In this blog post, we explore how Goethe exposes the conflicts of modern humanity and the contradictions of early capitalism through key scenes such as Gretchen’s sacrifice, Walpurgis Night, and the court masquerade ball.
The ‘Iliad’ of Modern Life
Written during the transition from late medieval feudal society to modern capitalist society and refined over the course of some 60 years, Goethe’s ‘Faust’ is a work that traces the wanderings and adventures of the modern European spirit. The work went on to become a classic of world literature, and its protagonist, Faust, became established as the archetype of the modern human being.
The Faust figure was not solely Goethe’s creation. It was the result of various literary and intellectual traditions—including late-medieval Christian demonology, Renaissance humanism and the yearning for individual freedom, and folklore about alchemists and magicians—that had accumulated and evolved over centuries. Goethe completed his ‘Faust’ based on such folk beliefs, legends, and popular plays, but the decisive difference is that, unlike existing traditions, he portrayed Faust as capable of salvation.
Lessing had already discerned the modernity of Faust—with his infinite thirst for knowledge—and attempted to secure his salvation from an Enlightenment perspective, though he did not succeed in bringing it to fruition. Thus, Goethe took on the task of fully embodying the unpredictable journey of the modern human being, which is also why Pushkin called it “the ‘Iliad’ of modern life.”
Mephistopheles approaches Faust to carry out his wager with the Lord. Faust, an intellectual who has achieved academic success but shrinks in the face of the living power of nature, yearns for a life of “action,” and this thirst drives him even to attempt suicide. However, the ringing of Easter bells and the rebirth of nature in the new spring bring him back to his senses, and ultimately, he chooses satisfaction in this worldly life and agrees to a pact with the devil.
The Social Significance of the Gretchen Tragedy
Mephistopheles rejuvenates Faust and lures him into the world of sensuality. By sending Faust into the city with a witch’s elixir of youth and money, Mephistopheles demonstrates, through the mechanics of the pact, the destruction that occurs when sensuality and money are combined.
Through Mephistopheles’s scheming, Faust begins a romantic relationship with Gretchen, an innocent peasant girl, and the outcome is devastating. Gretchen’s mother dies from an overdose of a sleeping potion meant to help her sleep, and Gretchen’s brother, enraged by her premarital pregnancy, confronts Faust and is killed in the ensuing struggle. The child Gretchen gave birth to drowned, and Gretchen herself was imprisoned and executed.
This tragedy pioneered the exposure of the era’s problems—class discrimination and gender inequality—by highlighting why society at the time held only women accountable for responsibilities that should have been shared by both men and women. Love between two people of different social classes was a newly emerging phenomenon in late 18th-century modern society; prior to that, extramarital love had been considered a crime across many social strata.
While the tendency to highly value earthly love has become widespread today, such notions were gradually formed after the 18th century, through works such as Rousseau’s ‘New Heloise’ and ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’. In those days, eroticism did not possess independent or universal value, and an optimistic view of love was rarely revealed—only explosively in works of genius.
The scene of Walpurgis Night depicts, both explicitly and metaphorically, the power of sensuality that led to Gretchen’s sacrifice. This night—dominated by gold, frenzy, sexual desire, and a blind will to power—reflects the reality of the time, when the church and social customs branded victims as witches and punished them. For Goethe, Gretchen’s blood serves as the force that rescues Faust from being a slave to his sexual desires, and following her sacrifice, Faust’s journey can never be separated from that event.
Court Society and the Rise of Early Capitalism
Tormented by guilt, Faust retreats into the heart of nature to find solace. The earth spirit soothes all who suffer, regardless of whether they are good or evil. Nature inspires Faust with the courage to move beyond the tragedy of Gretchen and continue striving toward the highest form of existence.
If Part I of ‘Faust’ is a subjective and twilight world that illuminates Faust’s inner self, Part II presents a vast and transparent objective world. The court society he encounters lays bare its true nature. A society unfolds where villains hold sway, illegality masquerades as legality, and factions claiming to champion noble causes are concerned only with their own comfort.
The masquerade ball scene serves as a metaphor for the productive forces and relations of early capitalism on the rise. The Plutonian Faust, who appears as the protagonist, is an allegorical figure personifying early capitalism. This evokes the Marxist proposition that an individual’s economic identity is ultimately the personification of economic relations.
