On the Faustian Mode of Being

IV.

Erich Fromm distinguishes two modes of existence or of orientation towards the self, the having mode and the being mode. The first grounds the self, either ethically or socially, on what is “has”. The other mode, by contrast, grounds it on what it is, i.e. on the inalienable intrinsic qualities that constitute it from within. Between these two modes of being swings the pendulum that traverses the paradigmatic boundary between two distinct ways of framing a sense of the self’s intrinsic worth.3placeholder

As Fromm says:

“The sentence ‘I have something’ expresses the relation between the subject, I (or he, we, you, they), and the object, 0. It implies that the subject is permanent and the object is permanent. But is there permanence in the subject? Or in the object? I shall die; I may lose the social position that guarantees my having something. The object is similarly not ‘permanent: it can be destroyed, or it can be lost, or it can lose its value. Speaking of having something permanently rests upon the illusion of a permanent and indestructible substance. If I seem to have everything, I have – in reality nothing, since my having, possessing, controlling an object is only a transitory moment in the process of living.”4placeholder

The having mode, as Fromm describes it, grounds the self’s sense of permanence in the illusory permanence of the self’s possessions and, connected to this, on the perceived solidity of the relationship of ownership that, in binding the essence of the owner to the materialized value of the thing owned, is thought to be as solid as the thing itself. There is here a sense of worthlessness that tries to correct itself via external validation. This creates a contrast with the mode of being, which builds the self’s sense of worth from within, through the actualisation of if its potentialities

The Faustian self, in contrast to this, does not rest its sense of permanence and worth on either things or, in general, on it having this or that. It already sees itself as permanent, as an island unto itself. If it acquires something, it does so not so much because it wishes to “own” it and, in owning it, to bask in the self-affirming glow of having expanded its ownership of even more “things”. But rather, since it already is everything to itself and all else is nothing by comparison, and because it feels it already is owed all that is has or even could have, all of its possessions are little more than adornments. Their purpose is only to further reflect the preexisting light of their owner.

The dealings that the Faustian self may have with others, however predatory they may be in character, are not to be seen, as is the case for those existing purely in the having mode, as exemplifying a pure instrumentalization of others, i.e. as reducing others to the status of means to a selfish end.

This instrumentalization, along with its justificatory mental apparatus, is predicated on a hierarchical view of other people. Hierarchical thinking is to be expected of those who exist in the having mode. As a matter of fact, this type of thinking, which serves as a crutch, is quite necessary if the having mode is to be maintained at all. By placing others on the lower or, depending on their usefulness, on the higher rungs of whatever ladder or pyramid of worth that can be conveniently dreamt up, it becomes possible to elude the unpleasant business of having to deal on an equal footing with people whose humanity we would rather disparage or at least ignore. This is how one preserves one’s own sense of “goodness” while also dispensing with any need to live up to the standards that goodness requires.

The Faustian self has no use for such cop-outs. Because the universal has been inverted, repurposed and ultimately pinned to the centre of gravity of its own self, the Faustian character is entirely capable of treating others both as means to an end and as ends in themselves without contradiction. To see why this is so, let us consider the following:

Ethical norms are, with few exceptions, structured in the following manner: do not X, except in case Y. This existence of exception “Y” to rule “X” implies that the norm is not absolute, that it cannot derive its justification from anything intrinsic to it and, precisely because of this, that it therefore not an end in itself, but rather a particular instantiation of a higher imperative. For example: the rule “do not kill” is not absolute but is complemented and bounded by the following correctives: “except in the case of acting in self-defence” or “except in times war in the face of an armed enemy.”

From the latter example, it can be deduced that, despite its seemingly paramount status, the prohibition of killing ranks lower on the list of “thou shall nots” than we may otherwise be inclined to think. This is because, ultimately, greater weight is given to the ethics of in-group loyalty, which occasionally purports to be incompatible with an enemy’s right to life – even when this is not borne out by any credible necessity of acting in self-defence.

These correctives to supposedly “absolute” rules exist precisely because such rules are not truly self-standing but rather function as corollaries of more “powerful” directives – directives which, whenever they cannot be reconciled with their corollaries in a particular case, demand precedence. “Do not kill”, therefore, exists as a rule not so much because the act of killing is wrong in itself, but because its perpetration, in most circumstances, threatens the pre-eminence of that higher moral authority whose self-serving perpetuation demands the imposition – if necessary, through violence and intimidation – of this rule. This higher directive might just as well be the survival of the self or, perhaps, the survival or even the prestige of the in-group.

