| Understanding the Mysteries of Faust by Douglas Gerwin The value of Faust can be summarized in the following way: Rudolf Steiner spoke about various mysteries that it is our task to come to understand. In earlier times human beings wrestled with the mystery of death, trying to come to terms with its reality, even if they could not understand it. In the ancient Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, for instance, we meet a character who simply does not grasp the reality of death. When his best friend Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh goes on a mythic voyage in a vain attempt to find him; the notion that Enkidu is beyond his grasp simply does not cross his mind as a possibility. The ancient Egyptians, as we know, spent enormous energy on accepting and coming to terms with this mystery of death. Today, in our culture, we may still wrestle with the nature of death - what it means, what it's like, and so forth - but we no longer have any doubt that death, like taxation, is. Instead we are now wrestling with the reality of another mystery, which Rudolf Steiner calls "the mystery of evil." We don't really understand the purpose of evil; indeed, some of us may actually doubt that it has any objective reality at all. In our thinking about evil, we can all too easily miss the point of it, or at least overlook the value, the possibilities, that evil presents. However, young people today instinctively know that there is something to be learned from the dark side, and even if we fail as adults to provide them with a language for it, they may well find it on their own. So it is that the study of Faust, among other literary masterpieces, comes into the curriculum of the senior year. On one hand, it provides the students an opportunity to wrestle with archetypal beings connected with this mystery; on the other, this drama allows them to explore what our responsibility to these beings might be. For truly, we have a responsibility to these beings - whether we imagine them residing in us or around us, whether we confront them or try to push them away. C.S. Lewis was fond of saying that we are at risk of making two mistakes when dealing with the devil: One is to think that he does not exist; the other is to become overly interested in what he does. In this sense, we are trying to find appropriate language for the modern faces of evil - not to judge or dismiss them, but rather to understand them, for in understanding them one can change them. Faust also relates to teaching and learning. He explores learning from authority (that is, from someone or something outside yourself) and learning from experience (that is, learning from within yourself) and he points up the blind spots inherent in each approach - one might even say the destructive forces inherent in each. In this way you can see how Faust prepares you to become a teacher. I should add that beyond laying out these two ways of learning, Goethe indirectly sets out a third approach to learning. He puts it this way: You know only what you love, and the deeper the knowledge is to be, the more passionate must be the love. And that thought that you learn to know only that which you love is one way of sketching the approach Goethe wanted to develop as a path to knowledge. Please understand, of course, that by love Goethe had something quite specific in mind - as did Rudolf Steiner. So what was it he had in mind? Rudolf Steiner would put it this way: By true love is meant the capacity to step out of your per- spective and to experience another person from that person's own point of view, or to experience it as your own. To be able to do that fully is to practice true love. Notice this is described as a practice, not just as the experience of a feeling. This approach lies at the fundament of what is sometimes called a Goethean approach to science, also known as a phenomenological approach to science. It involves learning to know what you love - not in a sentimental way or even a sympathetic way, but rather in this other, can I say objective and disciplined, way of learning. In this way, love serves as a vehicle for knowledge. |
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