Goethe’s allegory takes the economic conditions of role-playing as its theme, effectively serving as a mutual commentary to ‘Capital’. The masquerade scene depicts the convergence of a crumbling feudal society and the approaching bourgeois-capitalist era.
The financially strapped court attempts to avert crisis by borrowing money from moneylenders against its tax revenues, effectively spending future income in advance each year. A prime example of this is the issuance of paper money—a scene that questions whether continuous growth is possible through artificial manipulation. Goethe seems to foreshadow the inflation and crisis of financial capitalism that the emergence of a credit-based economy would bring.
The ideology of growth, supported by manipulation without a foundation in productive forces, is ultimately revealed as a fiction. Even the lavish masquerade ball is ultimately nothing more than an illusion, confirming the harsh reality expressed by the master of ceremonies: “The emperor’s opulent splendor will turn to ashes overnight by tomorrow.”
Faust and Mephistopheles
Faust and Mephistopheles, the two protagonists who make Gretchen their first sacrificial lamb and set out in earnest on their journey through the world, generate energies that counteract one another, unfolding like a panoramic view the salvation and downfall of the modern European spirit, as well as its continuity with the present day. As a dialectical division of the characters in the play, Faust and Mephistopheles drive the drama forward by pushing and pulling against one another.
Mephistopheles is a nihilist and materialist who openly declares his love for “eternal emptiness.” Faust, on the other hand, is ultimately given the possibility of salvation through “the eternally feminine.” The scene where Faust tells Mephistopheles, “In the nothingness you speak of, I shall discover the whole of creation,” clearly reveals the difference between the two beings, and this difference becomes the actual driving force behind the content and form of the Faust drama.
The two characters also display distinct differences in their attitudes toward women. While Faust expresses sexual desire to some extent through metaphor, Mephistopheles views sexuality with a crude and anatomical gaze. Faust, dancing with a young witch, dreamlike, compares a woman’s breast to a beautiful apple, whereas Mephistopheles, paired with an old witch, depicts the act of love in crude terms. For Mephistopheles, it seems impossible to imagine beauty in sexual intercourse.
However, as a being who ruthlessly enforces the reality principle, Mephistopheles is also a shrewd and witty satirist who has experienced much within his own realm. Mephistopheles’s discourse—though he is often cast as the villain—is sometimes interpreted as paradoxically reflecting Goethe’s secret inner thoughts; in particular, politically sensitive remarks are entrusted to Mephistopheles, the “spirit who always denies.”
This way of thinking—which seeks to reveal the good through evil—stems from the atmosphere of the 18th-century German Enlightenment, during which contradictions came to be recognized as the foundation of life and knowledge. The young Goethe was greatly influenced by the dialectics of Rousseau and Spinoza, solidifying his perspective that contradictions are central to life and knowledge; one critic has even interpreted the formation of this worldview as the foundation for Goethe’s lifelong work on ‘Faust’.
Scenes such as Mephistopheles’s blatant demands for money can be read as the result of a sharp observation of capitalist development. Satan’s demand for gold is broad, universal, and applicable to all class-based societies; however, it is Mephistopheles who first endows money with a specific capitalist meaning—as an extension of humanity, or, in other words, as a means of domination over humans and society.
Nevertheless, Mephistopheles is ultimately doomed to lose his wager with Faust. This is because every time Faust is tempted to sin, a change of heart occurs within him. Mephistopheles attempts to lure Faust into unbridled sexual indulgence to render him beyond redemption, but even in situations filled with sensual fervor—such as Walpurgis Night—Faust once again thinks of Gretchen.
Faust believes that without warmth in one’s heart, one is not truly human. Even in the terrifying scene where a red mouse leaps from the young witch’s mouth, Faust cannot forget Gretchen. In Act 5, Mephistopheles attempts to turn Faust into an autocratic ruler and have him hire robbers and murderers, but Faust, on the contrary, dreams of the noble political ideal of “a free people on free soil.”
Why does Faust demonstrate this capacity for inner transformation? Simply put, it is because while Mephistopheles is a mediating, instrumental, and rational being, Faust is a rational and creative subject who is constantly ascending and evolving. Mephistopheles possesses a partial and fragmented understanding, whereas Faust possesses a unified understanding that embodies the idea of the union of the sacred and the profane, transcending the distinctions between the beyond and the here-and-now, joy and suffering, hatred and love, and above and below.
