Foundations of Social and Behavioral Sciences Theory

The Tragedy of Modernity

Week 4, Lecture 1

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Outline

• Tragedy

• Goethe and Faust

• Development

• Self-development

• Societal-development

• Material development

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Tragedy

• “a serious drama typically describing a conflict between the protagonist and a superior force (as destiny) and having a sorrowful or disastrous conclusion that excites pity or terror.” (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary)

• Paradoxes abound: In order to achieve glory, justice, beauty, truth, power, one must suffer terribly

• Early Greek tragedies were composed in a liminal period between pre-classical and classical Greece

The Remorse of Orestes, William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1862)

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• 1749-1832, born in Frankfurt, lived mostly in Weimar

• Considered to be a literary genius (a German Shakespeare)

• Faust is considered to be his masterwork

• The first part was started as early as 1772 and the second was not finished until just before his death in 1832

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

1772

1832

American Revolution

French Revolution

Napoleonic Wars

Railroads

Steam Engines

Rise of the metropolis

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Faust and Modernity

• Faust is successful, middle-aged, but wants more

• The Devil (Mephistopheles) makes a bet with God that he can lead Faust astray

• The Devil makes a pact with Faust--the Devil will do whatever Faust wants and in return Faust will serve the Devil in Hell

• The bargain also states that as soon as Faust is content (“Verweile doch, du bist so schoen”) he will die and go to hell.

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Faust and Modernity

• What is that Faust wants?

... my mind Will not henceforth be closed to any pain And what is portioned out to all mankind, I will enjoy deep in myself; contain Within my spirit summit and abyss. Pile on my breast their agony and bliss And let myself grow into theirs, unfettered Till, as they are, I too will be shattered.

The Course of Empire, The Savage State, Thomas Cole, 1836

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

• What is it that Faust wants? (alternative translation)

... joy is not the issue I give myself to frenzy, to pleasure that hurts most, Hatred in love and setbacks that revive. My heart, cured of the knowledge-drive, Henceforth to all the sorrows will be host And what is dealt to all humanity That I’ll enjoy in my self’s innermost, Seize with my spirit the highest and the deepest And heap all humans’ weal and woe on me And widen my own self to encompass theirs...

Theodore Gericault, The Raft of Medusa 1818-1819 Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Faust and Modernity

• Faust wants development, progress, improvement, enlightenment

1. Self-development (the Dreamer)

2. Societal development (the Lover)

3. Material development (the Developer)

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

1. Modernity and Self-Development

• The “First Metamorphosis”:

• Faust wants knowledge and experience, “self- actualization”

• But these are not enough to fully grasp the fullness he seeks:

I feel it: I have snatched in vain All the valuable of the human mind To me and at the end when I sit down No force in me that’s new can be divined I am not by one hair’s breadth higher, To things that have no end I am no nearer

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Self-improvement Culture

the individual becomes the centre-point of reflection and concern

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Leave off brooding, let us go Into the wide world, you and I

I am not by one hair’s breadth higher, To things that have no end I am no nearer . . .

Faust Mephisto

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

2. Modernity and Societal-Development

• The “Second Metamorphosis”:

• Faust: “How shall we start?”

• Mephisto: “By leaving here. What a place of torment this is, to be sure! Boring the young and yourself too, What sort of life is that?”

• But Faust returns to the small town, falls in love with Gretchen, and attempts to draw her away...

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Reform and Societal Development

• As capitalism drew individuals into cities (away from rural communities), urban elites became concerned with their “improvement”

- Compulsory education

- Domestic training

- Universities

- Christian “holiness” movements

- Urban reformers

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Colonialism and Societal Development

• Faust can also be seen as modern European disruption across the globe

• Because of the structural inequalities between Faust and Gretchen (class and gender), she is ultimately at his mercy.

• “Faust, if he learns anything from her fate, learns that if he wants to get involved with other people for the sake of his development, he must take some sort of responsibility for their development--or else be responsible for their doom.” p. 58

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.

Thomas Macaulay, 1853

Colonialism and Societal Development

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

[1795] “Should not all the nations of the world approach one day the state of civilization reached by the most enlightened peoples such as the French and the Anglo-Americans? Will not the slavery of nations subjected to kings, the barbarity of African tribes, and the ignorance of savages gradually disappear? . . . If we cast an eye at the existing state of the globe, we will see right away that in Europe the principles of the French constitution are already those of all enlightened men. Can it be doubted that . . . the European population, spreading rapidly across [the new world], must either civilize or make disappear the savage peoples that now inhabit these vast continents?”

French “Civilizing Mission” (Mission Civilisatrice)

Condorcet (French Philosopher)

Colonialism and Societal Development

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

“If one runs through the history of our undertakings and establishments in Africa and Asia, you will see our commercial monopolies, our treacheries, our bloodthirsty contempt for people of a different color and belief; the insolence of our usurpations . . . But the moment is approaching, without any doubt, when ceasing to present ourselves to these peoples as tyrants or corrupters, we will become instruments of their improvement and their noble liberators.”

French “Civilizing Mission” (Mission Civilisatrice)

Condorcet (French Philosopher)

Colonialism and Societal Development

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

• American “Civilizing Mission”

- “Americanization” of Native Americans

- Indian removal from land and self-government

- Outlaw indigenous religion and tribal traditions

- Forced boarding schools (Indian Schools)

Colonialism and Societal Development

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Pennsylvania, 1900

Colonialism and Societal Development

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

3. Modernity and Material Development

• Faust, the Developer

‣ The Metropolis

- Boulevards, “broad” streets - Factories - Housing - Monuments - Blight and redevelopment

‣ Mastering nature

- Dams, canals - Mining, natural resources - Medicine, health science

‣ “I should then open a space for many millions To live, not securely, but free for action [tätig-frei]”

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

• The Developers

- Baron Haussmann’s Paris

- Robert Moses’s New York

- David Lilienthal’s Tennessee Valley Authority “In Missouri and in Arkansas, in Brazil and in the Argentine, in China and in India, there are just such rivers...rivers that in the violence of flood menace the land and the people, then sulk in idleness and drought - rivers all over the world waiting to be controlled by men - the Yangtze, the Ganges, the Ob, the Parana, the Amazon, the Nile....”

- Jean Monnet’s “European Unity”

3. Modernity and Material Development

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

• Modernity = Action

“The glory’s nought, the deed is all.”

“What I framed in thought I will fulfill.”

(The angels say) ‘For he whose strivings never cease Is ours for his redeeming.’

• Inaction = pre-modern, anti-modern or death

“If to the fleeting hour I say ‘Remain, so fair thou art, remain!’ Then bind me with your fatal chain, For I will perish in that day.”

“Verweile doch, du bist so schoen”

3. Modernity and Material Development

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

• Characteristics of modern material development

- Mediated, indirect, impersonal

- Effects cannot be fully accounted for beforehand; unintended consequences

- Creation necessitates destruction

- Creates the need for more development

3. Modernity and Material Development

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310