A quite precise overview of the Magian soul and its counterposition to the Faustian. Indeed, one crucial thing that differentiates the two is the disregard for agency in the former and a central emphasis on it in the latter.
To the best of my knowledge, Oswald Spengler is the only Western thinker who pinpointed the nature of the Middle East, and Islam as its consummate representation, precisely - it is the submission, lack of agency.
The Magian continues the Apollinian sentiment that man is subject to the whims of the divine, but instead of man being subject to being knocked and bulldozed when he happens to be in the way of a plurality of different natural and overwhelming presences, the natural world is seen to fundamentally radiate from a singular divine presence that projects reality onto this or that soul.
It's almost like a continuation of stoicism into a new form, "you can't control the world so focus on yourself" becomes "you can't control reality at all, which includes your ego, so give in and affirm the paradise that God, the true source of existence and the only truly independent will, intends to establish" which would obviously offend the senses of anyone who believes in even the smallest amount of agency on Earth.
It'd be strange to think of a Faustian civilisation in a Europe that lost at Poitiers and had to spend a thousand years thinking about how to align the individual will with something as definitive as Islam.
A quite precise overview of the Magian soul and its counterposition to the Faustian. Indeed, one crucial thing that differentiates the two is the disregard for agency in the former and a central emphasis on it in the latter.
To the best of my knowledge, Oswald Spengler is the only Western thinker who pinpointed the nature of the Middle East, and Islam as its consummate representation, precisely - it is the submission, lack of agency.
The Magian continues the Apollinian sentiment that man is subject to the whims of the divine, but instead of man being subject to being knocked and bulldozed when he happens to be in the way of a plurality of different natural and overwhelming presences, the natural world is seen to fundamentally radiate from a singular divine presence that projects reality onto this or that soul.
It's almost like a continuation of stoicism into a new form, "you can't control the world so focus on yourself" becomes "you can't control reality at all, which includes your ego, so give in and affirm the paradise that God, the true source of existence and the only truly independent will, intends to establish" which would obviously offend the senses of anyone who believes in even the smallest amount of agency on Earth.
It'd be strange to think of a Faustian civilisation in a Europe that lost at Poitiers and had to spend a thousand years thinking about how to align the individual will with something as definitive as Islam.