Faustian Existentialism and Idealist Dialectic:
Reflections on Ernst Bloch's Comparison
of
Goethe's Faust
and
Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
Dr. Colin M. Harper
On the day when you were one you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?
Jesus, according to the Gospel of Thomas
Introduction
Bloch repeatedly made use of Goethe's version of the Faust legend in expounding his utopian form of Marxism1; in particular, he compared its underlying philosophy to the Hegelian dialectic as exemplified in The Phenomenology of Spirit. He saw both as being in keeping with the thought of Marx and as appropriate resources for Marxists because Marx's debt to Hegel was to this work in particular. However, Goethe's tragedy is also important for Bloch's philosophy in other ways, most significantly for his theory of the subject. The importance of Faust for Bloch can best be seen in the light of his theory of the darkness at the heart of the human subject, a theory for which he is heavily indebted to the late philosophy of Schelling. This work of literature can be seen as a key to Bloch's often obscure philosophy in that it in many ways brings together the two main strands of German Idealism apparent in his work.
The critique of Hegel contained in the late philosophy of Schelling is rightly seen as being a central moment within both Marx's critique of and development beyond Hegel and as lying behind the emergence of existentialism with Kierkegaard2. Whilst the importance of the late thought of Schelling has remained almost totally unrecognised amongst Marxists, Bloch is significantly different in this regard. Alongside the many attempts to supplement Marx with more detailed accounts of human nature as it functions or disfunctions for the individual, whether through the use of Freud, Heidegger or existentialist humanism, Bloch's Marxism is distinctive in that it draws on aspects of 19th century German philosophy that were influential on Marx himself. Habermas's naming Bloch as a 'Marxist Schelling3' is thus appropriate and in no way indicates an immediate problem for Bloch's Marxism. The humanism of Bloch's thought can be seen in his stress on the influence of Feuerbach on Marx alongside that of Hegel. Humanity, not 'spirit' is the only actor on the human stage and it is perhaps in his interpretation of Faust that the key to understanding his view of human being lies. It is not surprising, given his high evaluation of Schelling, that he should turn to a work of literature for insight into human existence and it is through aspects of the thought of Schelling that one can best see the implications of Bloch's Faust interpretation for a dynamic theory of the human subject.
The 'existentialism' which lies at the core of Bloch's thought is thus intimately bound up with his interpretation of the thought of Marx. It is distinctive in that it is a positive 'Promethean' existentialism, not one given to fear, dread or Angst of any kind as being fundamental to the structure of human experience at an individual level. This 'Faustian existentialism' is one in which life is not devoid of meaning, but rather contains an ongoing expansion of meaning in which the nature of the individual is itself transformed. It can be seen to be both a key element of Bloch's multi-faceted thought and as a strong theory in its own right.
A coherent philosophy of the subject is important for several reasons. First, it is a necessary component of any attempt to reject the many forms of reductionism which seem to dominate the current philosophical scene. Second, it seeks to combine the best insights of classical and medieval Aristotelianism with the modern emphasis on the role of individual and collective activity in the making of the human and 'natural' world. Third, the dialectic of good and evil, which recognises how good can come out of evil without justifying the evil, is clarified through an understanding of the operation of opposition, of that which is destructive, in the emergence of the good. Fourth, it emphasises the enduring possibility of social transformation which is the core of Marx's materialist conception of history: things have been different in the past from how they are today, and this means things can be different again in the future. It is only the existence of that which is not merely a 'thing', which has a built in tendency to transcend its own nature (which is more than everything which is built into it) which allows the transformation of the world into something better — otherwise 'things' would take their own course according to the determinations of their limited nature and interactions. Hope in a better future is thus not grounded, but rather has space in which 'the categorial imperative to overthrow all conditions in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken and contemptible being4' assumes reality. The key question then is: what can be said about that which is more than what it is?
Faust and the Phenomenology of Spirit
There are of course many versions of the Faust story, but it is Goethe's romantic revision of the older morality tale that interests Bloch. The story has its ultimate origins in a real person, but the immediate source of most of the Faust tales lies in the Faustbuch (Faust Book) published in Frankfurt in 1587. As was the common practice at the time, the title page of this short work summarised the story:
The History of Doctor Johann Faustus the notorious magician and necromancer, how he sold himself to the devil for an appointed time, what strange adventures he saw meanwhile, bringing about some and living through others, until at last he received his well deserved wages. For the greater part collected and prepared for the printer out of his own posthumous writings as a horrible precedent, abominable example and sincere warning to all conceited, inquisitive and godless persons.5
Goethe's work preserves the core of the traditional story in that Faust does make a pact with the devil; however, both the character of Faust at the outset and the outcome of the pact are different. In Goethe's romantic version of the legend Faust is saved in the end, not mererly in spite of his pact with the devil, but in many ways because of it.
In his discussions of Goethe’s Faust, Bloch repeatedly stressed that there are connections between that particular version of the story and Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit6; a comparison also made by Lukács, but not developed by him at such great length8. Part One of Goethe's Faust appeared in 1808, shortly after the Phenomenology of Spirit (1806), and Part Two only in 1832, shortly after Hegel’s death. Notwithstanding this chronology, Bloch thinks that the Phenomenology can be seen as a philosophical counterpoint to Faust8. He claims that they correspond 'in their social basis, essential structure and in the context which determines that structure'; and he locates both works in the historical context of the Aufklärung (German Enlightenment), the Sturm und Drang ('Storm and Stress' movement), the rise of the German bourgeoisie, and the romantic reaction to it9.
