Dr. Faustus Essay: Free Will and Personal Responsibility

Free Will and Personal Responsibility in Faustus It can be argued that Doctor Faustus is damned from the moment of conception. His innate appetite for knowledge inevitably leads to his d possessfall. He represents the common compassionate dissatisfaction with being compassionate and the struggle of accepting our lack of omnipotence and omniscience. Marlowe manipulates this struggle between the aspirations of one and only(a) timber of his time and the implications to Christianity in relation to its doctrine of heaven and hell. Indeed, Doctor Faustus asks for some(prenominal) than what was intentionally made available to him through Gods plan, yet it was Gods gift to him of his intellect, that tempted him to attend beyond his appointed realm of knowledge. Faustus, through his own free will, decides to business his soul with Lucifer in order to gain the answers to the questions of the universe. According to the predict plan ideology of Catholic doctrine, his decision worked in to the cosmic outline. The divine drill of his decision implies that there are benefits or rather some former(a) importance, outside of the connection to Faustus, of his selling his soul. This lessens the impetus behind his decision because of the speech pattern on universal application as opposed to the immediate ramifications to Faustus, the human being. Therefore, one can argue as to where the obligation or rift lies concerning Faustus fate because of the presence of other forces who may have influenced his decision. However the responsibility for his choice remains his and his alone.Faustus sells his soul for what he believes to be limitless power, with the rich logical, as opposed to emotional, knowledge as to consequences of such a transaction. He knows the stakes of his gamble with the ... ...oth lead to eventual and eternal damnation. On the contrary, one could argue that Marlowe was illustrating the cruelty of the notion that faith alone was not bountiful to secure o nes salvation, merely by Faustus tragic end in itself. However, by taking into consideration Marlowes possible sympathizing with Catholic dogma, it can be inferred that much of the ideology of the character of Doctor Faustus, indeed was the direct product of Marlowes own religious beliefs. Works Cited and ConsultedMarlowe, Christopher Dr Faustus in ed. WB Worthen (1996) The Harcourt induce Anthology of Drama, 2nd edn., Texas Harcourt Brace Steane, J.B (1965) Marlowe Cambridge Cambridge University Press Wilson, F.P (1953) Marlowe and the Early Shakespeare Oxford Clarendon Press The Oxford English Dictionary (1989), Second edition, flock xviii. Oxford Clarendon Press