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8.good and Evil

1. William Blake's poetry explores the ideas of good and evil in unique ways, with Blake seeing them as "married" in his early works and evil sometimes playing the role of good. 2. Blake was influenced by Christianity as well as other philosophies and religions like Gnosticism, Kabbalah, and the works of Boehme and Swedenborg. 3. Blake's views on good and evil, and Satan in particular, evolved over time from a rebellious youth to a more accepting perspective emphasizing love, peace and forgiveness in his later years.

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Luiza Elena
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75 views3 pages

8.good and Evil

1. William Blake's poetry explores the ideas of good and evil in unique ways, with Blake seeing them as "married" in his early works and evil sometimes playing the role of good. 2. Blake was influenced by Christianity as well as other philosophies and religions like Gnosticism, Kabbalah, and the works of Boehme and Swedenborg. 3. Blake's views on good and evil, and Satan in particular, evolved over time from a rebellious youth to a more accepting perspective emphasizing love, peace and forgiveness in his later years.

Uploaded by

Luiza Elena
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Good and evil ( ex: Blake) In religion, ethics, and philosophy, the phrase, good and evil refers

to the location on a two-way spectrum of objects, desires, or behaviors, the good direction being morally positive, and the evil direction morally negative. Good is a broad concept but it typically deals with an association with life, charity, continuity, happiness, love, and prosperity. Evil is more simply defined: the opposite of good. The good and evil of a context represents a personal judgment, a societal norm, or either's claim to an absolute value related to the human nature or transcendent religious standard for that context. One of the key aspects of romanticism is the presentation of heroes and villains. Heroes - to present man as he ought to be. Villains - to present man as he ought not to be.

2) The struggle between the good and evil is an important theme

3) Man is presented as volitional i.e. it is his choices that dictate whether he is good or evil.

William Blakes poetry is even more interesting for our argument.


Blake compared himself to biblical prophets and wanted to create something like a religion of his own in which the ideas of good and evil were, in his own words, married, and evil, at least in his early works, could play the role of good. Here Blake, exploiting with polemical gusto the Protestant search for a religion of the heart free from all dogmas, in reality exceeded the limits of Protestantism and even Christianity itself. In his discourse All Religions are One Blake wrote: The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nations different reception of the Poetic Genius which is everywhere calld the Spirit of Prophesy. The Jewish and Christian Testaments are an original derivation from the Poetic Genius. As becomes clear from his other

early works, for Blake the Spirit of Prophesy, or the Poetic Genius, is the same as imagination idolized by many Romantic writers. Later the poet identified imagination with Jesus Christ Himself saying that Human Imagination is the Divine Body of the Lord Jesus, blessed for ever. There are many influences which can be traced in Blakes poetry and painting with their dark, not yet fully deciphered symbolism and very personal mythology. Some of these influences include the poets radicalism and his love for the Bible and Christian epics by Dante and Milton, as well as his interest in Gnosticism, neoplatonism, the Kabbala, and books by Boehme and Swedenborg. As time went on some of Blakes ideas were transformed and the accents changed. The poet gradually departed from the rebellion of his youth against the surrounding world where the Beast and the Whore rule without control and began to accept the mood of quietism, the values of love, peace and forgiveness. That is why Blakes attitude to good and evil, as well as his attitude to Satan, whom the poet in his youth called my particular friend, also changed. From the energetic spirit who could help peoples happiness in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from energy) Satan later in Milton turned into an embodiment of that same Reason so much hated by the poet or into an image of the fallen material world (The Four Zoas) and still later in the illustrations for The Book of Job he became a false god who terrorizes Job by his claims to the role of Supreme Godhead. And God the Father turned from an Old Testament tyrant resembling the Gnostics

evil Demiurge into a kind creature capable of forgiving sins and resembling the father from the parable of the Prodigal Son. But in spite of the poets closeness to the unorthodox Christianity of his later years, Blakes faith remained an individual religion where his main God was his imagination and the Divine Vision still consisted in his extraordinary ability to see the endless and eternal in the ordinary and simple, in a wild flower or a grain of sand. So the circle so to speak closed and Blake, at least in his youth, followed the path trodden by Gnostics, Cathars and Albigensians.

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