Mephistopheles, as the spirit of negation, is trapped within his own limitations, unable to comprehend Faust’s dynamic spiritual world, which ascends and develops through him as a medium. Goethe explains this as the difference between the man of understanding (Verstand) and the man of reason (Vernunft). The man of understanding seeks to utilize what is already solidified, while the man of reason seeks to change and create. Since Mephistopheles, as a demon, is an unchanging being, the initiative in choosing lies with Faust at the moment of action and decision.
In his later years, after long observation of nature, Goethe concluded that “polarity and sublimation” are the great driving forces of all nature. Polarity is characterized by continuous contraction and expansion, while sublimation is characterized by ceaseless ascent. Since there can be no spirit without matter, nor matter without spirit, he viewed matter as also being subject to sublimation. If Mephistopheles’ limitation lies in viewing polarity merely as division, Faust—as a being on the path of ceaseless ascent and development—embodies that sublimation within the play.
Therefore, Faust’s journey is an allegory of modern humanity striving to reach ever-higher levels of fulfillment while navigating countless polar contradictions and conflicts. Despite the temptations of Mephistopheles, the embodiment of matter, Faust’s spirit—which strives for ceaseless ascent—remains fundamentally intact. Although he is sometimes drawn toward Mephistopheles and commits evil deeds, his true nature invariably leans toward the good. This stems from the laws of nature governing creation, from the creation of the homunculus to his encounter with Helen.
From Sexual Desire to Eros
Wagner, Faust’s disciple, creates an artificial homunculus, and together with Faust and Mephistopheles, they embark on a journey to ancient Greece, the cradle of Western civilization. The continuation of the Walpurgis Night from Part I now unfolds in the light of day, giving rise to the scene known as the “Classical Walpurgis Night.”
In the “Classical Walpurgis Night,” sexual desire is sublimated into Eros. Faust’s seething sexual desire is now illuminated within the broader context of life; according to Freud’s perspective, the impulse toward a greater unity is the biological and organic essence of Eros.
However, even in that scene, Mephistopheles’ desire remains raw and unaltered. Just as on Walpurgis Night, he ruthlessly objectifies his counterparts and exchanges crude jokes with lecherous spirits. For Mephistopheles, there is no process of sublimation of the libido.
Faust, too, cannot easily navigate the surging sea of sensuality. The fact that Helen, the embodiment of beauty, appears immediately following the union of Homunculus—a symbol of masculinity—and Galatea—a symbol of femininity—confirms that vibrant Eros and its object, beauty, are two sides of the same coin. The boundaries between sensuality, Eros, and beauty lie in chaos, and thus this scene concludes with a chorus of Eros.
Faust’s desire for women is so boundless that he even summons the legendary beauty Helen to marry her. Yet, unlike Mephistopheles, Faust’s love undergoes a process of sublimation. From Plato’s perspective, love is the act by which humans, aware of the body’s finitude, seek to preserve the good within themselves eternally; Eros opens the path to immortality for finite human beings.
Human immortality is achieved physically through procreation and mentally through creation, and the force that guides people in this process is beauty. Since beauty and creation are inseparably linked, the path to Eros and beauty begins with the recognition of physical beauty and ascends step by step toward the beauty of the soul, beauty in itself, and unwavering love.
Helen, the embodiment of beauty, is a figure in which Eros, beauty, and salvation are united as one. Goethe’s intent can be discerned in the scene just before the drama’s conclusion, where Faust prays to the Virgin, Mother, and Queen, saying, “May all who seek to live more virtuously revere you.” Goethe not only incorporates elements of traditional Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary but also refers to Galatea—who resembles Venus—and Helen as goddesses, adding them to the ranks of saviors. In doing so, he asserts that earthly love and heavenly love—that is, Eros and salvation—are one and the same.
Nietzsche would have said this: “Look squarely at the eternal return of finite things, which retain their concreteness and finitude. Fully affirm the instincts of life that reject all forms of escape and denial!” This means that true Faustian rebirth—not the mere repetition seen in the vision of the nihilist Mephistopheles—is possible only through a re-creation imbued with will and hope.
