Promethean
The central characteristic of the European’s tragic mentality.
Prometheus gave man fire and for this the gods punished him. Chained to a distant, isolated rock, an eagle ate at his liver every day, which he grew back every night. European man possesses an inner fire that consumes him, destroys him, but at the same time elevates him. He is both suicidal and self-constructing. Heidegger, after the Greek deïnotatos, called him ‘the most risky’.
Unlike the ‘submission to God’ advocated by the salvation religions, Prometheanism in European history is distinguished by a will to ‘equal the divine’. It combines the will to titanic power (in the Jüngerian[1] sense), hubris, rationality, and risk-taking. Neither ‘good’ nor ‘evil’, neither beneficial nor detrimental, it is an inner force that must be ceaselessly mastered. It’s to be found among entrepreneurs and among artists, scientists, and statesmen. The allegory of Goethe’s Faust, like that of Don Juan, perfectly translates this Prometheanism, which overarches the European tradition. Prometheanism is both force and feebleness.
It’s a force that produces a defiant, challenging mentality, it’s a feebleness that risks succumbing to short-sightedness and self-destructiveness (as depicted in Wagner’s The Twilight of the Gods).[2]
Prometheanism can be defined as an energy that comes from ‘the contradiction of opposites’. Like a chariot harness, it is to be wilfully and forcefully used, for its energy is order-creating.
(see personality, creative; tragedy)
- ↑ Ernst Jünger (1895-1998) was one of the most important German writers of the Twentieth century, and was the preeminent Conservative Revolutionary thinkers of the Weimar era. In his book Der Arbeiter (The Worker), he discusses the idea of the Titanic forces as the heirs of Prometheus, a revolt against the gods which is today manifested particularly in war and technology. See ‘Soldier, Worker, Rebel, Anarch: An Introduction to Ernst Jünger’ by Alain de Benoist, available at Les Amis d’Alain de Benoist (www.alaindebenoist.com/pdf/an_introduction_to_ernst_junger.pdf).
- ↑ The Twilight of the Gods is the final part of Richard Wagner’s tetralogy of music-dramas, The Ring of the Nibelungen. It is the story of the god Wotan as he pursues a magic ring which will give him absolute power over the universe. However, in pursuit of this goal, he makes many miscalculations and ends up sabotaging his own plans. At the end of the drama, he destroys himself and the world out of a sense of hopelessness.
