The objective historical will of the proletariat

[samiaseo222]

Until recently the Western ideology of progress was dominated by a combination of Faustian will in the realm of science with a submission to destiny in the realm of politics. The great dictators of this century were themselves imbued with a notion less of their own individual importance than of their own significance in shaping the destiny of people or nations. They spoke of themselves and their followers spoke of them not as the changers of history but rather as the instruments of Providence or historical will.

From Hegel to Marxist-Leninism:the will of one man instrumentalising the will of the party as and ultimately all humanity). In the "passive" or Magian culture, by contrast, the notion of the eternal struggle job function email list between good and evil predominate. In this sense the Marxist axiom "religion is the opium of the people" is entirely consistent with a Faustian world-view. Marlowe's Tragical History of Dr. Faustus opens with the learned doctor condemning the tedium of traditional learning under the constraints of the world as he knows it. Goethe's famous opening to Faust I, in which the doctor expresses his world weariness, his reluctance to accept the constraints of nature and particularly Time, and Times messenger, Death, draws on the same cultural inspiration.

Where the will to life becomes the defining urge of man, good and evil make way for other antonyms such as will and inertia, life and death, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, happiness and unhappiness. (Modern Western culture is a hedonistic one in which the accepted ontological antonyms are no longer good and evil but pleasure and pain; according to this the reduction of suffering and increase of ease is the assumed basis of political and moral action.)