For Bloch, the events narrated in Goethe’s version of the Faust legend (such as the visit to Auerbach's cellar, the tragedy of Gretchen, Faust's period as advisor in the Imperial palace, and the summoning of Helen of Troy to be Faust's bride), are all stages on the way towards the sublime moment when Faust can say 'Stay awhile, you are so fair' (Verweile doch, du bist so schön). In many respects, the contract between Faust and the devil (Mephistopheles) formalises a wager, rather than concludes a deal. The contract Faust signs is not a 'deal'10 in which he exchanges his soul for the labour of the devil for a limited period of time, which is what Mephistopheles wants and thinks that he is getting, but rather a wager which he believes that the devil can’t win, and that matters not if he loses, since he is lost already.
For Bloch, both the Phenomenology and Faust are bent on a goal from the start. In the Phenomenology of Spirit it is the processing out of the content of Absolute Knowledge, the achievement of the knowledge of what knowledge is, which is implicit in the initial claim of sense-certainty to be knowledge. Insofar as the goal can be seen at the outset in Faust, it is already characterised in the wager between Faust and Mephistopheles. Faust wagers that he will never say to a moment 'Stay awhile, you are so fair'; that is, that his subjective longing will always be in contradiction with any given objective circumstance, no matter what circumstances Mephistopheles contrives. It is because of his hopeless confidence that he will never find the something that is missing, that Faust is prepared to wager his soul; it is not the case that he is not seeking such a moment, rather he thinks of its attainment as impossible. It seems at the outset that Faust is a man without a future, that he is either damned to Mephistopheles’s hell or damned to his own hell of endless restlessness; like the devil’s pact of the wage contract, heads the employer wins, tails the worker loses. If Faust does speak the fateful words, then his soul belongs to Mephistopheles; if he does not, then he cannot have found the fair moment for which he longs. Whilst it appears that Faust has no future, in fact he has no present; he is already in hell, the existential hell of his unrealised dreams (that is, unrealised in both senses of unarticulated and unactualised). Lacking any feeling of being at home in the world in spite of his great achievements, and not knowing where to turn, Faust experiences life as a prison which he is prepared to risk his soul to escape. Faust’s escape plan is not grounded in a certain gnosis, through which he has already gone beyond the world into some transcendent realm, but rather out of sheer desperation at the world and his frustration in it. At the opening of the play, Faust is acclaimed for his good works by the townspeople, having utilised his learning to save many from the plague, yet he remains unsatisfied - he feels that such work remained essentially incomplete, and due to its somewhat experimental nature, killed as many as it cured. At the outset Faust, in direct opposition to Mephistopheles, was a riddle to himself in that he 'would alone work good, but engenders evil'.
At each stage of the journey that results from the wager, Faust (re-)collects himself and proceeds bearing the burden of his previous experiences with him. Throughout the journey there is no resting in illusory fulfilment; only at the end of Faust II is the fulfilled moment reached as that moment in which Faust wishes to remain in endless activity. Faust’s journey toward fulfilment is thus:
... the way in which spirit consciously examines and adjusts all its exuberance and also elucidates and illuminates the mere dream of something in the world. ... Ever and again new affliction and new hope reveal the beginning of a new sphere to unsatisfied man (as the one heedful of individuality and particularity). That is: a new level of the subject for mediation of the subject with the object, and of the object with the subject. This mediated subject-object relationship is the process of refreshment: the renewing birth of the goal ahead.11
According to its Preface, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is the path of natural consciousness, the journey it undertakes in striking towards true knowing. This path leads through ever more complex stages, each of which contain many subdivisions, from immediate Sense-Certainty to Absolute Knowledge. This 'coming-to-be-of-science' is the education of the subject and formation of the object to the stage where the subject is no longer confronted by the object as something alien. The Phenomenology is the way of the soul which wanders through its 'stations', through all the possible forms of consciousness until it has tasted all experience and recollected and internalized (Erinnerung) it at the end of its journey. There is no resting at any stage of the Phenomenology until the end, and it is not solely the education (Bildung) of a single individual, but of the World Spirit (Weltgeist) whose formation through subject-object mediation is also its creation. Each stage is retained, but not in a static fashion: it takes on new meaning as a moment of and in the light of what follows. The 'goal ahead' has a 'renewing birth' in that the concrete content of the as yet unattained goal is reborn during the course of the various attempts at its realisation.
Bloch claims that Faust and the Phenomenology share the same structure of this dialectical-educational journey of man through the world which leaves neither unchanged; in one case as the education of one man, in the other as that of Geist, in both cases at the same time as the Bildung of the world itself. The dialectic of subject and object is what carries both works in a forward movement which also proves to be an upward movement. 'In each of these man counts as a question and the world as an answer; but the world also counts as a question and man as the answer. In each of them the subject wishes to experience that which is apportioned to all men; but the object also experiences the subject’s self-recognition.'12 In neither work is man understood as an ostensible shepherd of being; in both he is rather the agent whose actions make it possible for the configurations of the world to proceed into forms that are ever more appropriate to him.13
Bloch sees the theme of travelling as being joined to that of work. The role of Arbeit (labour) in the Phenomenology was identified as its strength by Marx in The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and Bloch refers repeatedly to the passage where Marx praises the Phenomenology for having grasped real man as the product of his own labour.14 According to this conception, the forming of the world occurs in tandem with self-formation and self-transformation; in shaping ourselves we shape the world, and in the course of shaping the world, we shape ourselves. Bloch stresses that, as an intellectual worker, Faust is not an archetypal figure for all learned men, as the character of Wagner, the self-important scholar, shows, yet 'every thinker worthy of the name is close to Faust himself'.15 Faust represents the desire for knowledge and accomplishment beyond that which has already been achieved, beyond what has already happened and what is already known, not merely the rediscovery of something already possessed.