As long as humans strive, they wander
However, Helen’s world is, after all, a world of illusion. In Act 4, the chaos of war unfolds in full view. As it nears its conclusion, the Faustian narrative increasingly mirrors the spirit of its time. The concrete progression of the war and the political inevitability of territorial division are depicted in minute detail. Ultimately, this illustrates that the source of capitalist wealth lies in war, plunder, and hereditary succession. Therefore, Mephistopheles’ magic transcends mere supernatural trickery; it also symbolizes the economic and social machinations employed to preserve wealth.
As capitalism expands, it increasingly reveals its blatant imperialist face. Power becomes synonymous with justice, and war, trade, and piracy form an inseparable trinity. Around the time fascism emerged—seeking to maximize the fusion of market capitalism and bureaucracy—one figure, in a speech commemorating the 100th anniversary of Goethe’s death, scathingly criticized the crisis of his era using the parable of Philemon and Baucis. He diagnosed the situation of this dreadful era as akin to the ‘Faust’ drama being reenacted on a grand scale on the world stage. He likened it to a hut burning in a thousandfold inferno, with a thousandfold surge of violence and murder being perpetrated—amidst which humanity is lost, and Mephistopheles grins at us with a face contorted a thousandfold. His warning was that while humans abandon their natural relationship with reality and seek salvation by relying on various economic and social illusions, the more they do so, the further away the possibility of escaping misery becomes. Even when considering the problems of transnational capital and financial capitalism today, his observation remains highly relevant.
Faust himself, as if to prove a point, embarks on territorial expansion through land reclamation projects. He urges the workers, saying, “Spend money, bribe people, and squeeze every last drop out of them!” Faust’s perspective lays bare the ruthless nature of capital and power. The confession that “the lack one feels amidst wealth / is the most severe of all our sufferings” reveals the emptiness and greed he feels. Ultimately, the elderly couple, who had sought to protect their humble home, are burned alive by the violence of Faust and Mephistopheles, the ruthless proponents of development. The end of instrumental reason—which mercilessly objectifies others—is drawing ever closer. Goethe had already seen through the paradox—that the sound the blind Faust mistook for shoveling at a levee construction site was, in fact, the sound of demons digging his grave—that is, the fate of industrial civilization, where the very moment of construction becomes a scene of destruction.
So, is Faust’s existence a model we should follow, or a cautionary tale we must overcome? This question is a recurring theme in the history of “Faust” scholarship. While Faust is by no means a figure of pure positivity, the question remains: is it acceptable to make a half-hearted compromise by acknowledging that his vision, at least, remains valid?
Goethe stated that affirming the dominance of spirit over matter was the work to which he had devoted his entire life and his own mission. Since the dominance of spirit over matter signifies the overcoming of fetishism, it is possible to interpret Goethe’s long labor as a journey to transcend fetishism. However, Western modern reason recklessly attempted not the domination of matter by the spirit, but the domination of nature by the spirit; as a result, humanity today faces the crisis of an environmental catastrophe. Through labor, humans naturally come to recognize nature as their homeland and communicate with it; yet the tragedy of modern industrial civilization lies in the fact that this labor was distorted by instrumental reason, causing humanity to lose its affinity with nature.
As the saying goes, “Man wanders as long as he strives,” the drama ‘Faust’ is an experience of the world marked by error and wandering. The awareness of error and wandering is an ethical pathos seeking to approach truth, and wandering presupposes reason. In the final stage of his worldly journey, Faust finally breaks free from Mephistophelean magic and incantations and stands alone, unarmed, before nature. The light of salvation shines into the empty space where all superstitions and phantoms have been vanquished, and the scene in the deep mountain valley—which serves as the work’s climax—embodies this moment of transformation through a religious framework.
The fate of Faust—the modern human being forged in the hellfire of an infinite thirst for knowledge, endless desire and greed, capital, power, and war—also serves as a lever for gauging the direction of modern civilization. Can the being that is Faust truly shatter the world of nihility created by Mephistopheles from within and be reborn as a son of the earth? In today’s reality, where we rush headlong with instrumental reason devoid of reflection, introspection, and warmth, what possibility of salvation remains for humans who do not save themselves? Only those who fight daily to secure both freedom and life are worthy of enjoying them. A tenacious and long journey that breaks through the limits of materialism and affirms the “potential for elevation” of the human spirit—this is the message that ‘Faust’ conveys to us today.
