Changing European Visions of Disaster and Development. Vanessa Pupavac

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СКАЧАТЬ and leaving people more exposed to natural forces. Indeed Sloterdijk, whose last name ironically invokes the Dutch engineering tradition, is one of the leading European academics embracing a post-humanist philosophy and treating attachment of self to place, especially the modern nation state, as fallacious (Sloterdijk 2013 [2005]: 150–4). Moreover the humanities themselves have retreated from humanism, and in their retreat from humanist beliefs, they are making the humanities and the study of literature redundant. Any bureaucratic objections to the long read that Sloterdijk observes would have little impact in an intellectual climate affirming the value of the classical humanist tradition. Goethe himself shared assumptions with the scientific governance being proposed by the then new doctrine of positivism, while remaining at the heart of European literature (Berman 1988 [1982]: 72).

      Faust’s vision of free establishing a free land with free inhabitants is an aspiration worth holding on to. Yet Goethe’s vision of political freedom was limited. Goethe presented an ambitious hydro-engineering project. Faust commanded public works, but we see no public voice in action, rather conscripted workers (Watt 1996: 205–6). At the end of Faust Part II’s larger world, we seem more distant from people than we were in Part I’s more personal world whose traditional Faust treatment depicted more eloquent yearnings for freedom. Goethe was described by Carlyle as a seer (Carlyle 1893 [1832]). No doubt Goethe would have liked being cast in the role. Goethe was inclined to enlightened despotism and disdainful towards the public (Lewes 1908 [1863]: 434–42). Risk cosmopolitanism and transnational governance echo Goethe’s enlightened patrician attitudes, but without his redemptive engineering of the future. Almost invariably the Faust myth is invoked today to condemn the Faustian bargains and pacts of modernity and propose a more humble human existence on the planet. Goethe’s Faust embodied a progressive humanist moment in European history. Today’s post-humanism embodies a defeated humanist spirit and an impoverished fragmented existence for the many, who find themselves without the securities of the old modernist welfare state and living amid crumbling national infrastructures (Duffield 2018). Its resilience governance offers a Faustian puppet condition, and expectations of people behaving and adapting within prescribed limits, and wary of those daring to think, act, and judge independently as either individuals, communities, or states. That life is becoming more menaced and insecure is especially evident in the historical European borderlands where Tesla was born. Arendt warned of the dangers of a new political homelessness, where the communal world between us erodes, and the political sandstorms that may ensue in desert conditions (Arendt 2005: 201–4). Regions of Europe today witness such desertification and intimations of potential sandstorms. The Faust myth continues to speak to the dilemmas of modern societies. Engaging with its themes helps clarify the circumstances we confront and how we could act. Above all the yearnings for freedom, self-determination and a meaningful existence animate its abiding attraction. Renewed Faustian aspirations and collective endeavour could humanise the continent and fulfil the earlier promise embodying freedom, development, and security.

      Outline of study

      Goethe, like Shakespeare, has accumulated a vast literature around his work. Goethe has been described as having one of the most thoroughly documented lives as a writer. Concerned with preserving his own legacy, Goethe commissioned family members and employed individuals, notably Johann Eckermann, to archive his work. Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe (1930 [1836]) is the best contemporary account of Goethe’s thoughts, rivalling Goethe’s own autobiographical volumes (Goethe 1974 Vol. I and II). Among the biographies of Goethe in English, G. H. Lewes’ Life and Works of Goethe (1908 [1864]) is one of the great nineteenth-century commentaries on Goethe, with important insights into his literary and theatre work. Of present studies, Nicholas Boyle’s two volumes of Goethe: The Poet and the Age are wonderfully detailed (Boyle 1991, 2000). While Andrew Piper’s Brief Lives is a compelling introduction to Goethe’s times and individual works, Goethe’s Faust has attracted considerable attention. Literary criticism historically celebrated Faust I and deplored or apologised for Faust II. Such is Lewes’ evaluation of Faust I and II. Indeed Goethe was apprehensive about the reception of his completed Faust, which was not published until after his death, imagining his Faust shipwrecked and becoming covered in sand (Piper 2010: 101). In the twentieth century, Lukacs’ Age of Goethe (1968 [1947]) marked a major intellectual re-evaluation of Faust II, followed up in Berman’s later All That Is Solid Melts into Air (1988 [1982]).