Faust and the Phenomenology are thus related in their dialectical motion; that is, both proceed through immanent opposition or contradiction as opposed to factors brought in from outside. In neither is there a deus ex machina; on the contrary, it is the dissatisfaction or insufficiency within each stage which leads onto the next. Both works are connected through the common idea of the emancipation of and from the self outwards towards the object, a liberation in which the self first finds itself. The objective spheres through which the self educates itself are themselves thereby transformed — in Faust through his restless activity, in the Phenomenology through the labour of the concept.
Bloch also sees parallels between Faust’s journey and Dante’s paradisal journey; but, apart from the scenes in heaven at the end of Faust, Faust’s journey is not a 'secular' one, rather it involves a rejection of any separation of this world and the world 'beyond' — for Faust, the 'beyond' is not beyond him. His journey is one out of the mind into and through the world, not one which takes place in another world beyond this one, as in Dante, nor is it a journey wholly within 'Mind' as in Hegel. This marks a significant difference for Bloch between the conceptions of Dante and Goethe: 'instead of the Dantean visio beatifica at the end, there is the new Protestant form of striving, the vita activa of the new-style Protestant bourgeois Commedia humana replaces the Commedia divina of a fixed and feudal estate; and there is an actively changing, ever newly unfolding world substituted for a pre-ordained movement and setting'.16 This idea of Goethe’s Faust as a 'Human Comedy', rather than a 'Divine comedy', is related to Bloch’s appropriation of Feuerbach’s critique of religion.17 For Bloch, the author of the 'Happy End' to the story of the journey is neither a transcendent God, nor an immanent World-Spirit, but rather humanity itself in its potential 'divinity'. In Faust God remains strangely passive, almost just a monitor of events as they unfold as a consequence of Faust's Fichtean striving. Goethe's Lutheran heterodoxy shows itself in that Faust seems to damn himself and then redeem himself, or to damn and redeem himself, through the same striving which is understood as being fundamental to human nature in general and is so apparent in Faust's nature: 'Man must strive and striving he must err'. Even the angels appear only to be able to help those who help themselves: 'For he whose strivings never cease/Is ours for his redeeming'.
Dante's conception also differs in being a classical one of descent (exitus) and return (reditus) and thus, in Bloch's view, remains trapped within the circle of anamnesis. Faust's journey, on the contrary, is essentially one of ascent, of creation, rather than one which takes place within a pre-existing cyclical creation. Bloch conceives Faust's condition at the outset of the play as being one of enchantment; it is not that he is led astray through the enchantments of the devil, but rather escapes his enchanted condition through the medium of the devil. The world as it exists is that which must be escaped, not that which redeems, and in what is a highly 'Gnostic' conception, Goethe suggests that it is the 'devil' who opens the door of freedom.18
For Bloch, this Faustian aspect of the Phenomenology of Spirit means that this work does not sit comfortably within the 'spell of anamnesis' which encircles the mature Hegelian system.19 Bloch sees a conflict between Hegel's Phenomenology and the later Logic in that, in the early work, Hegel had surmounted idealism and won through to an objectively nourished realism which was wholly compatible with Goethean objectivity and attachment to the world.20 In Faust, as in the Phenomenology, there is a continual movement throughout born from an insufficiency, a desire that has not been fulfilled. Faust's cognition of the reality of his situation does not reconcile him to it, but rather this knowledge is itself the source of the deepening darkness of his alienation. Faust cannot recognise himself in the world, for as it exists, it is not a world in which he is, or could be, at home. Faust’s journey is 'a journey of dissatisfaction or lack, it is directed toward completion and justice; therefore it must contradict everything in objective phenomena which in the long run does not satisfy it. The act of being present in events exhibits this journey as one filled with contradictions and sudden change, with a kind of objective Mephistopheles — i.e. replete with objective negation'.21 This parallel between Hegelian negation and the role of Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust is crucial for the use Bloch makes of the story, and may be drawn upon in developing a Blochian theory of the human subject.
Faustian Existentialism
It is distinctive of Goethe’s version of the legend that Faust's stepping beyond the limits does not lead to his damnation, as in earlier versions of the tale, but to his salvation. For Bloch, the guiding figure (Leitfigur) of Faust is the most powerfully portrayed subject of human striving.22 'He is the venturer beyond limits par excellence, yet always enriched by his experience when he has ventured beyond it, and finally saved in his striving. He thus represents the highest example of utopian man, his name remains the best, the most instructive.'24 Faust tests the limits of experience in his desire for experience beyond what has already been experienced; he is 'a representative of that subjectivity which, despite its finiteness, seeks to grasp the infinite'. Each satisfaction Faust attains with the help of Mephistopheles is cancelled and uplifted (aufgehoben) by the new longing which awakens within it; 'for something is missing, the fair moment is still to come'.
Vosskamp suggests that it appears as if Bloch diminishes the role of Mephistopheles in order to develop Faust’s journey as a teleological process.24 On the contrary, Mephistopheles is indispensable for Bloch’s interpretation — the true 'subject' of Faust can even be seen as a Faust-Mephistopheles figure, as each requires the other. Mephistopheles’s characterization of himself as 'the spirit that always negates' (Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint), and as 'part of that power that would always work evil, but always engenders good' (Ein Teil von jener Kraft,/ Die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft) is crucial for understanding his role in Faust’s journey. Mephistopheles would just do evil alone; that is, he acts from the first principle 'Evil is to be done and good avoided'. Mephistopheles does evil when he acts alone; it is the contribution of Faust, who does not aim to do evil, but good, which transforms the outcome of Mephistopheles’s action. Without the contribution of something or someone other than himself, in this case of 'the fortunate one' ('Faustus'), Mephistopheles would 'alone work evil' and succeed in doing so: the devil’s private vices do not of themselves mechanically produce public benefits (nor indeed private ones). Unlike the Spirit of Nature (which Faust conjured up, but could not hold) and as the etymology of his name perhaps suggests (mephotophiles, 'no friend to light', or Me to phos philes, 'the light is not a friend'),25 Mephistopheles is darkness personified; he seeks Faust’s damnation, yet helps to give shape to his salvation. He does so in spite of himself, not because of his nature as objective negation, but because of his encounter with Faust’s vision of the unnamed/unidentified fulfilled moment. It is not the cunning of Mephistopheles which results in Faust's salvation, no more than Hegel's cunning of reason (List der Vernunft) would ever produce a society in which all worked for the common good in the richest sense. It is the conflict or opposition between Mephistopheles and Faust which leads to Faust’s salvation, not the machinations of Mephistopheles alone.
