot- omies inhere and suggest themselves in Faust's complaint, but the real issue, I contend, concerns something rather different. Faust presents us with the incoherent individual whose inner division prevents moral decision and ac- tion.

Erich Kahler described and analyzed that condition in his book, The Tower and the Abyss. He argues there that "the unity and integrity of the human form" represents the crucial value of the individual as it evolved in the West from Greek and Jewish antiquity.9 As Kahler argues, that evolu- tion has been interrupted, if not reversed. He discerns a "breakdown of human form, [a] dissolution of coherence and structure" which results not merely in "inhumanity,... but in a-humanity."'o According to Kahler, more- over, a condition of a-humanity precludes the possibility of moral life. It is precisely that loss of inner unity and integrity accompanied by a devolution to a-humanity and a-morality which Faust exemplifies. He embodies the end of that long development in the West toward unity and integrity of the self, a development which in Modernity has been arrested and turned around.

J. H. van den Berg has likewise explored the problem of the dis- unified individual in Divided Existence and Complex Society. He suggests that the dis-integrated self made its appearance between 1773 and 1800- the very years, that is, in which Goethe conceived and composed his Faust. Van den Berg writes that at the end of the eighteenth century, "the unity of the individual personality trembles or, in a certain respect, maybe even crumbles."" He links the emergence of divided existence to the socio-cul- tural provenance, a world more and more cut loose from its traditional epistemological, ontological, and ethical moorings.

For the individual as personified by Faust, there is similarly no longer a hierarchy of beings or an understandable cosmic order. For Faust, neither religion nor science offers any guidance or answers. There is no universally binding ethical code, not one based on Christian moral principles with ref- erence to divine imperatives, nor one based on Humanistic or Enlighten- ment philosophical ingenuity with recourse to "true" human nature or to moral potential as innate properties of human nature or reason.12

Faust speaks of being morally and intellectually adrift in his opening soliloquy:

Mich plagen keine Skrupel noch Zweifel, Fiurchte mich weder vor Holle noch Teufel- Daftir ist mir auch alle Freud' entrissen, Bilde mir nicht ein, was Rechts zu wissen, Bilde mir nicht ein, ich k6nnte was lehren, Die Menschen zu bessern und zu bekehren. (369-73)

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Significantly, the figure Goethe chose to embody the divided self- Faust-has its roots in the Renaissance, the time of emancipation, but also (as Zygmunt Baumann observes) "the time of the great schism,"13 hence a time of radical division. With its ancestry in Renaissance Humanism, not to mention the Reformation, and its reemergence in the Enlightenment, the Faust character proved an apt vehicle for Goethe and his representation of the predicament Modernity brought to humanity. In a sense, Faust de- picts the self-reflection and psychological introspection which began in the Renaissance, took on further definition in the Enlightenment, intensified in the solipsism of Romanticism, and which results in, and inevitably confronts the individual with, the division of the self. Faust reflects the loss of inner harmony which occurred with the rise of the human being into an unprec- edented self-consciousness.14 When the self became so intensely aware of and absorbed with itself, a split ensued and resulted in a fundamental es- trangement of the self from itself.

Faust no longer has any coherent unity of self or wholeness of being. His two-souls statement identifies the condition of a self no longer in har- mony with itself, no longer co-incident with itself. While Faust has typically been called on to exemplify the so-called modern individual, most recently by Ian Watt (in Myths of Modern Individualism)," Faust's divided self calls that very characterization into question, for a divided self specifically con- tradicts the notion of in-dividuality or in-dividualism.

Faust lacks an integrated identity as well, indeed, lacks any real iden- tity whatsoever. Who he actually is, is almost impossible to determine. Faust has no roots, no heritage, no past, except a father with whom he practiced a dangerous and deadly sort of medicine. He comes from nowhere and has no home to speak of. When we meet him, he has no definite occupation. Although once a scholar and professor, he no longer bothers with philos- ophy, jurisprudence, medicine, or theology, as his famous opening mono- logue so emphatically asserts. He has no family, no friends, no lasting re- lationships, no community.

