Doctor Faustus and Other Nonsensical Thoughts
by Yvy Truong
God is a comedian. Life is the best running joke and Death is the punchline.
This blog post is a bit overdue and unfortunately I haven’t come to a clear stance on the play yet, but I guess I’ll write a small little blurb on what’s been on my mind when thinking about Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. If anything, I’ll make two other post about Doctor Faustus later (ha-ha)
I already mentioned it in seminar on Wednesday but when reading Doctor Faustus I couldn’t help but think about Adam, Eve, Prometheus, Doctor Frankenstein and all the other stories that surround the idea of knowledge. What all these stories have in common is that one, people must pursue knowledge, and two, when pursuing knowledge, there are consequences.
But what is knowledge? Is knowledge a fixed amount or does it have its limitations? Is it boundless? Is there something in existence that is beyond what the human mind can comprehend?
I like to think that Faustus is depicted as an idiot because he sells his soul to the devil for the exchange of knowledge and he ends up making stupid like jokes and pranks. But does that mean that it’s foolish to think that we can obtain this pure form of knowledge?
Well, I’m sure Socrates thinks so. In Gorgias, Socrates mentions that he does not know everything and that makes him wise. Faustus believes he knows everything and that makes him a little punk.
I’ll probably make another post later once I get my mind in some sort of order.
I think your question here about whether there are limits to human knowledge is an excellent one. I think of this as possibly: (1) are there some things we just can’t know? and/or (2) are there some things we actually shouldn’t try to know? The second one is an interesting one as well. I’m not sure where I stand on it, though I tend to think that we should be free to seek whatever knowledge we want, but then some knowledge can be dangerous if used badly so we have to place limits on how it’s used. But could we even place limits on what we seek? Would that even be possible? I kind of doubt it.
Is it foolish to try to obtain the knowledge Faustus tries to obtain? Maybe so; maybe there are some things we just can’t know (#1 above), and trying to figure them out may lead to problems. What sort of problems, though, I’m not sure.
So now at this point I’ve just maybe said #2 could be true too–maybe if there are things we can’t know then it would be bad to try to seek them! Tied myself up in knots, apparently.
It could be true that there is knowledge that should not been sought and if I follow that line of thought, there are a few things that pop into my head. . . . For one, I think venturing into knowledge opens us to what is good and bad. Like Eve when she ate the apple, she was given knowledge and acknowledged the existence of good and evil. So perhaps venturing forbidden knowledge is actually worth it in some sense if only to teach us faults and failures. However, if we believe that, we have to understand that there are consequences and that there are things at risk (as well as worth risking). If we seek bad knowledge but learn from mistakes, perhaps it is worth the while.
However in Faustus’s case, he seeks bad knowledge but he doesn’t believe it’s bad. If anything, this whole ordeal with bad knowledge feeds his soul (ha-ha, get it?)
For your first question, whether there are things we can’t know, well… I don’t know. Maybe. In the text believe Faustus asks Mephistopheles something along the lines of who has created the world. Now, Mephistopheles reply is very interesting because he can’t tell Faustus thought he must serve him. In this case, and in Marlow’s case, I think it’s interesting because within the historical context, Marlowe could have name Mephistopheles say “God”, but he doesn’t. What that might imply, I’m not too sure.
But I think I have one more thought for now and that is: Is there a difference between knowledge and morality? What makes the two different?
I know that Doctor Faustus was written as an Anti-Calvinist piece, but I keep edging towards the morality play part.