, to see if you have full access to this publication.
Book Titles No access
Changing European Visions of Disaster and Development
Rekindling Faust's Humanism
Authors:
|
Publisher:
2020
Summary
Goethe’s 1832 poem Faust offers a vision of humanity realising freedom and prosperity through transcending natural adversity. Changing European Visions of Disaster and Development returns to Faust as a way of exploring the rise and fall of European humanist aspirations to build free and prosperous national political communities protected from natural disasters.
Faust stories emerged in early modern Europe linked to the shaking of the traditional religious and political order, and the pursuit of new areas of human knowledge and activity which led to a shift from viewing disasters as acts of God to acts of nature. Faust’s dam building and land reclamation project in Goethe’s poem was inspired by Dutch hydro-engineering and in turn inspired others. Faustian dreams of an engineered future were pursued by the American Yugoslav inventor Nikola Tesla and the country of his birth towards establishing its national independence and escaping the fate of being a borderland.
Faust remains a compelling reference point to explore European visions of disaster and development. If Faust captured the European spirit of earlier centuries, what is today’s outlook? Ambitious Faustian development visions to eradicate natural disasters have been replaced by anti-Faustian risk cosmopolitanism sceptical towards human activity in ways counter to building collective protection from disaster. Tesla’s country of birth fears returning to being an insecure borderland of Europe. This powerful and timely book calls for a rekindling of European humanism and Faust’s vision of ‘free people standing on free land’.
Keywords
Search publication
Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2020
ISBN-Print
978-1-5381-4493-0
ISBN-Online
978-1-5381-4494-7
Publisher
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
297
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
About the Authors No access
Acknowledgements No access
1 Faustian Visions of ‘A Free People Standing on Free Land’ No access Pages 1 - 40
2 The Disastrous Birth of Modernity in Europe No access Pages 41 - 72
3 Faustian Work and ‘The Hope of the Poor’ No access Pages 73 - 106
4 The Rise and Fall of Faust the Developer No access Pages 107 - 136
5 Nikola Tesla’s Faustian Dream No access Pages 137 - 166
6 The Metamorphosis of Risk Cosmopolitanism No access Pages 167 - 202
7 Submerging Humanity and Rewilding Tesla’s Homeland No access Pages 203 - 240
Epilogue: The New European Wilderness No access Pages 241 - 252