However, if I, X, decree that the principal directive of any morality is the following: “everything that gives me pleasure is good, and everything that does not give me pleasure is bad,” then, as far as I am concerned, I have resolved all future moral dilemmas. This rule is perfectly universalizable and admits no exceptions. If, moreover, I manage to convince others that this is indeed the sole directive of any possible morality, other subsequent moral rules may yet be deduced from it, as inevitable branches of the main normative trunk – only that each branch will be constituted as a means relative to the principal directive, with all subsequent rules being condemned to perpetual subordination to that directive. This subordination will mark the boundary of each of the subsequent rules, a boundary whose transgression will be permitted only insofar as it gives rise to an exception that flatters and reinforces the principal directive: i.e. “It is good to cultivate coffee beans, but only as much as is needed to satisfy X’s pleasures”; “You must not kill, because in doing so you reduce the total number of X’s servants, except in the case where X’s interest requires you to do it.”

Moral rules are structured the way they are because they are typically conceived in reference to a “good” that is always the good of a “something,” usually of some higher moral authority: society, the homeland, humanity, etc.

Even when we speak of the value of our own life and therefore of the moral interest there is to be found either for ourselves or for others in preserving it, we are speaking of it as a particular instantiation of a general rule, as a specific incarnation of an abstraction – i.e. life – that otherwise exists just as well elsewhere or even everywhere. Even when it may seem that we are singling out a particular life as being, for whatever reason, particularly worthy, it is still implied that this worthiness manifests itself as an exemplification of a general, ideal type and it is only because of the degree to which the particular approximates the ideal that we acknowledge its worthiness at all. We may respect or even admire this or that individual because of their righteousness, magnanimity or intelligence but there is always a “because” that introduces the reason for our respect and admiration or renders it plausible. Even when we ground our respect for other people’s or even other living beings’ life on whatever notion we may entertain as to the intrinsic dignity or worth of either human or even just sentient life in general, we are really just respecting the general as exemplified in the individual. We are barred from respecting the individual as an individual in the purest sense of the word, that is, as an island of particularity and peculiarity, denuded of all participation in some higher abstraction. This may be termed the selfishness of the higher moral authority.

And I mean this not only in the sense, à la Max Stirner, that the moral authority is an egoist and therefore can only ever be occupied with itself rather than with us.5placeholder More than that, I mean to say that the moral authority, in acknowledging nothing greater or beyond itself, can never even permit us to think – or simply to be – by ourselves or for ourselves, save under the auspices of its mediation.

We can only achieve the “good” by attaching our own good to the greater, universal category of goodness, which is a demand both normative and affective, i.e. it is an imposition on both our mind and our heart.

Crucially, just as the goodness of any particular good is measured in terms of its degree of closeness to the abstract standard of goodness, so too is its opposite, i.e. the badness of any particular bad thing, commensurate with the degree of separation form this very same abstract standard, which is why the loathing of the bad is inversely proportional with the admiration of, or the positive emotion lavished upon, the good. There is a necessary correlation here in that, insofar as the good is cherished, its perceived opposite is, to the same degree, scorned. It is not, for example, possible to value honesty if its opposite, i.e. dishonesty, is a matter of indifference to us. If the former is to be loved, then the latter must be hated.

Both the love and the hatred, standing as they do in relation to their particular objects, constitute themselves as a function and as particular instantiations of the same allegiance which is owed to the higher moral authority that grounds the abstract and absolute standard of goodness. And this allegiance, which constitutes the substance of our adhesion to whatever moral principles we hold dear, is therefore a species of attachment; that is, a binding “chain” forged from the substance of emotion.

Under this perspective, there can be no room for any notion of “our” good that is in any meaningful way separate or distinct from the good in a universal sense – to which, therefore, we must grow attached before we can think of ourselves – and, as a matter of fact, only through, and because of, this prior attachment can we, and may we, think of ourselves as good.

This attachment, as such, is indeed outward-looking, at least in the sense that, even when introspective in nature – as in the case of guilt, or a sense of honour or dignity – it incorporates an outlook of care for something or someone beyond the self and its aggrandisement. And, in its negative aspect, this same attachment, under the guise of the aversion it must generate for that which contradicts the object of this moral species of attachment, allows us to fully delineate the boundaries of our own particular goodness by giving us the means to identify that which, because we are good, we are bound to hate in order to confirm this goodness.

This mediation of our moral outlook by a prior attachment to an abstraction of goodness is necessary to ground both the mode of being and the mode of having. As for the particular way in which this is done, in respect of the former, one needs only to point out that, if mediated by our positive attachment to the standard of goodness, there arises no opportunity, even as regards our comportment towards others, to compare and contrast our actions against anything other than a prior standard of our own behaviour as it would emerge in light of that very same standard. Because of this, given that the presence of others is merely an occasion for us to show ourselves worthy of this standard to which we are attached, we are therefore bound to treat others as equals and see them for what they are. These others are, for this reason, no threat to our moral standing – certainly not on in our own eyes – because, in treating them as persons worthy of consideration, we afford ourselves a chance to exercise our virtues, thus showing our own worth.

