Goethe’s Faust and the philosophy of money

ABSTRACT

Philosophers today do not think of Goethe’s Faust as an important contribution to the philosophy of money. But to discount the work in this way is a mistake, I argue. Underneath Faust’s lyrical form, Goethe develops a comprehensive view of money that came to be an important influence on left-wing (Karl Marx) and right-wing (Oswald Spengler) discussions of money. Centrally, Goethe argues that modern economic practices have transformed money obsession (long conceived of primarily as an individual vice) into a structural problem: social structures are now set up to systematically require individuals to engage in quasi-obsessive behaviors towards money (e.g. persistently talking about/sacrificing for money) independently, to a significant degree, from their individual choices. This structural power, Goethe proposes, requires a rethinking of how behavior towards money should be morally evaluated – and, importantly, a critique of moral attitudes that individualize what is, in truth, a social problem.

KEYWORDS:

• Philosophy of money
• Goethe
• Marx
• Spengler

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Unlike his social philosophy (including his philosophy of money), other elements of Goethe’s philosophical view – his philosophical methodology or his philosophy of nature, for example – have recently received some renewed attention in from within Anglo-American philosophy. Paradigmatic here is Eckart Förster’s work: for example, Förster (2008, 9–19); Förster (2012a, 85–99); and Förster (2012b) (where he attributes a prominent role to Goethe).

2 Outside of academic philosophy, to be sure, this suggestion might be received more kindly. In German studies, for example, since the 1970s, there has been a small but persistent literature on general economic themes in Goethe’s Faust. Standout contributions in this context, all of which I discuss in more detail below, are as follows: Metscher (1976); Binswanger (1985); Hamacher (1994); Gaier (2012, esp. ch. 8); Gray (2008, esp. ch. 9). A good overview over the recent literature can be found in Blaschke (2018).

3 For example, with a view to the rich literature on the subject, in the magisterial ch. 10 of Gaier (2012), which almost constitutes a book within a book.

4 Goethe took over the role of minister of finance in the duchy of Sachsen-Weimar in 1782 and worked on political-economic matters for most of his life. The most fundamental exploration of Goethe’s background knowledge is found in Mahl (1982). Brief summaries of some of the highlights bearing specifically on Faust, are in Gaier (2012, 521–522) and Gray (2008, 357–358).

5 Albrecht Schöne (2011, 23) reports that there were forty-six books on national economics alone in Goethe’s personal library. For the discussion of Sartorius, Schlosser and Büsch, see Gaier (2012, 521–522).

6 Goethe’s Faust and its two parts, of course, have a complicated publishing history and exist in multiple versions. For simplicity’s sake, my interpretation here – like most interpretations – pertains primarily to the final and most complete version of the text. For a general and extremely helpful overview over changes between the different versions, see Brown (2002, 91–100).

7 In my analyses, I use Trunz’s edition (Goethe 2018), which is based on the Hamburg edition of Goethe’s works. I cite, as is customary, by line. Unless otherwise noted, quoted translations are Luke’s (Goethe 1987; Goethe 1994).

8 For a comprehensive overview of the origin and the different uses of the Faust legend before Goethe, see Trunz (2018b, 470–477).

9 Goethe is, in fact, drawing together elements of traditional Florentine comedy with more idiosyncratic elements. For a helpful analysis of Goethe’s sources for the description of the charade, see Trunz (2018a, 591–604).

10 The above is a brief summary of the appearances of money in the story. There are, of course, many other economic themes woven through the text, such as the discussion of property in Act IV or the discussion of the ecological and political consequences of economic expansion in Act V. See, for example, Carter’s (2014) highly interesting exploration of economic themes in Acts II and III.

11 Explicit and implicit references to the Metamorphoses abound in Faust. One of the most explicit is the appearance of Philemon and Baucis in Act V (lines 11043ff.), which references Metamorpohses 8.611–724.

12 Ovid, Metamorphoses 11. 85–145.

13 It is worth noting that Hawthorne’s version, among many other changes, intensifies the focus on the corruptive power of money/gold. Whereas, for Ovid, Midas’s giving into the temptations of gold is only one example of the king’s general foolishness, gold/money takes the center stage in Hawthorne’s retelling.

14 Commentators frequently refer, for example, to Goethe’s familiarity with the failure of the Assignat currency given out during the French Revolution. For more background, see Gray (2008, 355).

15 In this sense, I agree with Hamacher (1994, 165) that the emperor is no longer fully acting as himself when he signs the new money into existence, but I disagree that this lack of self is due to the emperor’s own decision. Rather, it is due to the desolate structural economic conditions under which the emperor already operates and that significantly limit his range of choices.

