Re-enchantment of the Modern World

20 March 2024

Two years before the Treaty of Versailles would be signed, German philosopher and lawyer Max Weber warned his students in Munich that “the fate of our times” is the “disenchantment of the world” (Weber 155). While fitting into the context of the end of the First World War, the statement that mystery, magic, and religion were disappearing from a world dominated by bureaucracy and industry resonated deeply with people everywhere. In recent years, Weber’s paradigm of disenchantment has been extensively challenged by theorists: The “’disenchantment of the world’ is not a completed project of comprehensive global reach” (Bilgrami 1), this is to say that disenchantment, against what Weber claimed, is an empirically emergent and cyclical phenomenon. The feeling of disenchantment can stem from either religious or secular motivations, and there are valid concerns with how mainstream religion transitioned to that of asceticism and devotion, and how esotericism in the West became a marginalized topic, which led to mass theistical disenchantment. There are also equal concerns about the human condition in alignment to a larger societal perspective due to forces like capitalism and anthropocentrism. I postulate secular re-enchantment arises from within, following the healing of our relationships with nature and those within and outside our sphere of obligation.

Christian apologetics and Protestant German historians in the 17th century attempted to purify religion from paganism, which resulted in mainstream religion losing its “enchanted” properties like cosmotheism, which people valued more than they realized. While the “’wisdom of the pagans’ was the heart and core of the ancient wisdom narrative,” Protestant German historians labeled all these pagan ideologies like “Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Kabbalah, magic, alchemy, theosophy, and anything that went against the Bible” (Hanegraaff 369) into the diminishing category called Western esotericism. These ideologies were the Other of “true Christianity and rational philosophy” (Hanegraaff 369). One important concept thrown into Western esotericism that deeply enabled the enchanted feeling amongst the world was cosmotheism, considered a “logical counterpart to monotheism,” (Hanegraaff 371) or, in other words, a counterpart to Christianity. Cosmotheism, part of the “Hellenistic philosophies” is the “’religion of the immanent God’” (Hanegraaff 371) and allows for the divine to “’permeate [the world] and [give] it structure, order and meaning’” (Hanegraaff 371). This mindset led to a wholesome and connected feeling towards the world, as the presence of the divine was everywhere, “[illuminating] and [complementing]” it. The loss of these gods is what Friedrich Schiller laments in his famous poem “Da ihr noch die schöne Welt regieret,” when the speaker beseeches, “Beautiful world, where are you? / Come back, / Beauteous blossom time of nature! / Oh, it is only in the fairy tale land of song / That any trace of your magnificence lives on. / The fields are now in mourning after the extinction, / No divinity appears before my eyes,” (Schiller 12). This is also when Max Weber “defined the eighteenth-century of disenchantment as the disappearance of ‘mysterious and incalculable powers’ from the natural world,” and this is due to his “describing the attempt by new scientists and Enlightenment philosophers to finish the job of Protestant anti-pagan polemics, and get rid of cosmotheism once and for all” (Hanegraaff 372). Indeed, “cosmotheist worldviews now came to be perceived as vain superstitious belief that nature was inhabited by spirits or ghosts, and references to gnosis became virtually indistinguishable from silly ‘enthusiasm’” (Hanegraaff 374). The orthodox thinkers of that time refused to believe in the possibility of coexisting religions, and felt threatened by those who did not share the same worldviews. The result, again; the historically beloved cosmotheism (among other ‘pagan’ beliefs) were reduced to silly, misinformed caricatures of what they are. Unfortunately, such indoctrination creates resentment and resistance, leading to the widespread lamentation that the world is disenchanted.

On the other hand, secular disenchantment comes from our broken relationship with nature and society. We, as society, have an anthropocentric, “harmful hierarchical framework of stewardship” of nature (Beaman 6), where we believe that are “more distinguished than animals,” and can therefore treat nature with disrespect. This is how science can be seen as disenchanting because it is primarily used for “extraction and exploitation,” and therefore “capitalism” itself becomes the reason we feel disenchanted (Beaman 6). Capitalism calls for an emphasis on tangible performance indicators like money and material goods. Unfortunately, that means much of our time is spent worrying over these things, and continuously choosing these values over everything else. It is common to feel immensely helpless in the race of late-stage capitalism, ultimately becoming trapped in a materialistic struggle. It would be difficult for one to not feel disenchanted the more they try to improve themselves.

