With the removal of God and King from human affairs and with the disenchantment of reality by generations of scientists and engineers who turned Nature into a resource to be exploited, man now finds himself alone in an empty world and so despondent in a life without meaning that he is even willing to sell his soul to the Devil in a desperate attempt to break out of the limits of his own mind, in which reason has trapped him. Though Faust becomes outwardly wealthy, he remains inwardly poor. And we must not forget that the Age of Enlightenment led not only to the French Revolution, but soon after that to the Emperor Napoleon and the restoration of the monarchy.
Which brings us finally to one of the best-known critics of the Enlightenment, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). We all know his anguished outcry that “God is dead”, but not so well known are the words that followed:
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
Like the wealth and comfort, this anguish also is part of our inheritance from the Enlightenment. Using reason, we have freed ourselves from the myths of God and King, but in doing so we have trapped ourselves with the very tool we thought would free us. And now, like the Israelites in the wilderness, we are unable to break free of our own mentality. Reason has led us to meaninglessness, which has left us feeling small, desperate and filled with anxiety. The Promised Land remains as distant as ever.