As for the mode of having, by contrast and precisely because of its manner of ascertaining the value of the self in light of its external possessions, our moral outlook is mediated by our prior attachment to the abstraction of goodness in its negative aspect, i.e. by the aversive emotion of the loathing engendered by either an action, a person or of this or that thing which we judge, for whatever reason, to have fallen rather too short of the standard of goodness.

Because the development of our own potentialities is less a source of delight and an occasion for moral action, our moral worth cannot therefore be shown other than by counting its external symbols or signifiers and, having an overview of their cumulated value, by calculating, as it were, our moral worth in terms of its closeness to, or separation from, the standard of goodness as a comparative function of our standing next to the greater or lesser standing of others.

Because of this and in contrast to the mode of being, the presence of others is potentially a threat to our own comparative standing. It therefore becomes necessary both to attach ourselves to those who have more perceived worth, thereby partaking in their greater value, and to disparage those of lesser standing, thereby signalling the relative distance between their acknowledged lesser standing and our own comparatively superior position. These “lesser” people therefore cannot emerge as equals nor can they be treated as anything other than means to an end because the whole of our own moral standing is imperceptible as anything other than a measure of distance between our “goodness” and their own perceived “baseness”.

There is, however, no logical reason why our ethical stances should be mediated by, or subsumed into, some higher all-encompassing universal abstraction. It is entirely possible, not just conceptually but even psychologically, to fall back on a position that truly valorises the individual as an individual even in the purest sense of the word.

If this is the principle that underpins the self’s own sense of understanding and valorisation of itself, then it is a selfishness that goes beyond the typical boundaries of selfishness, precisely because the self’s sense of itself emerges in this case unmediated by participation in any abstractions, and is therefore no longer justified or even framed in terms of adherence to any set of preexisting standards nor does it pay heed or make obeisance to any external value-judgments.

Whereas the ethical, as Kierkegaard would say, is the universal and, as the universal, reposes immanently in itself, knows no telos outside itself, and is itself telos for everything outside it, and as such constrains the individual as the particular to subsume his or her own particular telos to the universal telos,6placeholder the Faustian individual doesn’t so much “assert himself in his particularity”7placeholder against the universal as he reabsorbs the universal telos into his own telos.

This is not so much a case of favouring the part over the whole as it is a case of extricating the part from the whole in such a way that, severed from any continuum or contiguity with anything outside of it, the part becomes the whole. The individual, having in an autarchical fashion become the centre and horizon of every possible telos, loses all communion with the universal and, with it, any means to even distinguish the universal from the particular.

The eternal stretches outside of the self and all around the self and, in so doing, localizes the self and renders it small. However, in as much as the self becomes able to look inward and only inward, it will become big again. To the extent that the negation of a negation is an affirmation, so too is the disavowal of a prohibition the avowal of its antithesis and, for that reason alone, a prohibition of the prohibition itself. To the extent that only in relation to the big can the small truly appear as small, so too that which is finite is finite only in relation to the infinite; and if the finite can be said to be “smaller” than the infinite, then the finite is, by the very nature of the comparison, infinitely small. If, however, the infinite is disavowed, if its undefinable vastness is “rolled back”, then the finite, having previously been small, grows big and, as the infinite further recedes from view altogether, the finite also grows to become all there is, its boundaries now demarcating the bounds of all possible horizons.

This species of autarchic self-sovereignty is extricated from any socially recognisable framework of moral values and valorisations to such a degree that it approaches the level of a usurpation of the status of a moral tradition. I speak of usurpation rather than repudiation or defiance, because it is not a discontinuation, or even a denunciation, of an adherence to a preexisting set of moral rules that otherwise remain in the background unchallenged, but a brazen substitution of the very firmament that grounds any conception of the “good” – whether consequentialist or non-consequentialist in its framing of a good that is nonetheless “out there” – with an elevation of the self to the status of a moral authority that takes itself to be the arbiter, and even the source, of the good.

This stance is liable to garner the epithet of “evil.” It is, of course, not so much a case of it being evil on account of the concrete harms it has caused in the past, is causing now, or could cause in the future, as on account of the attitude behind it, an attitude premised on no outward-looking criteria or concern for anything exterior or “out there” in the realm of external purposes, values, and moral priorities. It need not actually cause any harm; yet it is deemed “evil” because it has no concept of harm, save for harm that can be so termed based on criteria grounded in the self, with no reference to anything outside of it.

We usually think of ourselves as having a purpose or a function of some kind or, when we are not troubled by any hint of anxiety about our usefulness, we may still revel in the exercise of our talents and faculties and derive our sense of meaning or fulfilment from the satisfaction of so doing.