Faust consequently has no real sense of identity, nor does he have any way to define a sense of self which occurs in relation to an Other. Here Martin Buber's understanding of the self helps to evaluate and understand Faust. For Buber, the self can only be fully realized in and as a relation. Indeed, Buber asserts that "man can become whole not by virtue of a re- lation to himself but only by virtue of a relation to another self."'6 Since he is divided within, Faust only has a relation to himself, however. Without as well as unable to engage in relation with another self outside himself, Faust is unable to become a whole self. According to Emmanuel Levinas, "the primary act of being" resides in such relation to the Other, that is, in "a social communion."'7 Faust's disunified self represents an impaired I for whom there is and can be no real Thou.

Faust's Divided Self 457

Zygmunt Bauman provides an insightful discussion of morality (and the self) in his book on Postmodern ethics. There he presents what he considers seven marks of moral condition, one of which pertains especially to the present explication of Faust. Echoing Buber, Bauman expressly re- lates the definition of the self to the condition of being moral, specifically to the relation of the self to the Other and in its responsibility for the other being. "Moral responsibility-being for the Other before one can be with the Other," he maintains, "is the first reality of the self."'8 Indeed, Bauman goes so far as to say that "moral responsibility is precisely the act of self- constitution."'9 The self cannot be or become a self if there is no relation to the Other.

Because of his inner division, his loss of unity and integrity, Faust becomes morally inert, if not morally impotent and morally moribund. Such duality (or even plurality) of the self necessarily disrupts existence and makes moral life disordered, chaotic, and ultimately impossible. A divided self is a self which is its own Other. As such, it cannot engage with an actual Other, cannot consider or be for the Other, since the Other it considers and is for is only itself.

In order to become moral, however, the self must engage with and consider an Other, some other human being, some other self. In order to become moral, the self must give up or limit something of itself,20 but that is precisely what Faust as a divided self cannot do. He is utterly preoccupied with himself, that is to say, with his self (or selves). In consequence, he has lost any and all foundation for any values. As a divided self, Faust cannot enter into relation with another self, cannot (and will not) become respon- sible for the Other, hence cannot act morally.21

Faust never moves beyond his self, never exists outside his self, never exists for other selves. As he himself declares, he wants the experience of all other selves to occur within his self:

... was der ganzen Menschheit zugeteilt ist, Will ich in meinem innern Selbst genieBen, Mit meinem Geist das Hdchst' und Tiefste greifen, Ihr Wohl und Weh auf meinen Busen hiufen, Und so mein eigen Selbst zu ihrem Selbst erweitern, Und, wie sie selbst, am End' auch ich zerscheitern. (1770-74, my italics)

As he himself admits (even if in despair), the processs ultimately eventuates in the utter shattering and fragmentation of his self.

Inner division of the self results in inner strife which deranges and unsettles the individual (as Faust certainly is), making it all but impossible for him to act morally. A self which is divided is a self at odds with itself. Faust's two souls pull in opposite directions, competing with each other, wanting different things, one this, the other that. The two (or more) selves

458 van der Laan

thus enter into conflict with one another: they do not and cannot harmonize, since they are in effect antagonistic forces. Choices cannot be made, and morality is all about making choices. In his book, Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps, Tzvetan Todorov notes that "where there is no choice [that is, where the individual cannot choose one behavior over another], there is also no place for any kind of moral life whatsoever."22

Ultimately, the self succumbs (as Faust so effectively illustrates) to anomie, that is, to normlessness, lawlessness, to unrestraint, abandonment, in a word, to im- or a-morality.23 Faust moreover suffers so severely, because his inner division is so extreme, because his two souls deviate so strongly from one another. They are not acceptable to each other and so cannot coexist. The inner division of the self consequently makes moral life, first in terms of decision and second in terms of action, impossible.