      We enjoyed reading and refer to various translations of Faust, including by David Constantine (2005, 2009), David Luke (1998), and Philip Wayne (1949, 1959). We gained different insights from their distinct interpretations, alongside commentaries grappling with this ‘incommensurable work’ such as John Williams’ Goethe’s Faust (1987). W. H. Bruford’s Germany in the Eighteenth Century: The Social Background of the Literary Revival (1965) does exactly what he proclaims in the title and socially contextualises Goethe’s work. Germany: Memories of a Nation (2012) of Neil Macgregor, former director of the British Museum, provides a fascinating cultural historical survey of Germany for a global audience and epitomises Jaspers’ ideals of the Humanism of a European Museum (Jaspers 1948: 510). Obviously the legend of Faust has fostered its own field of analysis. Among these, Ian Watt’s Myths of Modern Individualism (1996) gives a useful introduction to Faust as a modern mythical figure, while detailed surveys include Osman Durrani’s Faust: Icon of Modern Culture (2004), J. M. van der Laan’s Seeking Meaning for Goethe’s Faust (2007), and J. W. Smeed’s Faust in Literature (1975). Then there are analyses of other Faust creations. Marlowe’s Dr Faustus has been gaining literary appreciation among scholars of sixteenth-century literature (Marlowe 2005), as has Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita among scholars of twentieth-century literature. Mann’s Dr Faustus has its own vast commentary (Allen 1985; Ball 1986). The fascination with Faust, Dr Faustus, and his various guises continues, and continues to express our anxieties about our humanity since the rise of modernity.

      The book traces the rise and fall of European humanist modernism, and modern development and disaster eradication through the following chapters:

      Chapter 2, ‘The Disastrous Birth of Modernity in Europe’, discusses the changing European cultural understandings of disasters from acts of god to acts of nature and the seismic cultural importance of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake during Goethe’s lifetime. Historically belief in disasters as acts of God did not preclude belief in secondary causes and the need for official responses. Not least disasters were seen as portends of dynastic changes, and therefore important to rulers concerned to pacify their subjects. Early modern Europe pioneered scientific breakthroughs, but panics about witches and demonic spirits heightened during the devastating religious-political wars. The longer-term impact of these conflicts was to encourage the idea of religion being conventional and facilitated the reception of new scientific theories, notably Isaac Newton’s laws of physics in the late seventeenth century, whose great work of the 1680s coincided with the years settling the modern British constitution. Writing in Newton’s wake, the English writer Daniel Defoe encapsulated the transition period from pre-modern to modern understandings of disasters, where scientific explanations for natural disasters were gaining ground amid religious frameworks. He wrote pioneering accounts of disasters at the beginning of the eighteenth century and was scathing about accusations of witchcraft and the claims of quack medicine, while continuing to believe in disasters as acts of God and the importance of the devil and supernatural forces. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake precipitated a decisive shift towards secular scientific understandings of natural disasters, propelling Enlightenment hopes for the future of humanity and the eradication of disasters. Immanuel Kant’s scientific account of the Lisbon earthquake influenced his philosophical thinking on the realms of necessity and freedom and the scope of human agency in the world. The Lisbon earthquake took on a different political meaning for Goethe, writing six decades later. He saw the disaster as prefiguring the subsequent political revolutions and revolutionary armies overturning the old social order. Instead of political vulcanism, Goethe sought elite-led material development to found social stability and meet the needs of the population. However, Britain as the first industrialising country indicated that the СКАЧАТЬ