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References

Diamond, Jared (1997). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies . New York: W. W. Norton. Dumont, Louis (1966). Homo Hierarchicus . 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. — (1977). From Mandeville to Marx: The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology . Chi- cago: University of Chicago Press. — (1986). Essays on . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Everdell, William R. (1999). Review of David Fromkin, The Way of the World: From the Dawn of Civilization to the Eve of the Twenty-First Century [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999]. The New York Times Book Review , January 17, 1999: 9. Foucault, Michel (1965). Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason . Richard Howard (trans.). New York: Random House. Gauchet, Marcel (1994). Tocqueville. In Mark Lilla (ed.), New French Thought: , 91-111. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gauchet, Marcel and Gladys Swain (1999). Madness and : the Modern Psychi- atric Universe . Catherine Porter (trans.). New French Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Haynes, Charles C. (1999). Modern opinions vary on top religious events. Burlington Free Press. Saturday, June 5. Kojève, Alexandre (1947). Introduction à la lecture de Hegel . Paris: Gallimard. Lilla, Mark (1994). The legitimacy of the liberal age. In Mark Lilla (ed.), New French Thought: Political Philosophy , 3-34. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lilly, Reginald (1998). Postmodernism, French critics of. In Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy , 7: 593-596. London: Routledge. Seigel, Jerrold (1999). Foreword. In Marcel Gauchet and Gladys Swain, Madness and Democracy: The Modern Psychiatric Universe , vii-xxvi. New French Thought. Catherine Porter (trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

MARCEL GAUCHET’S DISENCHANTED WORLD AND NIETZSCHE’S CONCEPT OF NIHILISM

Herbert Frey

Libri historiam habent , ‘books have their history’, but not books alone; at times, even the discovery of books may have its own story. As a rule such a story would be rather difficult to localize but sometimes it can be told. I came across Marcel Gauchet when I attended the 1998 meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in Mon- treal. I was speaking with a colleague about my research on Nietzsche and my analyses of the comparative classical and Jewish- Christian histories of religion, when all of the sudden he said, “well then, you should really buy a book which I have recently read, Marcel Gauchet’s The Disenchantment of the World . Although it was

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2002 Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 14, 120-128 the disenchanted world and nietzsche ’s nihilism 121 translated into English only in 1997, the book was known in since 1985. Since the limits of language—to paraphrase Wittgenstein —often define the limits of the world, Gauchet has experienced a second birth, so to speak, with this publication in English. The two main theses that define the innovative character of Gauchet’s book are, of course, the “disenchantment of the world” and “ a political history of religion” . From this it follows that the process of disenchantment must be read as a political process, a process which takes effect in the course of the monopolization of politics on the part of the state. As a result, Gauchet adds an entirely new dimension to the thesis of disenchantment introduced by Max Weber. In her biography of Max Weber, Marianne Weber connected the term “disenchantment” to Weber’s discovery of rationalism as a dis- tinctive feature in Western culture. She describes this as follows: [T]he process of rationalization dissolves the magical notions and increas- ingly “disenchants” the world and renders it godless. Religion changes from magic to doctrine. And now, after the disintegration of the primi- tive image of the world, there appear two tendencies: a tendency toward the rational mastery of the world and one toward mystical experience. But not only the religions receive their stamp from the increasing develop- ment of thought; the process of rationalization moves on several tracks, and its autonomous development encompasses all creations of civiliza- tion—the economy, the state, science, and art. All forms of Western civilization in particular are decisively deter- mined by a methodical way of thinking that was first developed by the Greeks, and this way of thinking was joined in the Age of Reformation by a methodical conduct of life that was oriented to certain purposes. It was this union of a theoretical and a practical rationalism that sepa- rated modern civilization from ancient civilization, and the special character of both separated modern Wester civilization from Asian civi- lization. (Weber 1975: 333) The great process of disenchantment in the history of religion began, in Weber’s opinion, with ancient Jewish prophetism which, in con- junction with Hellenistic scientific thinking, dismissed all magical means of seeking one’s salvation as sacrilegious offenses and as super- stitions. According to Weber, who regarded the Protestant Ethic as the highest form of religious development, the discontinuation of ecclesiastical-sacramental salvation by Protestant represented decisive progress. The prerequisite for disenchantment as the motor of Western de-