Goethe’s Faust II: The Redemption of an Enlightened Despot

ABSTRACT Faust, a cosmic drama with epic qualities, is the great epic of the Enlightenment. It turns on the problem of theodicy or vindicating divine goodness. Does Faust, in view of his crimes, deserve to be saved? In particular, the deaths of Philemon and Baucis, victims of the engineering works carried out in Faust II, Act v, have been condemned by critics, as has Faust’s project of founding a free society. In reply, it is argued that Faust is modelled on Enlightenment despots who engaged in land reclamation, often at human cost, for their subjects’ ultimate betterment. Faust’s ascent to heaven does not imply his exoneration, but initiates a process of purification, for which Goethe was indebted to the theologian Origen mediated via Gottfried Arnold.