Nonetheless, if this sense of meaning is already a given and if its wellspring lies within the self and has no need for anything or anyone outside of it, it exposes the self to the risk of an existential boredom which, unlike most cases of boredom, isn’t connected to a lack of proper stimuli or to the dulling of the satisfaction procured by previously exciting stimuli, but rather, in the absence of any possible meaningful striving towards a sense of accomplishment, it is caused by the diminution of the importance of anything outside the self. This boredom, because of its origin, is inescapable. And while it may never go away distractions are possible

This is what forces the self to seek out, wherever or however it may, an occasion for great deeds, or at least to content itself with whatever stand-ins for greatness it is likely to find; not so much to create or bestow meaning upon itself, or even to confirm to itself its sense of its own importance, but to exert itself within the only possible scope of action that it finds worthwhile. Marlowe’s Faustus is not setting out to “elevate” himself to the lofty status of an emperor of the world; rather, he wishes to elevate the rest of the world, which he otherwise finds tainted by mundane baseness, to the level of a plaything worthy of his attention.

This is true, even though it is a cast in a nobler, more romantic light, of Goethe’s Faust, who declaims:

“Scruple or doubt comes not to enthrall me,
Neither can devil nor hell now appal me—
Hence also my heart must all pleasure forego!
(…)
Woe’s me! still prison’d in the gloom
Of this abhorr’d and musty room!
(…)
This is thy world! a world! alas!
(…)
Instead of nature’s living sphere,
Created for mankind of old,
Brute skeletons surround thee here,
And dead men’s bones in smoke and mould.”8placeholder

Only the hope of abandoning the sphere of the mundane in favour of a frenzied communion with the full intensity of the Earth-Spirit will permit Faust to truly live to the full scope of his yearnings:

“What sudden ecstasy of joy is flowing!
I feel new rapture, hallow’d and intense
(…)
The powers of nature all around revealing.
Am I a God? What light intense!”9placeholder

But incidentally, he emerges a “crush’d and writhing worm” from his confrontation of the Earth Spirit, despite his boast that “thine equal, I am he!”10placeholder This is unsurprising, of course. This particular incarnation of Faust is haunted by the shadow of the promises contained in the concepts of meaning and fulfilment – promises which he, being so alienated from human connection as he is, can never hope to see realised. The satisfaction of sociality, unknown to him, nonetheless impresses itself upon him with the force of an unreachable spectre, one that is believed, because unreachable, to belong to a higher order or realm, something from an undefinable beyond and therefore untainted by the baseness of the concrete.

Faust yearns to radiate the light within, so to speak, and then bask in the warm glow of its reflection in a worthy and worthwhile audience, deriving a sense of meaning and fulfilment from this exchange.

So far, the Faustian manner of being is coextensive with what Fromm describes as the mode of being. And yet, it is not at all insignificant that Faust’s episode of fulfilment – that is, his desire to arrest the passage of a beautiful moment because he finds it worthwhile and meaningful – is purely interstitial. Faust becomes enamoured with the hypothetical afterglow of a projected great deed – one that, crucially, will never come to fruition precisely because, languishing on his deathbed as he does, there is no peril of ever having to taste the inevitable disappointment that was surely to come.

The shadow of a thing is bigger than the thing itself, and so long as only the shadow may be seen, its looming shape may yet galvanise the fancy. If no pleasure or meaning can be found in human connection, some echo of either may still be found in the nebulous anticipation of some future triumph that never truly comes. The seeking leads nowhere but the seeking is all that remains.

The Faustian mode of being, therefore, stands in opposition to both the mode of having and the mode of being, while also reabsorbing and repurposing them in a way that can be perceived as their subversion.

The Faustian self may be chameleonic in its dealings with others, but all these false colours it wears are only so many declensions of a core self that, nonetheless, remains unmodified; and all its actions, however varied, are similarly so many conjugations of an unvarying outlook or disposition. There is no compulsive fixation on outward markers of worth, no importing – by way of acquiring riches or honours – of tokens of self-importance, which is ultimately the purpose of acquiring property.

No, the Faustian mode of being is a mode of self-centred play. All others, reduced as they are to the status of playthings in their interaction with the Faustian character, are seen as being neither ends in themselves (which is the default stance for those interacting with others under the framework of the “mode of being”), nor as means to an end (which would evince an outlook mired in the “having mode”).

Rather, since toys are just props for the pleasant exercise of the imagination, which is a purpose unto itself, so too are the Faustian character’s interactions with others a form of play, a theatre whereby the actor takes himself or herself as his or her own audience. The Faustian self, in being what it is, exercises its conatus and if, in so doing, reveals its predatory nature, there is no surprise in this is because, as I’ve said above, it has reabsorbed the universal telos into his own telos and, as such, while remaining wholly unable to see or hope beyond itself, it can nevertheless never truly find satisfaction in itself.