Writers like John Cottingham in Religion Without Magic add another layer to secular disenchantment, defining “disenchantment is flattening” (Cottingham 43), meaning that following the Scientific Revolution, our conception of how to understand the world has been levelled out or flattened, so that we are prepared to accept only one type of framework for making sense of things, namely the framework of explanatory science” (Cottingham 43). This is loosely defining scientism; however, scientism is not wholly the problem. For example, the “idea of an opposition between [technology and magic] has only been established recently, and it is generally incomplete” (Josephson-Storm 7), and “the nature and limits of scientific explanation are unclear... and that there is no requirement that they conform to a single model” (Ellis 181). Weber, in Science as a Vocation, criticizes our growing dependence on technology: “Unless we happen to be physicists, those of us who travel by streetcar have not the faintest idea how that streetcar works. Nor have we any need to know it... But we have no idea how to build a streetcar so that it will move... Thus the growing process of intellectualization and rationalization does not imply a growing understanding of the conditions under which we live. It means...that in principle, then, we are not ruled by mysterious, unpredictable forces, but that, on the contrary, we can in principle control everything by means of calculation” (Weber 12). Actually, “for most of European history, technology and magic were seen as aspects of the same thing, not as diametric opposites,” and “the whole notion that modern science necessarily produces disenchantment is completely false” (Josephson-Storm 7). This is because “it has been impossible to... demarcate ‘science’ from other domains,” and there is “no unitary scientific method” (Josephson-Storm 7) because the criteria for determining what is considered scientific may not be universally agreed upon and that the boundaries of science are more fluid than we think. Even Newton himself, thought that “Newtonian physics was not the stripped-down mechanisms he is associated with, but a dynamic cosmos inclined towards apocalypse and dissolution, which required active ‘supernatural’ intervention by God and angels” (Josephson-Storm 8). Cottingham says “issues that arise in a religious context, for example, the problems connected with human suffering, sin, evil, repentance, conversion and redemption, simply cannot be properly dealt with using these austere and impersonal techniques of inquiry [science]” (Cottingham 44), but there is a lot more to implicating science as “flattening” our livelihood, as scientists and theistic thinkers often draw from each other to better understand the world. They link science and “spiritual engagements” (Josephson-Storm 8): When Robert Oppenheimer witnessed the first nuclear detonation, he quoted the Bhagavad Gita, showing that those at the forefront of science were “equally engaged with mysticism and Eastern thought” (Josephson-Storm 8). He uses the revered Hindu scripture as a metaphor for both his internal and external processing towards the success of the Manhattan Project. His discovery, while scientific, transcended the bounds of rationality. Science, or work in general, is a lot more fulfilling and charming than what Weber says to be in his original Science as a Vocation, and the problem of creative destruction is somewhat trivial to the scientists themselves, as their work inspires wonder in equally magical ways. Curiosity instils within us novelty and thus enchantment, and science is exactly that.

It is also obvious that religion depends on science to expand their theistical thinking, and it would be harmful to banish those who follow scientism. Weber’s original quote (“we have no idea how to build a streetcar”) is an example of how modern-day computer engineers encapsulate their code to create functioning applications for users, and that we don’t need to learn assembly language nor how to build a streetcar. The reason we encapsulate, whether in computer science or in streetcars, is to secure the internal workings and increase efficiency for more complex programs. It should be a great thing that people don't need to understand the inner workings of a streetcar, as Weber might suggest, because otherwise, everyone would have a broken transit system when they fail to replicate the efficiency of a well-designed streetcar. Encapsulation hides trivial details of which gears and axles make the wheels of the streetcar turn, and there’s also no need for the common programmer to understand every single line of code that makes the compiler run. This leaves the gives the everyday person more time to ruminate over abstract values, the ones that Weber is trying to figure out as well, or what Cottingham would point out as “imaginative, symbolic and poetic forms of understanding in deepening our awareness of ourselves and the reality we inhabit” (Cottingham 44). Similarly, if the urge to eliminate builders and architects, then we would lose the skill to build a lovely tall building that can house pews and display ornate stained windows and we wouldn’t have any environment to do deep thinking about our place in the world. Science and continuous technological development provide us with the means to escape the worries of survival. They offer us vast opportunities to enjoy the view from the streetcar, allowing us to be sensitive and aware of the “mysterious, unpredictable forces” (Weber 12) that touch our lives.

A secular re-enchantment of the world is possible in addition to a theistical re-enchantment, as re-enchantment above all, is an answer to repairing a distorted relationship with nature. If “theism is true, we don’t have to ‘reenchant’ the cosmos, because it is already enchanted,” so redefining our beliefs to be logical towards our own needs will help the individual feel re-enchanted. Currently, we have a “[broken] relationship with the earth,” (Beaman 4) and with each other (Weber was “deeply concerned about human arrogance” (Beaman 5)). To define re-enchantment in a way that satisfies everyone, first “religious people must stop imagining non-religious people as bereft and barren,” and “nonreligious people must stop characterizing religious people as deluded” (Beaman 8). Anyone can experience “that spine-tingling moment of discovery of recognition” (Beaman 8), and “religion, magic and the divine do not own this space of wonder, awe and gratitude” (Beaman 6). On the other hand, nonreligious people must show tolerance for “the messiness of everyday life that includes strands of religious participation,” as religion helps people deal with “morals and ethics” (Beaman 4) in a way that science cannot. And towards those who feel the contradictory effects of society, there is no reason to continue believing that it is pointless to try to construct intrinsic meaning from the world – that would go against the effort of re-enchantment. Instead, even by taking the assumption that society is paradoxical as true, one is still left with at least two options: Firstly, through belief, free will, and personal responsibility, one can construct meaning in a society that is fundamentally flawed; secondly, through acceptance that society is fundamentally flawed, but simultaneously the understanding that this is the opportunity to rebel against lack of meaning by embracing what life has to offer.

The origins of disenchantment can be explained religious and nonreligious lenses, and the notion of re-enchantment is an individualistic matter that takes a deep amount of discomforting self-reflection. Beaman, Cottingham, Josephson-Storm, Ellis and Hanegraaf offer serious responses to Weber’s idea of cultural rationalization and devaluation of religion, doing so by pointing towards the infinitesimal of divine nature and the beauty of the human heart.

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