For Bloch, Mephistopheles’s role is comparable to the 'tremendous power of the negative' (die ungeheure Macht des Negativen) in the Phenomenology of Spirit, but it is not the only factor at work in the play. As objective negation, Mephistopheles is the complement to Faust’s dissatisfaction. He stimulates or irritates Faust into action; but, according to Bloch, without Faust Mephistopheles has no place in the dialectic.26 Mephistopheles is the negation in the world itself, its tendency to upheaval and change, which operates independently of Faust’s subjective strivings.27 Without the help of Mephistopheles’s magic, Faust’s yearnings would be impotent; but, more importantly, without the principle represented by Mephistopheles, Faust could not be striving at all. However, the direction to the journey which Faust undertakes in the company of Mephistopheles comes from Faust, not Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles neither would, nor could, undertake the journey on his own; it is not in keeping with his nature to do so and he would be left sitting in Auerbach’s cellar. According to Bloch, this negative character of Mephistopheles fits well with Hegel’s emphasis on the role of negation in the Preface to the Phenomenology. Negation is the motor which drives the formations of Spirit into new forms and transforms each category within the Science of Logic into its opposite. According to Hegel, the life of spirit is ...
... not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself. It is this power, not as something positive, which closes its eyes to the negative, as when we say of something that it is nothing or it is false, and then, having done with it, turn away and pass unto something else; on the contrary, spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being.28
As in the Phenomenology, so in Faust; it is negation which is the source of movement and which drives the dialectic onwards to ever higher levels; Mephistopheles is the Nicht ('not') in the present which drives Faust onward from his dissatisfaction at the beginning of Goethe’s story. Had Mephistopheles not appeared, then Faust would have passed his days in the prison of his longings. However, only the positive, the 'life' which is always more than the negative, can tarry with the negative: the devil cannot tempt himself. Hegel's formulation encircles 'life' in death, and give precedence to the negative over the positive: it is the tarrying with the negative which is supposed to bring the positive into being, but if positive life beyond the negatively determined relations of Hegel's system did not already exist, then it would not be there to 'tarry' with the negative in the first place. It is precisely the existence of this positive 'life', or more accurately, 'life' as positive existence beyond the negative, reflexive determination of the concept, that is important for understanding both Bloch's interpretation of Faust and his critique of Hegel’s anamnetic system.29
Mueller suggested that 'Goethe is Faust and Mephisto in one',30 but this combination can also be seen as representing something general about the structure of human existence: the human subject can itself be seen as having a Faust-Mephistopheles character. Bloch's view of the nature of the 'subject' is markedly different from that of the Cartesian tradition and both this and his critique of Hegel are heavily indebted to the late philosophy of Schelling.31 In his Lectures on the History of Modern Philosophy,32 Schelling argued that the Cartesian Cogito inverts the true relation between thought and being and thus ends up giving an inappropriate primacy to the subject as thinking. Against Descartes, Schelling argues that it is not the case that we are because we think, or that thought in any way grounds our existence or our self-knowledge. The true relation between thought and existence is not 'I think, therefore I am', but rather 'I am, therefore I think'. It is not possible for me to be thinking unless I can identify myself independently of the thinking: otherwise all that could be said is 'There is thinking', which thinking would include the thinking that 'I am thinking'. This 'I am', as that which makes thought possible, exits positively, beyond thought, as that which thinks the thought (subject), and as such is not reciprocally determined by its relation to any determinate other: it has no 'others'. That which is the object of thought is reciprocally determined through negation — when I am the object of my thought, that necessitates thinking my self in its relations of determinate negation. Thinking what a chair is, requires the thinking of what it is not; that it is not a table for example. However, to be me, it is not enough to simply be 'not' someone else in this way; specifically when it comes to my existence for myself, not for another. Whilst I am in fact not someone else, this difference is not a condition for the possibility of my identity, of my being, or of my cognising, myself. To see that 'I' am different from another, or from my self as I was before, requires that I can already successfully identify myself independently of the cognised differences. If I could not, then there would be no way of knowing that it was in fact 'I' that was different. For self-consciousness, self-identity makes possible the difference; the difference cannot constitute the self-identity. 'I' can only think any identity or any difference if there is already a self-identity which pre-exists any judgement of identity or difference.
