The last in a series of four books telling the history of the
concept of radical evil embodied in the Devil. Earlier volumes were
praised for their scholarship and astuteness and also for their
sense of the poignancy of the ordinary person's bafflement by the
intrusion of evil into their lives. For Luther, the Devil was an
immediate presence - see a literal translation of Ein Feste Burg.
Shakespeare noticed the heart's desire for evil for evil's sake, an
evil transcending our conscious errors and feelings. Milton's
Paradise Lost is discussed for 32 pages - "the last convincing
full-length portrait of the traditional lord of evil." Thereafter
for the atheists, matter produces mind, and mind creates the
categories of good and evil. The romantics reversed the symbols -
traditional Christianity had created a god who was really an evil
tyrant. But the obstinate problem persists. Recently, says Russell,
some psychologists have begun to look for a concept akin to the old
one of evil to describe some phenomenon they encounter -
personalties so completely founded on lies that traditional
sociological and psychological understandings are irrelevant. The
demonic quality of the arms race becomes clearer, Russell says,
when we ask for whose good are these preparations for holocaust.
The value of this book by a historian lies not in this last-page
comment but in the 300 pages of descriptive analysis of the ways in
which this basic question figures in the work of, among others,
William Blake, G. Vico, Hume, Schleiermacher, Baudelaire, Mark
Twain, William James, Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, Freud and Jung. The
author's use of this issue opens up the works discussed and incites
the reader to explore. (Kirkus Reviews)
Mephistopheles is the fourth and final volume of a critically
acclaimed history of the concept of the Devil. The series
constitutes the most complete historical study ever made of the
figure that has been called the second most famous personage in
Christianity.In his first three volumes Jeffrey Burton Russell
brought the history of Christian diabology to the end of the Middle
Ages, showing the development of a degree of consensus, even in
detail, on the concept of the Devil. Mephistopheles continues the
story from the Reformation to the present, tracing the
fragmentation of the tradition. Using examples from theology,
philosophy, art, literature, and popular culture, he describes the
great changes effected in our idea of the Devil by the intellectual
and cultural developments of modem times.Emphasizing key figures
and movements, Russell covers the apogee of the witch craze in the
Renaissance and Reformation, the effects of the Enlightenment's
rationalist philosophy, the Romantic image of Satan, and the
cynical or satirical literary treatments of the Devil in the late
nineteenth century. He concludes that although today the Devil may
seem an outworn metaphor, the very real horrors of the twentieth
century suggest the continuing need for some vital symbol of
radical evil.A work of great insight and learning, Mephistopheles
deepens our understanding of the ways in which people in Western
societies have dealt with the problem of evil.
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