Consider the treatment of one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins

Posted on April 19, 2015 Updated on August 28, 2026

(1133 Words)

As seekers of knowledge, individuals may strive relentlessly, employing whatever means they deem necessary to achieve intellectual or spiritual enlightenment. However, the pursuit of knowledge can become excessive when it transgresses moral, theological, or human limitations. Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus dramatises precisely this tension. Faustus is an intellectual explorer whose desire for knowledge and power exceeds what is considered appropriate or permissible for human beings. His relentless pursuit of forbidden knowledge ultimately becomes an act of transgression: he embraces mortal sin and, within the play’s Christian moral framework, is condemned to Hell.

Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus engages closely with the Renaissance ideal of the ‘aspiring mind’, embodying the period’s fascination with intellectual expansion, individual ambition, and the possibility of transcending established boundaries. Faustus represents this aspiration in its most extreme form. Yet his pursuit of knowledge is characterised by a striking lack of discrimination. Rather than directing his intellectual abilities towards morally or intellectually valuable ends, he becomes fascinated by pleasure, wealth, power, and the supernatural. His response to the personification of the Seven Deadly Sins—“O, this feeds my soul”—is particularly revealing. The statement suggests that Faustus has begun to derive intellectual and emotional gratification from transgression itself. During the twenty-four years granted to him through his pact with Lucifer, he seeks experiences of every kind, seemingly embodying the Renaissance desire for exploration and discovery. Paradoxically, however, the supernatural power he acquires does not produce genuine freedom; instead, it ultimately leads to anxiety, despair, and spiritual destruction.

Foremost among Faustus’s characteristics is his ambitious desire to experience the fullest possible range of human existence. As a figure associated with Renaissance humanism, he seeks to transcend conventional limitations and enter a new intellectual and experiential world. His ambition is ultimately expressed through his desire to approach the status of a deity: “A sound magician is a mighty god.” The statement demonstrates the extent to which his intellectual curiosity has developed into an aspiration for absolute power. Faustus no longer wishes merely to understand the world; he wishes to control it. His desire therefore shifts from knowledge to mastery, revealing the dangerous consequences of an intellect that recognises no ethical boundaries.

Faustus’s declaration, “How am I glutted with conceit,” further illustrates the destructive effects of excessive pride. The language of ‘glutted’ suggests an appetite that has become excessive and insatiable, while his repeated emphasis on the first-person pronoun reinforces his egocentricity. Faustus increasingly imagines himself as autonomous and self-determining, attempting to construct his own destiny independently of conventional religious authority. His ambitions are also explicitly materialistic. He dreams of “flying to India for gold” and “ransacking the ocean for orient pearl,” revealing that his intellectual aspirations are inseparable from greed and acquisitiveness. His pursuit of knowledge therefore becomes corrupted by cupidity: what initially appears to be intellectual curiosity develops into a desire to possess wealth, pleasure, and power without limitation. His apparent liberation from conventional restrictions consequently becomes another form of enslavement—to appetite, pride, and sin.

Faustus’s rejection of human and divine limitations also resonates with the biblical condemnation of pride and covetousness. In this respect, his character can be understood through the moral framework of the Book of Psalms, particularly its association of pride, greed, and the rejection of God with spiritual corruption. Faustus similarly attempts to place himself beyond divine authority. God is effectively displaced from his intellectual universe, while his own desires become the principal measure of value. His tragedy therefore emerges not simply from his possession of supernatural power, but from his refusal to recognise any authority greater than himself. His intellectual independence becomes spiritually destructive because it is accompanied by an unwillingness to accept moral limits.

Furthermore, Faustus can be considered in relation to Aristotle’s conception of the tragic hero. In Poetics, Aristotle argues that tragedy centres upon a figure who is neither wholly virtuous nor wholly corrupt, but whose downfall arises from an error or weakness inherent in human nature. Faustus embodies this model through several interconnected flaws. His pride, his relentless intellectual curiosity, and his desire to transcend the limitations of humanity all contribute to his eventual destruction. His pride constitutes a form of hubris: he seeks to elevate himself beyond the position assigned to human beings. From a Christian perspective, his aspiration to become godlike represents an even more profound transgression, since it challenges the fundamental distinction between the human and the divine. At the same time, his restless intellect and dissatisfaction with ordinary existence prevent him from accepting the boundaries imposed by religion, morality, and mortality. His tragedy consequently emerges from the interaction between intellectual ambition and moral blindness.

Nevertheless, Faustus’s aspirations cannot be dismissed as entirely reprehensible. His desire for knowledge reflects one of the most significant intellectual characteristics of the Renaissance: the elevation of human curiosity, individual potential, and intellectual inquiry. In this respect, Faustus can be interpreted as a representative of the ‘new man’ emerging from the intellectual culture of the Middle Ages. The authority of the medieval Church, which had exercised considerable influence over intellectual and social life, was increasingly challenged by new forms of humanist thought, scientific inquiry, geographical exploration, and political individualism. The Renaissance consequently witnessed a growing emphasis on human agency and the capacity of individuals to investigate and understand the world independently.

Marlowe’s engagement with classical thought is also significant in this context. The classical world offered Renaissance thinkers alternative models of intellectual and cultural authority, while Greek literature frequently presented human beings who challenged established boundaries and confronted the power of the gods. Although Marlowe’s play is ultimately shaped by a Christian moral framework, its protagonist possesses a distinctly Renaissance fascination with inquiry, experience, and self-determination. This creates a fundamental tension at the centre of the drama: Faustus embodies the intellectual freedom of the Renaissance while simultaneously being judged according to the theological values of the medieval Christian worldview.

Ultimately, Marlowe presents Faustus as a quintessentially Renaissance figure whose intellectual ambition develops into an ultimately destructive desire for absolute knowledge and power. He surveys a world whose horizons appear to be expanding through geographical exploration, scientific inquiry, and renewed engagement with classical learning. His aspiration to exceed conventional human limitations is therefore both admirable and dangerous. Faustus represents the possibility of intellectual liberation, but he also demonstrates the consequences of pursuing that liberation without ethical restraint. His tragedy lies precisely in this contradiction: he possesses the curiosity and ambition associated with the Renaissance ‘aspiring mind’, yet his inability to reconcile those aspirations with the moral limitations of his Christian world leads ultimately to his damnation. In this sense, Doctor Faustus concludes with a distinctly medieval warning about the dangers of Renaissance ambition: the desire to know more may be intellectually admirable, but when knowledge becomes indistinguishable from pride, greed, and the desire for godlike power, aspiration becomes transgression.