According to Schelling, our self-consciousness or self-awareness must be pre-reflexive. That is, it must exist before we engage in any thought process and it is also what makes it possible for us to engage in such thinking at all. I cannot make myself the object of thought or reflection unless I am already self-conscious in the way Descartes seeks to establish through meditation. The situation of the meditating or reflecting subject is analogous to that of someone looking in a mirror. If I did not already know what I looked like, I would not be able to recognise myself in a mirror; I would have no way of knowing whether or not it was in fact myself that I was looking at. However, there is even more going on in such experiences. The possibility of the opening of a gap between the images of reflection, between the appearance of one's self and the reality of what that self is, is attested by the fact that it is possible to fail to recognise the reflection of oneself. Bloch relates a story told by Ernst Mach as an illustration of this:
Ernst Mach once reported such an experience: as he seated himself in a carriage outside his hotel, another guest did likewise on the seat that faced him. Mach's first impression is that a country schoolteacher who looks to be rather down on his luck is getting aboard. Of course, it was Mach himself reflected in a mirror.33
The 'stranger in the mirror who is at the same time not a stranger' indicates the basic structure of our experience of our self. I can gain knowledge of what I look like though the experience of looking in a mirror, but that is only possible because I already possess a sense of myself: 'I raise my left arm and so does the image', and so on. Such experiences depend upon my prior ability to identify myself (to use 'I' correctly), they cannot be what produce my sense of my own identity. If I was not already certain of my self, then I could not know whether or not it was indeed my self that I was reflecting upon and not someone or something else. Furthermore, if I were not already conscious of my self, then 'I' could not reflect at all. The self is conscious of itself without ever seeing itself — as Mach attempts to show through a self-portrait entitled 'Self-Regarding Ego' in which the view of the self is presented as it immediately appears to itself, namely without a head.34 Faust, imprisoned by his intellectual achievements, and disillusioned as to the potentialities of reflection (and dismayed by their practical results), is conscious of these limitations of reflection, and says to the eager student Wagner that 'what you call the Spirit of the Ages/Is but the spirit of your learned sages,/Whose mirror is a pitiful affair.'
In positing this anti-Cartesian and non-Hegelian relation between thought and existence, Schelling is effectively distinguishing two related aspects of our self-conscious existence: our consciousness of what we are and our consciousness that we are. Schelling argues for the fundamentally dirempted structure of human self-consciousness: we are doubled or divided in our selves. Faust's ability to identify himself as one thing rather than another cannot be reducible to his possession of certain knowledge or information about himself, nor to the possession of certain characteristics as opposed to others. In the opening lines of the play Faust laments his achievements: 'Philosophy have I digested,/The whole of Law and Medicine,/From each its secrets I have wrested,/Theology alas thrown in./Poor fool, with all this sweated lore,/I stand no wiser than I was before.' His initial existence, as philosopher, lawyer, medic and theologian, is transformed during the course of his adventures into others: he becomes a lover, an economist, and an industrialist at subsequent points in the story. It is only because he is already more than his initial, by no means itself immediate nature, that he can identify himself as anything at all: his existence cannot be reduced to facts about what he is. There is a Mangel (lack, defect, shortcoming) built into the reality of his essential existence and Faust is thus always destined to be incapable of reaching the fulfilled moment if it is understood as full self-presence.
The gap is not one between what he is and what he sees himself as, as in Mach's experience; nor is it between what he is and what he would merely like to be; nor between what he currently is and what he could be if he were to realise the potential of human nature in an Aristotelian sense — these are all forms of a mismatch between two essences. The gap lies between what one essentially is, whatever that happens to be at any particular time, and one's existence. Such a Schellingian conception is not incompatible with what is in other respects a basically Aristotelian view35 such as is fundamental to Marx's thought36, and which fits well with Bloch's incorporation of 'Left wing Aristotelianism' as one of the sources of his philosophy.37 Bloch rejects nominalism, but goes beyond Aristotelian conceptions in seeing that alienation involves more than a conflict between two essences. In MacIntyre's formulation these two essences are described as: 'human-nature-as-it-happens-to-be' (E1) and 'human-nature-as-it-could-be-if-it-realised-its-telos' (E2) 32. Both however refer to what a human being exists as and not to the fact that one exists, nor to the immediacy of one's knowledge that one exists. There can of course be legitimate disagreement as to the content of one or both of these two essences. E1 can be thought in different ways, some more or less adequate than others (for example, Hobbes or Locke, as opposed to Marx's analysis of capitalism), as can E2 (Plato as opposed to Aristotle, or Nussbaum as opposed to Finnis, or varying ideas about the detailed content of Marx's concept of human nature). Such varying conceptions of human nature and the human good are often the result of different historical or social positions on the part of different thinkers, but they remain disagreements about essentially the same thing, about the content of a particular essence. It is possible for there to be an increasing convergence on a more universal concept of the potential of human nature (seen to date largely through the rejection of racist and sexist ideas and an increasing engagement with previously inaccessible cultures), as well as a real coming together of what-we-currently-happen-to-be and what-we-could-potentially-be. However, the overcoming of the mismatch between the two essences is not the overcoming of the gap between our essence and our existence: were this to vanish, there would be no self-conscious subject to 'have' an essence at all, to exist as either alienated or unalienated. One must exist before one can exist as a stunted individual who could potentially live as so much more than that. The overcoming of the alienation of life in capitalism is not the same as the overcoming of the gap between our existence and essence as the precondition for us being anything, possessing any determinate nature, in the first place.39 After alienation, objectification remains and that process requires a subject which is not only an object, yet which makes itself into one. The gap between essence and existence is a precondition for the existence of the gap between the two essences and the overcoming of the latter cannot be the overcoming of the former, for then we would cease to exist as anything at all — we would be as nothing. To exist as unalienated requires an ongoing process of the objectification of the subject. The problem is not that of objectification as such, but rather of objectification in an alienated manner: that is, the objectification of human being as wage labourer, rather than as human (i.e. self-superseding) being. It is only because human being is not solely objective being, that humans can 'objectify' themselves at all; it is only because human beings are more than a 'thing', that they can make a thing into a person (fetishism), or conversely make a person into a thing (reification).
