The Myth of Faust, “Titanism”, and the Religious Topic of the Selling of the Soul in the Cultural Writings of Jan Patočka

Abstract

The intensive and systematic scholarly interest in the relation of Patočka’s phenomenology to religion and Christianity is recent and has only intensified over the last ten years. Thus far, the topic has mainly been studied from philosophical and theological perspectives, and the extensive body of Patočka’s cultural writings has largely failed to attract the attention of scholars. Moreover, a culturological approach is virtually absent. Therefore, this article suggests focusing on the analysis of cultural archetypes in Patočka’s cultural writings related to the topic of religion and Christianity from this perspective. The cultural archetypes of the Faustian figures of Patočka’s cultural writings, whether Goethe’s Faust, Goethe’s Marguerite, or Mann’s Adrian Leverkühn, are all Socratic-Christic avatars that personify Patočka’s philosophical concept of “care for the soul” in the modern age. The legacy of Plato’s Greek philosophy and that of Western Christianity as presented by Patočka insist on the universally shared existential experience of finitude that should be grasped as a positive challenge in the strife for meaning. Patočka’s “titanism” and the archetypal titanic figures of his cultural writings are Patočkian manifestations of this universal effort. A culturological approach to Patočka’s thinking on religion and Christianity might thus prove most relevant.