Abstract
In Goethe’s well-known tragedy, the devil figure Mephistopheles exposes Dr. Faust to a new kind of language as yet unfamiliar to the learned theologian—he introduces irony, ambiguity and difference. Thus, Mephistopheles literally is a dia-bolos: he goes in-between, he separates word from meaning, making two out of one. The “success” of his temptation therefore rests on a linguistic premise which one might call a diabolic principle: one word can mean itself and its own opposite simultaneously. Confronted with this confusing, diabolic language, Faust’s traditional theological hermeneutics fail. This chapter seeks to explore how Goethe’s masterpiece is challenging the prevalent eighteenth-century model of hermeneutics based on the hermeneutics of Scripture: the diabolic experiment in Goethe’s Faust is calling for a new hermeneutics—a hermeneutics of hell.
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Sauter, C. (2017). The Diabolic Logic of Logos : Towards a Hermeneutics of Hell in Goethe’s Faust . In: Thuswaldner, G., Russ, D. (eds) The Hermeneutics of Hell. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52198-5_7
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