It is significant that at the outset Faust does not clearly know what he wants or seeks, he feels as if he has already run through all the things that could potentially assuage his hunger and yet a sense that something is missing remains. It is when faced with an alienation born of an existential dissatisfaction that he opts for his wager with the devil and it is through the medium of Mephistopheles that the content of the fulfilled moment is eventually realised. The transformation of his immediate nature as scholar is the result of that object encountering its limit in other objects and thus moving out of its immediacy into a journey through other forms. His mediated nature is dependent upon its others, but its process of transformation in turn depends on a prior immediacy as subject; in this, what Bloch takes to be a Hegelian dialectic of subject and object is grounded by a Schellingian ontology of positive 'existence'. Faust's changing finite self-determinations throughout his adventures with Mephistopheles spring from an infinite activity which itself can never appear as a finite object; conversely, the self-transcendence built into his existence is the manifestation, the only appearance, of this infinity in the finite. Faust both finds himself in the world (as an object alongside other objects) and is his own creator (his self-identity subsists through the transformations resulting from his activity); and it is precisely this double character as creature and creator, measured and measurer, that leads him towards damnation, yet saves him in the end. Faust cannot totally lose himself in, or be completely reduced to, any of his objective activities; for if he did, or could, then there would be no Faust who could be described as being lost. Instead there would only be a set of objects whose identity is determined through negation: rather than being claimed by God as he is in the Prologue, Faust would always have belonged completely to the devil. Faust thus loses himself in gaining himself and gains himself in losing himself.
The birth of a new desire out of dissatisfaction in the fulfilment of the old, the melancholic recognition that that which was missed is missing still, leads to a new desire which is a desire for something new. As Mephistopheles states: 'No joy but has its sorrow - that is life', and toward the end Faust himself recognises this fact: 'My way has been to score the whole world through./ Where was delight, I seized it by the hair;/If it fell short I simply left it there,/If it escaped me, I just let it go./I stormed through life, through joys in endless train,/ Desire, fulfilment, then desire again/'. Faust’s life of desire is thus not crudely Benthamite, his quest is not for a new pleasure to replace the jaded ones which he has exhausted, but for something else other than pleasure: his visit to the underworld of Auerbach’s cellar is short. In opposition to any mechanical Hobbesian conception of desire, the dialectic of Faust's changing desires is not produced through a more instrumentally 'rational' pursuit of an initially given object of desire, nor is it simply the product of a clash of already present forces which are essentially opposed. No more than hate produces love, nor selfishness altruism, could Faust's languishing in the cellar raise him to the heights of fulfilled human existence to which he aspires; that the 'something' which is missing is not itself identifiable, nor passively receivable, as utility or 'peace' at the outset, precludes it turning out to be anything so simple in the end. Mephistopheles’s magic may provide a rich menu, but ultimately Faust is interested in cooking, not eating; for Faust, salvation is ultimately found in producing, not in consuming. Faust’s life is also not a life devoted to the search for the new simply because it is new. New desires and new objects of desire appear in the course of Faust’s search for the fulfilled moment, but the new as such is not the goal of his desire. His aim is that the lack should be filled, not that it should always endure; the old aims do not suffice, the fulfilled moment is not the perpetual scratching of an unending physical or intellectual itch, nor is it attained simply in the invention of new pleasures to replace jaded ones.
Faust does not simply discover a place in which he can rest; rather, the fulfilled moment as enduring activity is ultimately attained, at the end of the play, on ground that the human labour organised by Faust has created — hope claims dry land from the sea of forces which buffet humanity. His salvation lies in the fulfilled moment being that in which he wills that the process of shaping the world through work should continue. The heaven Faust finds through this activity which provides its own ground is one in which his striving continues.40 This striving is, however, not simply a Hegelian 'bad infinity'; the fulfilled moment has indeed been reached, Faust is saved and does escape the clutches of Mephistopheles. However, salvation seems to be found not just in the content of what one does (which correct content is indispensable), but in the doing, and in how one does it.
In the fulfilment of the journey of consciousness in the Phenomenology, the subject ends up not being 'burdened' with an object at all, as if all objectivity as such were alien to it so long as it remains outside the recollection of the subject. In Faust, on the other hand, objectivity always remains, even in the moment of fulfilment; this moment is that of an objectivity which is adequate to the objectifying activity of the subject, of a 'just objectivity' (eine rechte Gegenständlichkeit). In not distinguishing the nature of the end of the process in the two works, Poole argues for an even stronger correspondence between them than Bloch. 41However, Bloch clearly thinks that the works are incompatible in this respect. It is therefore not a criticism of Bloch’s interpretation to suggest, as Vosskamp does, that their incommensurability consists in the fact that in Faust the tension between subject and object, between the I and nature, is not transcended into an idealist identity of subject and object.42 Bloch fully recognised this difference, indeed it is why he thought it necessary to 'complete' Hegel with Goethe at all. It is important for Bloch that the objectivity of nature is not overcome, as it is constitutive of the 'fulfilled moment' itself. At the end of Faust, nature, as the object, remains external to Faust, as the subject; but it is a transfigured nature, a humanised nature. As such, Faust’s endless striving may indeed be seen as a key motif of modernity;43 however, whilst the juggernaut of capitalism seemingly grinds on forever, and certainly ideologically presents itself as doing so and as always having done so, Bloch draws out the utopian promise of Goethe's version of the Faust story — production without the tyranny of the products over their producer.
