30.7.08

Heaven, Hell and The Robbers


Most of the main characters in
The Robbers are prone to appealing to heaven and hell at any given moment but this could have more to do with the rhetorical nature of Schiller’s style than his religious convictions. Also it was most likely just part of the common vernacular of the day. Perhaps as well it was the only moral paradigm in which they knew to operate within or were prepared to operate – not forgetting the various atheist texts and philosophical discourse circulating at the time. Franz is inexorable and prescient when he curses those who “corrupt our fantasy with horrific fairy tales and impress our soft brains with hideous images of judgements and punishments” which serve only to “bar the way to boldest resolutions, bind our awakening reason in fetters of superstitious darkness” (Act 4:Sc 2). To the contemporary atheist the concepts of heaven and hell are extremely questionable. Hitchens’ response is unrelenting; “Nothing proves the man-made character of religion as obviously the sick mind that designed hell, unless it is the sorely limited mind that has failed to describe heaven – except as a place of either worldly comfort, eternal tedium, or continual relish in the torture of others” (219). Heaven and angels, says Onfray, are “creations of fantasy”. The angel is essentially an “anti-man” ideal and heaven or paradise, “anti-world” (97). The religious moral paradigm suggests everything we say, do and think has eternal repercussions, not so much in this world but in the afterlife. This very idea comes under fire from Dawkins suggesting; “We humans give ourselves such airs even aggrandizing our poky little ‘sins’ to the level of cosmic significance” (238). The conclusions Franz reaches are clearly unsustainable and immoral, that is a certainty. But the conclusions Karl reaches are more complicated because he sought a workable alternative to the dominant paradigm but was not able to conceive of one apart from a more overtly violent and lawless reality. The choices given to them by god’s earthly representatives are limited.

In Act 2 Scene 3 a Priest pays a visit to Karl and his robbers’ hideout in the forests of Bohemia to offer a pardon for the lawless deeds and demand they give themselves up. He arrives with the full backing of the establishment; “out there are seventeen hundred men, set to guard every hair of my head” (Act 2: Sc 3). With the comfort of this protection he begins with a tirade of abuse aimed at the robbers; “poisonous brood of vipers… plague upon the face on mankind – generation of hell” and so on. He seeks only to convince them to come crawling back to the “Holy Mother Church” where the “way to rank and honour shall be open” to all of them. His real motivation is not to save them from god but from the law! By contrast, in Act 5 Scene 1 Pastor Moser is summoned by Franz – after he had a nightmare about being judged by God.
Pastor Moser (a Jesuit?) throws down a Pascal’s Wager-like challenge to the confused Franz, “If you stand firm in death, if your principles do not desert you even then, then the victory is yours; but if in the hour of death you feel but the slightest qualm, then woe unto you! You have been deceived” (Act 5:Sc 3). The choices offered by the Pastor are clear, follow the righteous godly law-abiding path and go to heaven or face judgement in hell. There is no in-between. Franz at first thinks he can defy heaven its “victory” and hell its “mockery” by ordering Daniel to stab him. Daniel clearly in fear of damnation himself flees with god speed not wishing to jeopardise his chances for eternal bliss. Karl chooses to return to the fold while Franz takes his chance with divine justice. Amalia, living a chaste existence, believes she will go to heaven. Old Moor hopes to go to heaven but fears, because of his failure with his sons, he may go to hell. The characters in
The Robbers are always conscious of the afterlife and whether their behaviour in this life warrants eternal agony or ecstasy after death.

Christianity, Islam and Judaism, according to Onfray, “call on their faithful to renounce life in the here and now” (66) and focus on a “tinsel afterlife” (198). This focus on the mythical hereafter, he asserts quite simply, “leads to denial, contempt or hatred of the here and now” (198). The theory of what Hitchens calls “the doctrine of eternal reward and/or punishment” (205) teaches that if you follow god’s word to the letter, however you interpret it, you will automatically be immortalised. Therefore death doesn’t happen to you really because you make the transition into the next world and “live” forever. You likewise “live” forever, in a sense, if you don’t follow god’s law; unfortunately it will be in the torturously sadistic world of hell. A martyr holds that duty to god is always first priority, they choose martyrdom with the understanding they will be “rewarded in the gardens of Paradise” (Dawkins:308). “The idea of immortality” says Dawkins, “survives and spreads because it caters to wishful thinking” (190). Karl in
The Robbers, reflecting on his own failures, ponders this very question; “Why this ideal of unattained perfection? This looking to another world for what we have failed to achieve in this? (Act 4:Sc 5) Is the focus on life after death really just the avoidance of facing the subject of death itself? Is death the real issue?

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