Evil be my Good: The Devil's identity crisis, satanic heroism in Paradise Lost, and Faustian ambition as the new moral imperative.

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About Evil Be My Good: The Devil's Identity

A complete history of Satan in literature... and what it means for humanity. I planned to start this project from the beginning of civilization and make it a complete history of the devil. My doctoral advisers looked horrified and recommended I start with Milton. In examining Paradise Lost through the lens of critical theory, and taking the evidence at face value (without a pre-conceived certainty in Satan's guilt or natural "evil") we can see how Satan's journey is a precise metaphor for the creation of human subjectivity, and fundamentally necessary, both in religious and secular terms.The main argument of this book, simplified, is that our modern virtues and ideology of heroism are directly based on Satanic principles that have been whitewashed by two centuries of ethical inversion. This history - which includes hundreds of famous writers, artists and philosophers - is relatively unknown.Paradise Lost has had a massive influence in the history of Western civilization, and this literary tour of philosophy, psychology and critical theory will attempt to chronicle how changes in Milton criticism reflect critical social movements. We'll explore the history of fallen angels, pirates, revolutionaries and other daring insurgents who liberated humanity from ignorance and founded the modern world.We'll consult texts from Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, classic and modern literature, Badiou and Foucault, as well as little-known works by Napoleon Hill, Kahlil Gibran and Mark Twain. We'll trace the history of satanism, the devil, as well as the Faustian revolution which shifted ambition from Evil to Human, and fueled the new age ambition towards self-improvement as a moral imperative rather than a sin of hubris.At its heart, this book agrees with Captain Ahab, the only true response to the absurdity of suffering is Defiance. Radical breaks with the status quo are necessary to achieve true freedom, but also terrifyi