Conclusion
Bloch's Marxism was woven from the broad cloth of 19th century German culture and Goethe's Faust, Hegel's Phenomenology and the late philosophy of Schelling are fundamental for his philosophy. Bloch sees in Marx's thought a combination of the subject-object dialectic of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (minus its putting on of, or being dressed up in, idealist clothes at the end) with the ontology articulated by Schelling in his critique of Hegel (which was transmitted to Marx largely through Feuerbach). For Bloch, Faust is a literary presentation of this utopian philosophy in that it is the story (Geschichte) of the appearance of the object as finally adequate to the subject (humanisation of nature) and of the subject as finally adequate to the object (naturalisation of humanity). However, this is a history in which the subject’s homecoming does not entail the overcoming of the objective world as such, but rather its transformation. Bloch suggests that it would not have been possible to set Hegel’s dialectic on its feet and turn it into the 'algebra of revolution', if there were not already something revolutionary in it which could be so inverted and used.44 Bloch’s conception of the subject-object dialectic rests upon his interpretation of the Phenomenology of Spirit and he sees this interpretation as also being Marx’s view of it.45 However, Hegel’s world-spirit only interprets the world in a new way, and thus recognises itself in it; Faust changes it. Faust is saved through activity, not through contemplation (theoria); his salvation lies more in correct volition, than in adequate cognition. Faust finds salvation in the will to change the world, to reject determination by the present in the name of that which does not yet have a name. Bloch argues that there is:
a gap in external determination … in that social locus where a human being stands, the place from which he views his externalisation and from which he derives the still class-determined ideals of his self-recognition. These determinations are certainly, in historical terms, the most real ones. They are the reactionary or static underpinning for every dominant — and the revolutionary foothold for every oppressed — form of consciousness. They have set history in motion up to the present moment, and the sharpness of their contradiction will diminish only when dominant and oppressed classes no longer exist. Yet these determinations, so intrinsic to the social locus, are by their very nature transient; indeed, every critique of society has always relied on their transience, insisting that they do not strike at the heart of actual human 'nature'. For no human is only that which he possesses and conceives; he is not even that by which he would idealistically complete himself, insofar as this ideal is moulded by external social forces, both past and present, by the splendour potentially available within one's social rank etc. The real human being is found beyond these mirror images; he suffers, desires, creates, and takes pleasure in a way that does not yet do justice to himself — he is still not sure of his own name.46
Faustian existentialism does not see the world as lacking meaning, but rather grasps human existence in its fundamental reality as the search for the meaning which is that reality. It does not reject essentialism, but rather sees the transforming dialectic of essences as being grounded in an existence which has not and cannot itself appear in the world. The gap between our existence and our essence is thus not a misfortune, but rather is the space which allows the transformation of the human world, as part of the natural world, into something more adequate to human being. Less of a misfortune, more the space of possibility, the gap itself is what undermines both facile optimism and nihilistic pessimism about the future of humanity. The creation of this future is not a one-sided process in that changing the world involves self-transformation: it is no more a matter of simply changing circumstances to fit what we currently essentially are, than it is of upholding those which force us to live as what we currently happen to be. Just as at an individual level the finding of a fulfilled and meaningful life means not just the changing of the circumstances of that life, but also often changes in the individual who is living it, so at the social level the changing of circumstances coincides with self-changing. What we essentially are itself remains to be revealed in the overcoming of alienated and alienating structures through the ongoing interaction between the experimental processes of human life and nature.
The starting point for any and all attempts to obey the Classical injunction to 'Know Thyself' must be the recognition of the inexplicability and irreducibility of our knowledge of our self as that which is being questioned. If one did not already know in one sense who one was, one could not even ask the question 'Who, or what, am I?' — otherwise what would one be asking about? If one were reducible to one's nationality, one's 'race', class or gender, then there would be no 'I' to be reduced. The possibility of the tyranny of a particular social structure and dominance of a given linguistic structure are made possible by the very human being who is already necessarily more than them. That the productivity of the subject can never be lost in its products opens the possibility of their transformation, a transformation which does not mark the end of the productive subject, but rather its rescue in its productivity from the tyranny of its products over it. Not as willed means, never as end, yet inescapably so, it is the destructive spirit whose nothingness makes such change possible; it is the spirit which is its own gravedigger and which proclaims 'I am nothing and I should be everything', that holds the key to the transformation of the human and natural world. As we are both authors of and characters in an unfinished story, perhaps the human story may ultimately turn out to be like Goethe's strange tragedy which has a happy end.
Footnotes
1. Other philosophical discussions of Faust can be found in Gustav E. Mueller, Philosophy of Literature, New York, 1948, and George Santayana, Three Philosophical Poets, Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1938.
2. There is an immediate historical connection here in that when Schelling articulated his critique of Hegel in his famous lectures on the Philosophy of Revelation in Berlin in 1841 Kierkegaard, Feuerbach and Engels were in the audience and Marx was in Berlin at the time. On Schelling's influence on Feuerbach and Marx see Manfred Frank, Der unendliche Mangel an Sein. Schellings Hegelkritik und die Anfänge der Marxschen Dialektik, München, Wilhelm Fink, 1992; and for the significance of this for Bloch's thought see Colin M. Harper, 'Dialectic in the Philosophy of Ernst Bloch', PhD thesis, Queen's University Belfast, 1993.
3. Jürgen Habermas, 'A Marxist Schelling', in Philosophical-Political Profiles, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), pp. 61-77.
4. Marx, 'Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law. Introduction', in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 3, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1975, p. 182.
5. Ian Watt, Myths of Modern Individualism: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan and Robinson Crusoe, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 19.
6. See Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie, Werkausgabe, Band 13, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1969, pp. 49-84; Subjekt-Objekt: Erläuterungen zu Hegel, Werkausgabe, Band 8, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1962, pp. 75-77; and Das Prinzip Hoffnung, Werkausgabe, Band 5, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1959, pp. 1188-1201.
7. See Goethe and his Age, translated by Robert Anchor, London, Merlin Press, 1968, pp. 176-81.
8. Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie, p. 64.
9. Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie, pp. 66-69.