The divided self is unable to focus, unable to discriminate or discern, unable to choose between right and wrong, good and evil. As Kahler points out, the Faust-motif in particular serves to demonstrate the "precariousness of norms" in the modern world in which "values are no longer clear-cut and immune .... They are, as it were, infected with each other: good and evil blend and merge."24 Mephistopheles indicates as much in his self-introduc- tion to Faust claiming that evil begets good. In response to Faust's question "wer bist du denn," Mephisto answers:

Ein Tell von jener Kraft, Die stets das Bose will und stets das Gute schafft. (1334-36)

As already noted, such categories as good or evil, love or hate, heaven or hell (1660-70) no longer obtain for the divided self, for Faust.

Because of his inner division, Faust cannot interact in any unified or integrated fashion with the world outside himself. His inner division, his alienation from himself (pace Marx), coincides with an alienation from oth- ers as well. His alienation from other human beings eliminates moral life, since morality exists only in terms of community and of the self in relation to and with other selves outside itself. Morality exists for interhuman re- lation and conduct, for communal life, of which Faust has no part. Although Kahler thought that Thomas Mann's Faustus-Adrian Leverktihn-spe- cifically embodied the individual divorced from the human community, it is precisely that same fundamental "break with the community of creatures, the community of man" which characterizes Goethe's Faust.25

Morality tempers the drives of the individual so that individuals are able to co-exist, but Faust living apart from community never tempers his drives, hence never lives morally. According to Todorov, "for an action to be moral it must be both subjective -performed by the individual who is the subject of that action-and personal-directed toward other individ- uals."26 And as Kahler so aptly points out, morality is nothing if not "re-

Faust's Divided Self 459

sponsibility in regard to the human community."27 Cut off from human re- lation, Faust does not know such responsibility. His refusal to acknowledge Care (11493-94), moreover, may well be the ultimate denial of moral life. In "Notes on Morality," the epilogue to Facing the Extreme, Todorov asserts "caring" as "the moral action par excellence." "Through caring," he writes, "the 'I' has as its goal the well-being of the 'you.' "28 If Faust has never cared, never experienced anxiety or worry, he has never sought the welfare of the Other either.

Divided within himself as he is, Faust could not establish a viable human relation with either Gretchen or Helena (the two persons with whom he had his closest relationships, women he ostensibly loved and who bore his two children), nor finally in any way with the community he hopes to create and envisions for the future. After all, Faust's great venture (his great Deed) is in the same way inherently flawed and plagued by implicit contradiction or division. In the words of Baucis, soon to be sacrificed to Faust's desires, "es ging das ganze Wesen/ Nicht mit rechten Dingen zu" (11113-14).

Faust founds a realm where he believes that individuals in future will be able to live (as he says) "tatig-frei" (11564), but he establishes it on the basis of cruelty and what amounts to slave labor. Again, Baucis provides the commentary: "Menschenopfer mu3ten bluten,/ Nachts erscholl des Jammers Qual" (11127-28). The work of those laborers contributed only to the enrichment of Faust's life and to the impoverishment of their own. In Faust's opinion, the people who inhabit his land at present are merely "die Menge, die mir franet" (11540). Finally, it is Faust's "irrwitziges Geluist nach Macht und GriBee"29 which determines the tragic fate of Baucis and Phi- lemon and which eventuates in the murderous destruction of innocent life.

The end-the great Deed, namely-can hardly justify Faust's means, and his so-called noble purpose is undermined by ignobility. He himself betrays his ruthlessness and brutality. To the foreman (Mephistopheles), he commands:

Wie es auch moglich sei, Arbeiter schaffe Meng' auf Menge, Ermuntere durch GenuB und Strenge, Bezahle, locke, presse bei! (11551-54)

He cares not the least how he gets his workers nor how he gets work out of them. In effect, he does more to destroy than to build human community. Yet, with his very next breath, he utters his utopian, ostensibly egalitarian vision of a new land of supposed liberty. The new world order he foretells can hardly be anything other than a reflection and embodiment of its founder's values (or lack of them). What real liberty will exist in a land forged through acts of violence, power, and domination?

