Knowledge and Power
What according to you is the central dilemma of the play Doctor Faustus and how does Faustus transgress it?
The play Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe is a Renaissance play trying to reconcile the rapidly changing ideology of the times. Of the many questions it makes its readers or audience ask, the most essential conflict in the text is that between discursive knowledge and empirical knowledge, between the voice of God and the voice of reason or science (if a general statement such as that can be made). The Renaissance world was one which was man centric. Renaissance humanism acknowledged the potential of each individual man and its aim was to nurture that potential. Spiritual union with God was thought to be achieved through that potential, through art. But like any other time, this ideology did not go unchallenged and Marlowe attempts not to reconcile but to open up the debate about the same.
Discursive knowledge allowed for control to lie outside of the common man; this was knowledge handed down to man by the Church authority. Empirical knowledge allowed man the agency to acquire knowledge for himself, allowed him to decide what he wants to learn, how much of it he wants to learn and what he wants to do with it. When Faustus makes the choice to move towards knowledge (empirical knowledge, here), and he does make that choice, it is seen as an act of turning away from God. The only means to that knowledge is selling his soul to the devil, Lucifer. Our reading of the text, as 21st century students then leads us to question whether the act of acquiring knowledge is a sin and if it is, then is this the sin that Faustus is punished for? A possible counter to the latter question could be that Faustus aspires to be more than a man and it is this ambition which is his sin. The Icarus image in the Prologue, “melting heavens conspired his overthrow” supports this possibility.
The first appearance of the Good Angel in the play is not about Faustus turning away from God. The Good Angel’s primary concern and what can be rightly called the bone of contention, is Faustus’ books. In the last act as well, Faustus says “I’ll bum my books”. During the last couple of hours of Faustus’ life, the scholars do not even want to be in the same room as him. Although they pray for him, they maintain their distance from him, so scared are they of being a part of the world of empirical knowledge.
What’s essential is that for Faustus, turning to knowledge never meant turning away from God. Even after signing a pact with the devil, he continued to use a vocabulary that was very ‘christian’ and very ‘god centric’. In Act 3, he acknowledges Christ as his saviour and turns to God. Faustus’ main transgression thus is that he refuses to look at the world of empirical knowledge and the world of discursive knowledge as an ‘either-or situation’. Faustus was unaware that once he signed the pact with the devil, the option of turning to God was no longer available to him. Perhaps after crossing that threshold, his apology or acknowledgement of his sin and folly no longer mattered and was not accepted by God.
The question then is whether the problem lies in acquiring knowledge that is outside the realm of empirical knowledge or it it is what one thinks of doing with the power obtained through knowledge. The themes of knowledge and power coexist and coincide in the play, rather than existing exclusively. That then becomes the central dilemma of the play Doctor Faustus.
(From an assignment written on Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe in my second semester)
