Please explain why Faust became a Romantic Hero in Faust by Goethe.

Romanticism was a reaction against an emotionless
rationality and structured literature that defined the Age of Enlightenment and Reason.
Faust personifies this dichotomy on his way to becoming the Romantic hero. Faust starts
out as a respected and admired representative of rationality and structure as a
quiet-living academic who is an expert in every field of study from Mathematics to
Divinity. Faust has spent his life in the pursuit of knowledge, which precluded (i.e.,
made impossible) involvement in life's pursuits of happineess, pleasure, and
feelings.

Now, having found that the knowledge available to
him is in the end analysis meaningless ("And see, that nothing can be known! / That
knowledge cuts me to the bone."), he is searching for the knowledge of the cosmos "That
[he] may detect the inmost force / Which binds the world, and guides its course." He
wants to transcend the limits of earth's hold on mortal flesh and with the
Moon

on
mountains grand,
Amid thy blessed light ... stand, ... [and]
Float
[as molecules] in thy twilight the meadows
over,

After his encounter
with Mephistopheles (Mephisto), Faust is persuaded to wager that Mephisto cannot lure
him from his quest by vain pleasure and passion. His wager with Mephisto, which grows
bit by bit from the initial,

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Canst thou with lying flattery rule
me,
Until, self-pleased, myself I see,—
Canst thou with rich
enjoyment fool me,
Let that day be the last for
me!

ends with a complicated
challenge to Mephisto to tempt Faust and distract him through life's
feelings:

Let
us the sensual deeps explore,
To quench the fervors of glowing passion!
....
Then may delight and distress,
And worry and
success,
Alternately follow, as best they can:
....

This is where Faust
symbolically leaves behind the rational approach of the Age of Enlightenment and Reason
and becomes the Romantic hero. In his new persona--as the Romantic, feeling, passionate
hero--Faust engages in lust and murder and horror and despair when he seduces Gretchen
(thanks to the motivation given by Mephisto's magical potion), then murders Gretchen's
brother Valentine (while under Mephisto's control), then suddenly learns with rage about
Gretchen's murders and imprisonment, then fails in earnest and heart-wrenching attempts
to rescue her from execution. In Faust Part II, Faust becomes a
Classical hero and is no longer a Romantic hero because Goethe renounced Romanticism in
1777 and pursued Classicalism thereafter.