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Faust never truly realizes his quest for self-fulfillment and for mean- ing. In his book The Culture of Cynicism, Richard Stivers has written that meaning "in the sense of the meaning of life and the meaning of history is [essentially] ethical meaning."30 The observation has special relevance for Faust, who searches for meaning, yet finds no meaning, because he has no moral life-except the excercise of power in order to indulge his divided and disharmonious self. Because he fails to give life moral meaning, Faust only discovers an elusive and illusory meaning for his life in a vision of what can only be an unlikely future.

Faust's only morality, if we can call it that, has been a morality of the self, a morality of power. When he in retrospect describes his entire life to Care, he makes that abundantly clear:

Ich habe nur begehrt und nur vollbracht Und abermals gewiinscht und so mit Macht Mein Leben durchgestiirmt; erst grol3 und michtig, Nun aber geht es weise, geht bedachtig. (11436-40)

But how wise is he? And what has he learned? Because Faust never enters into an I-Thou relation, but only engages in I-It relations, he never achieves any real knowledge. To speak with Levinas, "the I-Thou relation is a relation of true knowledge because it preserves the integrity of the otherness of the Thou instead of relegating the Thou to the anonymity of the It."31 Faust specifically fails to preserve the integrity of the Other, to care for the Other. Even though blinded by Care (or should we say blind to care?), he adamantly reasserts his morality of carelessness and of power: "Des Herren Wort, es gibt allein Gewicht" (11502).

For Levinas, denial of the self, morality, and existential meaning are interdependent. "It is in the laying down by the ego of its sovereignty (...)," he explains, "that we find ethics and also probably the very spiri- tuality of the soul, but most certainly the question of the meaning of be- ing."'32 Like Levinas and Baumann, Stivers links existential meaning with ethical meaning which in turn "arises from a limitation of power."33 Faust never limits himself or his power in any way, however. On the contrary, he sought always and only to increase his power-through erudition, through science, through magic, through his pact with Mephistopheles, through his seduction of Gretchen, through his obsessive and possessive passion for Helena, and finally through his technical mastery of the natural world. His conquest of nature may well be the consumate manifestation of the I-It relation.

Acts of power-such as possession, consumption, domination, con- trol, coercion, violence, and conquest-characterize Faust's entire life. Ac- tually, he seeks the expression of ultimate power, the power of the deity, the power to create his own world like the Judeo-Christian God in the

Faust's Divided Self 461

Genesis account. Faust's ethic of the self is the morality of power, which Stivers defines as a "morality without meaning, [one which] destroys the possibility of love and therefore destroys freedom itself."34

At the beginning of the Classical Walpurgisnight, Erichto suggestively related the domination of others to the inability to govern one's own self: "Denn jeder, der sein innres Selbst/ Nicht zu regieren weiB, regierte gar zu gern/ Des Nachbars Willen, eignem stolzem Sinn gemaiB ..." (7015-17). As one of the furies (who in a sense pursues Faust), Erichto as it were reiterates Faust's problem and delineates its consequences. Unable to govern itself, the self at odds with itself projects its unresolvable struggle outward where it indulges instead in and enjoys a surrogate victory in the domination of and exercise of power over others.

In conclusion, we must remember that Faust does not provide answers nor a model for ethical behavior. Rather, Faust depicts the condition of humanity in Modernity (with anticipations of Postmodernity). The play de- picts how Goethe understood, both perceived and conceived, such a human being to live and behave. The human being he describes with Faust in Faust eschews, if not abhors, the constraints of a traditional moral order and instead embraces a morality of the self, a morality where the Other does not matter, where the self only relates to the Other in terms of power, where that power supplants the freedom of the Other with servitude and subju- gation, and where meaning disappears in the end both for the self and its Other.