10. On the significance of the modern notion of the 'deal', see James Daly, 'Deals, Ideals and Enlightenment', forthcoming in Studies in Marxism Vol. 7 (2000).
11. Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie, p. 51.
12. Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie, pp. 54-55.
13. It is the activity of humanity that is under consideration here, but this is in many ways only half of the story. Its indispensable complement lies in the activity grasped in the philosophy of nature, where what prove to be the same core philosophical issues are approached from the side of nature. For Bloch, human beings are both subjects of a process and subject to a process, which does require humility and the rejection of any purely instrumental or domineering attitude to extra-human nature.
14. See Marx's 'Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy and Dialectic as a Whole', the concluding section of the 'Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts', in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 3, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1975, pp. 326-46.
15. Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie, pp. 63-64.
16. Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie, p. 70.
17. On Bloch's appropriation of Feuerbach, see Das Prinzip Hoffnung, pp. 1515-34; The Principle of Hope, pp.1283-90. Also Atheismus im Christentum, Werkausgabe, Band 14, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1959, pp. 278-87.
18. See Bloch's comments on the Ophites and Marcion in Atheism in Christianity, New York, Herder & Herder, 1972, pp. 183-95; Atheismus im Christentum, Werkausgabe, Band 14, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1968, pp. 231-47. Bloch refers to the serpent in Genesis as 'the sole ancestor of Mephistopheles' (der alleinigen Muhme Mephistos).
19. See Subjekt-Objekt: Erläuterungen zu Hegel, Werkausgabe, Band 8, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1962, pp. 473-88.
20. See Subjekt-Objekt: Erläuterungen zu Hegel, Werkausgabe, Band 8, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1962, pp. 473-88.
21. Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie, p. 75.
22. Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie, p. 50.
23. The Principle of Hope, pp.1012; Das Prinzip Hoffnung, pp. 1188-89.
24. Wilhelm Vosskamp, '"Höchstes Exemplar des utopischen Menschen": Ernst Bloch und Goethes Faust', Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 59, 1985, pp. 676-87.
25. See Ian Watt, Myths of Modern Individualism, p. 24.
26. Subjekt-Objekt, p. 148.
27. Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie, pp. 76-78.
28. Hegel, Die Phänomenologie des Geistes, Werke, Band 3, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970, p. 19; Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller, Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 36.
29. That Schelling understood Hegel correctly and that his criticisms hit their mark are of course contestable. For a recent defence of Hegel against Schelling's criticisms, see Stephen Houlgate, 'Schelling's Critique of Hegel's Science of Logic', Review of Metaphysics 53 (September, 1999), pp. 99-128.
30. Gustav E. Mueller, Philosophy of Literature,, p. 132.
31. For a more detailed account of Bloch's theory of the subject and his debt to Schelling see Colin M. Harper, 'The Infinite Vacuum in Existence: Bloch's Theory of the Subject and Frankl's Logotherapy', Bloch-Almanach, 18, 1999, pp. 71-108.
32. It is on these lectures in particular that I will be drawing, but do not think that Schelling's own view of the positive implications of what is substantially the same Hegel-critique are necessarily identical here and in the later lectures on the Philosophy of Revelation. See, F. W. J. Schelling, Ausgewählte Schriften, 6 Bände, hrsg. Manfred Frank, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985, Band 4, pp. 420-45; Schelling, F. W. J., On the History of Modern Philosophy, trans. & intro. by Andew Bowie, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 42-61. On Schelling see the following: Andrew Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy, London. Routledge, 1993; Manfred Frank, 'Identity and Subjectivity', in Deconstructive Subjectivities, ed. Simon Critchley & Peter Dews, Albany, SUNY, 1996, pp. 127-48; and Manfred Frank, The Subject and the Text. Essays on Literary Theory and Philosophy, trans. & intro. by Andrew Bowie, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
33. Ernst Bloch, Literary Essays, (Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 193; Literarische Aufsätze, Werkausgabe, Band 9, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1965, p. 224.
34. For the carriage incident and the 'Self-Regarding Ego', see Ernst Mach, The Analysis of Sensations, (New York: Dover, 1959), p. 4 and p. 19 respectively.
35. Joseph P. Lawrence, 'Schelling as Post-Hegelian and as Aristotelian', International Philosophical Quarterly 26 (1986), pp. 315-30.
36. On Marx's Aristotelianism, see Scott Meikle, Essentialism in the Thought of Karl Marx, Open Court, 1985, and James Daly, Marx: Justice and Dialectic, Greenwich Exchange, 1996.
37. See Das Materialismusproblem. Seine Geschichte und Substanz, Werkausgabe, Band 7, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1972, pp. 479-524.
38. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, (London: Duckworth, 1981), p. 53.
39. Marx's claim in the 'Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts' that 'Communism … is the true resolution of the conflict between existence and essence' is thus misleading at best. (See Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 3, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1975, p. 396.) However, it is not incompatible with the position being argued for here if understood as meaning the resolution of the conflict between 'what we currently exist as' and 'what we essentially are'.
40. Subjekt-Objekt p. 448.
41. See Ingrid Poole, 'Goethe's Faust and Hegel's Phenomenology: A Comparison', Telos, 1 No.1, Spring, 1968, pp. 34-40.
42. Vosskamp, p. 680.
43. See Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air, London, Verso, 1983, pp. 37-86.
44. Ernst Bloch, Leipziger Vorlesungen zur Geschichte der Philosophie, Band 4, Deutscher Idealismus. Die Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985, p. 300.
45. The Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit is the key section here (see Harper, 1993), but Fichte and Schelling, rather than Hegel, are possibly the real source for many of these ideas, for Bloch as for Hegel himself.
46. Ernst Bloch, Literary Essays, (Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 195; Literarische Aufsätze, Werkausgabe, Band 9, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1965, p. 227.