Disenchantment

In social science, disenchantment (German: Entzauberung) is the cultural rationalization and devaluation of religion apparent in modern society. The term was borrowed from Friedrich Schiller[1] by Max Weber to describe the character of modernized, bureaucratic, secularized Western society, where scientific understanding is more highly valued than belief, and where processes are oriented toward rational goals, as opposed to traditional society, where for Weber, "the world remains a great enchanted garden".[2]

For other uses, see Disenchantment (disambiguation).

Enlightenment ambivalence

Weber's ambivalent appraisal of the process of disenchantment as both positive and negative[3] was taken up by the Frankfurt school in their examination of the self-destructive elements in Enlightenment rationalism.[4]

Habermas has subsequently striven to find a positive foundation for modernity in the face of disenchantment, even while appreciating Weber's recognition of how far secular society was created from, and is still "haunted by the ghosts of dead religious beliefs".[5]

Some have seen the disenchantment of the world as a call for existentialist commitment and individual responsibility before a collective normative void.[6]

Sacralization

Disenchantment is related to the notion of desacralization, whereby the structures and institutions that previously channeled spiritual belief into rituals that promoted collective identities came under attack and waned in popularity. According to Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, the ritual of sacrifice involved two processes: sacralization and desacralization. The first process endows a profane offering with sacred properties—consecration—which provides a bridge of communication between the worlds of the sacred and profane. Once the sacrifice has been made, the ritual must be desacralized in order to return the worlds of the sacred and profane to their proper places.[7]

Disenchantment operates on a macro-level, rather than the micro-level described above. It also destroys part of the process whereby the chaotic social elements that require sacralization in the first place continue with mere knowledge as their antidote. Thereby disenchantment can be related to Durkheim's concept of anomie: an un-mooring of the individual from the ties that bind in society.[8]

Reenchantment

In recent years, Weber's paradigm has been challenged by thinkers who see a process of "reenchantment" operating alongside that of disenchantment.[9] Thus, enchantment is used to fundamentally change how even low paid service work is experienced.[10]

Jung considered symbols to provide a means for the numinous to return from the unconscious to the desacralized world[11] - a means for the recovery of myth, and the sense of wholeness it once provided, to a disenchanted modernity.[12]

Ernest Gellner argued that though disenchantment was the inevitable product of modernity, many people just could not stand a disenchanted world, and therefore opted for various "re-enchantment creeds" (as he called them) such as psychoanalysis, Marxism, Wittgensteinianism, phenomenology and ethnomethodology. A noticeable feature of these re-enchantment creeds is that they all tried to make themselves compatible with naturalism: i.e., they did not refer to supernatural forces.[13]

Disenchantment as myth

American historian of religion Jason Josesphson-Storm has challenged mainstream sociological and historical interpretations of the ideas of both disenchantment and reenchantment, labeling disenchantment as a "myth." Josephson-Storm argues that there has not been a decline in belief in magic or mysticism in Western Europe or the United States, even after adjusting for religious belief, education, and class.[14] Josephson-Storm has further argued that many influential theorists of disenchantment, including Weber and some members of the Frankfurt School, were not only aware of modern European magical and occult movements but consciously engaged with them.[15] Foundational theorists of disenchantment such as Weber and James George Frazer did not envision a rigid binary between rationality or rationalization and magical thinking and did not describe a process of "reenchantment" to reverse or compensate for disenchantment.[16] According to Josephson-Storm, this information necessitates a re-interpretation of Weber's idea of disenchantment as referring more to the sequestering and professionalization of magic.[17]

See also

References
  1. Richard Jenkins, Disenchantment, Enchantment and Re-Enchantment (2000) 1 Max Weber Studies 11.
  2. Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (1971) p. 270
  3. A. J. Cascardi, The Subject of Modernity (1992) p. 19
  4. G. Borradori, Philosophy in an Age of Terror (2004) p. 69
  5. Murray E. G. Smith, Early Modern Social Theory (1998) p. 274
  6. L. Embree ed., Schutzian Social Science (1999) p. 110-1
  7. Bell, Catherine (1997). Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 26
  8. Bell
  9. Joshua Landy and Michael Saler, eds., The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age, Stanford University Press, 2009.
  10. Endrissat, N., Islam, G., & Noppeney, C. (2015). Enchanting Work: New Spirits of Service Work in an Organic Supermarket. Organization Studies, 36(11), 1555–1576. http://doi.org/10.1177/0170840615593588.
  11. C. G. Jung, Man and his Symbols (1978) p. 83-94
  12. Ann Casement, Who Owns Jung? (2007) p. 20
  13. John A. Hall, Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography, Verso, 2010.
  14. Josephson-Storm, Myth of Disenchantment (2017), Chapter 1.
  15. Josephson-Storm, Myth of Disenchantment (2017), 215, 269-70.
  16. Josephson-Storm, Myth of Disenchantment (2017), 277–8, 298.
  17. Josephson-Storm, Myth of Disenchantment (2017), 299-300.

Further reading
  • Berger, Peter (1971). A rumour of angels: modern society and the rediscovery of the supernatural. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin. ISBN 9780140211801.
  • Bennett, Jane (2001). The enchantment of modern life: attachments, crossings, and ethics. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691088136.
  • Berman, Morris (1981). The reenchantment of the world. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 9780801492259.
  • Campbell, Joseph; Moyers, Bill (1988). The power of myth. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 9780385247740.
  • During, Simon (2002). Modern enchantments the cultural power of secular magic. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674013711.
  • Josephson-Storm, Jason (2017). The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-40336-X.
  • Landy, Joshua; Saler, Michael (2009). The re-enchantment of the world: secular magic in a rational age. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804752992.
  • Ross, Stephen David (2012). Enchanting, beyond disenchantment. Albany: SUNY Press. ISBN 9781438445106.
  • Weber, Max (author); Livingstone, Rodney (translator); Owen, David S. (editor); Strong, Tracy B. (editor) (2004). The vocation lectures. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. ISBN 9780872206656.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
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