Faust's prescient wish to augment his self with his own self-"mein eigen Selbst zu ihrem Selbst erweitern,/ Und, wie sie selbst, am End' auch ich zerscheitern" (1774)-at last comes true indeed. Ironically, the self- fulfilling prophecy is at the same time a self-destructing prophecy, for er- weitern goes hand in hand with zerscheitern. Faust's enhancement or rep- lication of the self-literally, a reply of the self to itself-ultimately entails its own demise.

A number of scholars have published studies devoted to ethical aspects of Faust. Among many others are: Wolfgang Baumgart, "Mephistopheles und die Emanzipation des BOsen," Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert. Facetten einer Epoche, ed. Wolfgang Adam (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1988) 93-111; Hans Bayer, "Goethes Faust. Religids-ethische Quellen und Sinn- deutung," Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts (1978): 173-224; Alan EP. Cottrell, Goethe's View of Evil and the Search for a New Image of Man in our Time (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1982); Hans Eichner, "The Eternal Feminine: An Asepct of Goethe's Ethics," Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada 9 (1971): 235-44; Erich Heller, "Fausts Verdammnis. Die Ethik des Wissens," Merkur 17 (1963): 32-56; Hans Robert JauB, "Job's Questions and Their Distant Reply: Goethe, Nietzsche, Heidegger," Comparative Literature 34 (1982): 193-207; Steven D. Martinson, "Error and the Problem of 'Bildung' in Goethe's Faust," Euphorion 82 (1988): 104- 15; Geza von Molnir, "The Conditions of Faust's Wager and Its Resolution in Light of Kantian Ethics," Publications of English Goethe Society 51 (1981): 48-80; Hans Schwerte, Faust und das Faustische: Ein Kapitel deutscher Ideologie (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1962); G. H. Streurman,

462 van der Laan

"Was Faust 'ein guter Mensch?' " Levende Talen 229-32 (1965): 207-16; James M. van der Laan, "Die Faustfigur bei Goethe und Nietzsche im Hinblick auf die Postmoderne," Euphorion 88 (1994): 458-67; J. M. van der Laan, "The Virtual and the Real in Goethe's Faust," Acta Germanica 25 (1997): 7-20; and Wilhelm Vosskamp, "Hdchstes Exemplar des utopischen Menschen. Ernst Bloch und Goethes Faust," Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift 59 (1985): 676-87.

2Wolfgang Wittkowski, "Goethe, Schopenhauer und Fausts SchluBvision," Goethe Yearbook 5 (1990): 238.

SAlfred Hoelzel provides a useful overview of the two points of view in his article: "The Conclusion of Goethe's Faust: Ambivalence and Ambiguity," German Quarterly 55 (1982): 1- 12. Critics whose interpretations show the bias toward human progress include among others: Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982); Konrad Burdach, "Das religi6se Problem in Goethes Faust," Eu- phorion 33 (1932): 3-83; Hermann Grimm, Das Leben Goethes, ed. R. Buchwald, 5th ed. (Stuttgart: Kr6ner, 1947); Horst Hartmann, "Das Tatethos im Werk Goethes," Wissenschaft- liche Zeitschrift (Pidagogische Hochschule "Karl Liebknecht" Potsdam), 19/2 (1975): 277-84; Harold Jantz, Faust as a Renaissance Mtan (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1951); Georg LukAcs, Faust und Faustus. Vom Drama der Menschengattung zur Tragodie der modernen Kunst, aus- gewhhlte Schriften II, ed. Ernesto Grassi (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1968); Thomas Metscher, "Faust's End: On the Present Significance of Goethe's Text," Our Faust? Roots and Ramifi- cations of a Modern German Myth, ed. Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand (Madison, Wi: U of Wisconsin P, 1987) 22-46; Joachim Miller, "Fausts Tat und Tod. UmriB einer Motivanalyse," in his Neue Goethe Studien (Halle: Niemeyer, 1969) 167-88; Jaroslav Pelikan, Faust the Theo- logian (New Haven: Yale UP, 1995); Heinrich Rickert, Goethes Faust. Die dramatische Einheit der Dichtung (Tiubingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1932); and Ian Watt, Myths of Modern Individualism: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe (New York, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996). Among those studies which show a bias toward human regress are: Ernst Beutler, Besinnung (Wiesbaden: Dietrich, 1946); Melitta Gerhard, "Faust: die Tragidie des 'neueren Menschen'," Jahrbuch des freien deutschen Hochstifts (1978): 160-64; Walter Kaufmann, "Goethe's Faith and Faust's Redemption," Monatshefte 40 (1948): 1-14; and Reinhold Schnei- der, Fausts Rettung (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1946).

