The Golden Mean of Faustian Man
A Spengerlian Thought.—Consider the difference between the enthusiastically Faustian man, who is eager both to transcend and to transgress, who never sees a mountain he doesn’t want to climb, and who, in climbing, is fascinated with every step forward, drawn as though by a magnet, and the tragically Faustian man, who dreads the spur to action that goads him forward. The enthusiastically Faustian man is bursting with energy, difficult to restrain, headstrong in making his way and scarcely noticing those who fall by the wayside. He not only knows triumphs, but glories in them as his just due; he celebrates the deeds of his life with a clean conscience. Theodore Roosevelt was the very embodiment of enthusiastic Faustian man. The tragically Faustian man, on the other hand, is unhappily compulsive in the expansiveness of his life. He is driven forward in a kind of torment, always doubting, always hesitating, but driven forward nevertheless. He envies the sage of the East his perfect quietude in the lotus position, admiring that which we cannot bring himself to do. If he rests, he is discontent, and if he continues, he is discontent. He is a man at cross purposes with himself. Goethe’s Faust is an obviously tragic Faustian man, and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus the more so. Insofar as Spengler took Goethe as his model, his Faustian man was tragic, but Faustian man is not intrinsically tragic. And Goethe’s tragedy was a tragedy with salvation in the end, so not even the most tragic of tragic Faustians—he is, in a sense, the Aristotelian mean of Faustian man.
