The Myth of Faust, “Titanism”, and the Religious Topic of the Selling of the Soul in the Cultural Writings of Jan Patočka
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Patočka’s Cultural Writings
Literary work of art does not speak about a particular thing, but on the occasion of the demonstration of one possible relation it points out the constants of the world, which, contrary to all that is but unique, particular and arbitrary, last for ever and let shine the structure of the world as a whole. It is not about Antigone and Philoctetes, Faust and Mitya Karamazov, but about the relation of meaning, which articulates what is being, and which guides life, shapes destiny and decides about fulfillment and emptiness, about punishment and destruction. It is about the relation between nature and the supernatural, between human freedom and religious power, it is about man and God or gods, about man and woman about together being in work and in fighting, about guilt, suffering and death.
Against this proto-Enlightenment demand of the human being to take into his own hands his whole life and that of the polis, to let the law of the day rule everywhere, Antigone shows the supremacy of the myth, the supremacy of the whole, from which even the law of day is being nourished. The law of day, which is just a part and cancels itself, where it strives to become the whole.
3. “Titanism” in Jan Patočka’s Thinking
4. Selling One’s Soul or Caring for It?
5. Marguerite—A Socratic Faust?
6. Mann’s Adrian Leverkühn: An Übermensch of Responsibility?
[…] first, it is important to acquire the dimension of responsibility, therein should emerge ‘the immortal soul’, and then, as a result of this healing, a breakthrough towards a new art, which would thus be a suitable bearer of further renewal. The spiritual and artistic renewal is thus not divided into stages but is seen together.
7. Jan Patočka and the Archetype of the Hero
8. Conclusions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
1 | Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937) was one of the leading Czech intellectuals of the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Philosopher, sociologist, and politician, he is credited with the foundation of Czechoslovakia. He was the country’s president from its foundation in 1918 until 1935. |
2 | Václav Černý was one of the leading Czech intellectuals of the 20th century. Professor of Romance studies, his main scholarly interest was in the Baroque period and in Romanticism in Czech, Spanish and French literatures. Patočka does not mention in his review that in 1934 Černý published an article entitled “Quelques remarques sur la critique masarykienne du titanisme romantique” in Revue de littérature comparée (published by the renowned academic publisher Honoré Champion, vol. 14, 1 January 1934). The text becomes a chapter of the 1935 monograph. The article reacts to the publishing of Masaryk’s book Modern Man and Religion in 1934 (Moderní člověk a náboženství, Prague, J. Laichter). Although the content of Masaryk’s book had already been published in magazines in 1890s, the publication in a book form renewed the debate on the topic. |
3 | “(…) M. V. C. ne nous ait rien dit sur l’histoire du mot titanisme, qu’il emploie comme s’il était tellement courant chez nous”. |
4 | |
5 | Apart from the already mentioned culturological approach to the study of literature that Patočka adopts, there is another factor that shapes his study of the myth of Faust, and that is the intellectual discussion of the nature of myth, especially the one developed within the realm of German Protestant liberal theology of the 1940s and 1950s by theologians such as Karl Barth or Rudolf Bultman. An important testimony of the theoretical impulse of theology for Patočka’s thinking on myth is represented by the private correspondence between Patočka and the Protestant theologian Bohumil Souček. A relationship that started as an intellectual confrontation developed into a lifelong friendship (see Veselý 2013). The debate on myth between the two thinkers was particularly lively in the 1940s and the first half of the 1950s. This unpublished correspondence is an under-researched source and should be explored in more depth by theologians. |
6 | “[…] problém prodeje nesmrtelné duše”. |
7 | “Nesmrtelnost duše v pravém smyslu dosáhnou ti, kdo dají přednost nebytí před zkázou duše”. |
8 | “Pravá nesmrtelnost je zde pro ty, kdo hrůzu z tělesné smrti překonali hrůzou z absolutně negativní existence, aby dosáhli toho, čeho je možno dosáhnout na vrcholku vezdejšího života: své konečné absolutnosti”. |
9 | “[…] z lidského bytí v jeho základní krisis a problematičnosti, která je bytostně mravní, tj. taková, že v ní běží o naše vlastní bytí a nebytí v částečné závislosti na nás, na našem rozhodnutí […]”. |
10 | “Velkolepá vůle k sebeobětování, která oduševňuje Markétku a vede ji k pohrdnutí pozemskou ‘záchranou’, přivádí Fausta Goethovy verze k tomu, že přes zdání své cynické banálnosti uvěří ve vyšší smysl světa a vydá se na cestu očisty”. |
11 | “[…] s níž velikáni tehdejší doby vystoupili proti úplnému zesvětštění moderní doby a jednostrannostem osvícenství.” (Patočka [1972] 2004e, p. 117). |
12 | “Obnova umění a člověka patří k sobě, na tom trvá i Adrian, ale jejich vztah vidí spíše naopak: napřed je třeba získat dimenzi zodpovědnosti, v ní se má vynořit ‘nesmrtelná duše’, a potom, jako výsledek tohoto uzdravení, průlom k novému umění, které by tak bylo vhodným nositelem další obnovy. Duševní a umělecká obnova tak vlastně není rozložena do etap, nýbrž naopak viděna pohromadě”. (Patočka [1972] 2004e, pp. 117–18). |
13 | “Samotná postava Achillea—člověk, který si vybere ten krátký a slavný život! Něco takového, co jde proti směru běžného života, něco takového, co patří k základu řeckého politického citu”. |
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James, P. The Myth of Faust, “Titanism”, and the Religious Topic of the Selling of the Soul in the Cultural Writings of Jan Patočka. Religions 2021, 12, 528. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12070528
James P. The Myth of Faust, “Titanism”, and the Religious Topic of the Selling of the Soul in the Cultural Writings of Jan Patočka. Religions. 2021; 12(7):528. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12070528
Chicago/Turabian StyleJames, Petra. 2021. "The Myth of Faust, “Titanism”, and the Religious Topic of the Selling of the Soul in the Cultural Writings of Jan Patočka" Religions 12, no. 7: 528. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12070528
APA StyleJames, P. (2021). The Myth of Faust, “Titanism”, and the Religious Topic of the Selling of the Soul in the Cultural Writings of Jan Patočka. Religions, 12(7), 528. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12070528