4 Aside from my interpretation of Faust, Helmut DOring is one of the few to deal with Faust as Abbild rather than Vorbild. See his "Faust-Nicht Vorbild, sondern Abbild" Faust- bliitter 32 (1977): 1226-35; 33 (1977): 1296-1305; 34 (1978): 1356-65.

5Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust I und II. In vol. 3 of Goethes Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe, ed. Erich Trunz (Mtinchen: C.H. Beck, 1982) 1050-55. This edition of Faust is sub- sequently cited parenthetically in the main body of my text.

6Ralf Sudau, Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Faust I und II Interpretation (Mtinchen: Olden- burg, 1993) 60.

7Hans Bayer, "Goethes Faust. Religios-ethische Quellen und Sinndeutung," Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts (1978): 173-224.

8Jane K. Brown, Goethe's Faust: The German Tragedy (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1986) 57. 9 Erich Kahler, The Tower and the Abyss: An Inquiry into the Transformation of Man

(New York: Viking Press, 1967) xii. "o Ibid. " J. H. van den Berg, Divided Existence and Complex Society: An Historical Approach

(Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1974) 76. 12 For an insightful review of the Renaissance and specifically Enlightenment quest for

ethical foundations see Zygmunt Baumann's Postmodern Ethics (Cambridge USA, Oxford UK: Blackwell, 1995) 21-28.

'3 Ibid. 23. 14Cf. Kahler, Tower and Abyss 255. 's Ian Watt, Myths of Modern Individualism (1996). 16 Martin Buber, "What is man?" in his Between Man and Man, tr. Ronald Gregor Smith

(New York: Macmillan, 1967) 168. 17 Emmanuel Levinas, "Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge," tr. P. A. Schilpp

and M. Friedman, in The Levinas Reader, ed. Sein Hand (Oxford UK, Cambridge USA: Basil Blackwell, 1989) 65.

Faust's Divided Self 463

18Baumann 13. 19 Ibid. 14. 20 Cf. Ibid. 13. 21 At this point, I should acknowledge a debt to Scren Kierkegaard's remarkable analysis

of the self in The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening, ed. and tr. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983), if only for indirectly shaping my thinking about the self.

22Tzvetan Todorov, Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps, tr. Arthur Denner and Abigail Pollak (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996) 33.

23Cf. van den Berg 100. 24Kahler, Tower and Abyss 202. 25 Erich Kahler, "Doctor Faustus from Adam to Sartre," Comparative Drama 1/2 (1967):

90. 26Todorov 288. 27Kahler, Tower and Abyss 216. 28Todorov 287. 29 Heller 49. 30 Richard Stivers, The Culture of Cynicism: American Morality in Decline (Oxford UK,

Cambridge USA: Blackwell, 1994) 173. 31 Levinas, "Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge," The Levinas Reader 66. 32 Levinas, "Ethics as First Philosophy," tr. Selin Hand and Michael Temple, The Levinas

Reader 85. 33Stivers 154. 34Ibid. 177.

The second annual University of Wisconsin-Madison Graduate Student Conference, sponsored by the German and Dutch Graduate Student Association (GDGSA), will be held in Madison on 25 March 2000. Students from various disciplines at universities in the Upper Midwest will present papers on issues related to Ger- manic literatures, languages, and cultures. For information, contact Sara Young (<sbyoung@students.wisc.edu>) or Kristin Lovrien-Meuwese (<klovrien@students. wisc.edu>).