16 It is for this reason, of course, that Gretchen, upon finding the first piece of gifted jewellery, does not even fathom the possibility that it could be a gift. Rather, she immediately suspects that it is part of a financial transaction and serves as collateral for a loan her mother might have given a neighbour: ‘Perhaps my mother lent/Some money on it, and it’s meant / As a security. Oh dear!’ (Goethe 1987, lines 2786–2787).

17 Another very clear example of this neglect is Thomas Metscher’s Marx-inspired reading of Faust II (Metscher 1976). For Metscher, the emperor is a representative of an old and doomed feudal order, who gets wiped away by the forces of history (1976, 78). But this reading has to suppress and awkwardly explain away the Emperor’s ultimate triumph (Metscher 1976, 83). On my reading, the emperor is not so much a representative of the doomed feudal order, but rather a representative for the struggles of modern political rule under modern economic conditions: struggles that are connected with the difficulty of unifying a political whole that is itself not longer united by shared nonmonetary values. For more on this, see the detailed argument the following section.

18 One might object here that, in some sense, Ovid’s Midas is also saved. After pleading and groveling, Bacchus takes the golden touch back (Metamorpohses 11.127–45). But this is misleading, for Ovid’s Midas is left to live with the horrifying psychological and political consequences of his actions (Metamorphoses 11.146). In other words, whereas Goethe’s emperor is led to political triumph, and thus truly saved, Midas is not, his punishment merely gradually reduced as a result of his admission of foolishness.

19 Goethe does not seem to consider that there is a complicated way in which even money itself still relies on an attenuated form of intersubjective trust (for example, and most importantly, trust in the state issuing the currency). It is important to note, though, that Goethe’s portrayal of the progressing financialisation of human exchange retains much plausibility, even if this qualification would have been taken into account. For an analysis of this nexus between social trust and money see Graeber (2011, 21–42).

20 Indeed, prior to the charade, Mephisto himself invites this parallel by invoking the golden calf in line 5041.

21 This transformation of money into a master of ceremony is to be understood formally because within the context of the charade, Pluto literally replaces the herald who was meant to manage the charade. As the herald’s power wanes, Pluto’s power grows (see lines 5757–5858).

22 In this context, I disagree with Michael Jaeger’s argument that the text formulates a therapeutic ‘corrective’ to modern economic circumstances, represented by Philemon’s and Baucis’s form of life (Jaeger 2019, 73, 88–91). Rather, Philemon and Baucis’s primitive hut serves as a reminder that whatever value their form of life possesses stands outside of the current economic world and is therefore beyond our grasp: trying to reach for it and integrate their form of life in ours brings only horrific and somewhat unintended destruction (lines 11310–11357).

23 For a helpful history of performances of Faust in Germany, see Petersen (1929).

24 Jonathan Sperber (2017), for example, does not mention Goethe. Anitra Nelson makes only one parenthetical reference to Goethe (1999, 20).

25 David McLellan, for example, attributes the insights about money’s divinity and structural power (discussed below) largely to Marx’s readings of Hess’s essay Über das Geldwesen; indeed, McLellan charges Marx, in effect, with a kind of plagiarism and speculates that Hess felt the same way (1969, 154–155)). But in light of the analysis presented here, this does not seem fully convincing: Marx himself here references Goethe and Shakespeare (not Hess) as his intellectual dialogue partners, and we have no prima facie to suspect Marx to be dishonest in his own reading notes.

26 Marx’s works here are quoted according to the Werke edition prepared by the Institute for Marxism-Leninism (Marx and Engels 1965-1975) and their Ergänzungsbände. Translations are my own, but I have profited from consulting the translation of the Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts by Martin Milligan in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. by Robert C. Tucker (New York/London: Norton, 1978), 66–125.

27 It is worth noting, also, that Marx’s views about money and its relationship to capitalism do not remain static over the course of his life. It would be a worthwhile project to see how Marx’s relationship to Goethe (and to Goethe’s view of money) develops over time – a project, for example, analysing the various references to Faust strewn through Das Capital.

28 Spengler’s Untergang des Abendlandes is cited after Spengler 2003 orig. 1972 which itself is based on the 1923 edition of the text. All translations are mine.

29 For a helpful recent analysis on Spengler’s view of money and the economy, see Max Otte (2018) and Peukert (2018).

30 I thank Borhane Blili-Hamelin, Jake McNulty, Johannes Steizinger, Margaret Strair and Leonard Weiß for comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and Ellen Wert for helping me prepare the manuscript for publication. My thanks also goes to Christian Raith for introducing me to Faust all those years ago.