DOCSLIB.ORG

Disenchantment, Actually Doug Sikkema

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Disenchantment, Actually Doug Sikkema Disenchantment, Actually Doug Sikkema f you remember anything from tory of science,” one we tell ourselves high school science, you may in the modern, secular world: the Iremember something of Marie story of disenchantment. Josephson- Curie. She was a pioneer in chemis- Storm summarizes it as follows: try and physics, and the only person ever The Myth of Disenchantment: ...at a particular to be awarded Nobel Magic, Modernity, and the moment the dark- Prizes in both. Her Birth of the Human Sciences ness of supersti- By Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm tion, myth, or reli- research on radioac- Chicago ~ 2017 ~ 400 pp. gion began to give tivity led her to the $96 (cloth) $32 (paper) way to modern light, discovery of poloni- exchanging tradi- um and radium, and helped make tional unreason for technology possible technologies used in cancer and rationality. When told in a treatment, nuclear energy, and nucle- soaring tone, this is a tale of tri- ar weapons. But while readers may umph; and when recounted in know this synopsis of her life, much a different and descending emo- less familiar is her abiding fascina- tional register, it can sound like tion with the paranormal — or that in the inauguration of our tragic 1907 this paragon of scientific ratio- alienation from an idealized past. nality attended a séance with Eusapia Palladino, a psychic rumored to make Whichever your take, the narrative objects move with her mind. abides: Modernity, thus understood, In The Myth of Dis enchantment: is an age of rationalism, science, and Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of technology that eventually (and inev- the Human Sciences, Williams College itably) overcame the mysterious won- religion professor Jason Ā. Josephson- ders of magic, religion, and supersti- Storm opens with this anecdote, not- tion. But this story, Josephson-Storm ing that it doesn’t quite jibe with “the argues, is a myth. Why else, he sug- single most familiar story in the his- gests, would an esteemed scientist 96 ~ The New Atlantis Copyright 2018. All rights reserved. Print copies available at TheNewAtlantis.com/BackIssues. Disenchantment, Actually like Curie be cavorting with the likes that science necessarily deanimates of Palladino? nature.” Part of his evidence comes from The book, however, is less import- recent polls, which show that belief ant as a history of science and magic in psychic healing, ghosts, telepa- than as a history of how we came to thy, witches, reincarnation, and other believe the myth of disenchantment. paranormal phenomena remains As he traces the story, Josephson- remarkably high. According to 2005 Storm brilliantly pulls open the cur- Gallup research, seventy-six percent tain on one of our oft-told and rarely of Americans “profess at least one questioned modern myths, helping paranormal belief.” Results from us better to see the motley crew the large Baylor Religion Survey of responsible for its production. the same year show that about 80 But if disenchantment is a myth, percent of respondents believe that just how has it managed to persist angels probably or absolutely exist, for so long? While Josephson-Storm and about 66 percent in the case of does a fine job exploring the ori- demons. gins and story of the disenchantment While these numbers challenge the myth, his failure to offer an adequate idea that ours is a disenchanted age, answer to this question leaves much perhaps such beliefs might still be to be desired in his project. The rea- expected among the common folk. son for this failure seems to be his Thus Josephson-Storm places in the restricted understanding of myth as crosshairs members of the scientific a merely fabricated story or a fiction, establishment, who we would expect and of disenchantment as something to be right-thinking. He provides an we should be able to detect easi- impressive compendium of Curie- ly from people’s behaviors or self- like anecdotes going back to Bacon, professed beliefs. Descartes, and Newton, dabblers in magical thinking all, suggesting that n Josephson-Storm’s account, the our default image of the scientist as Imyth of disenchantment originat- hardnosed materialist is more carica- ed with the German Romantics and ture than reality. was crystallized through Friedrich From these anecdotes, Josephson- Schiller’s influential poem “The Storm concludes that “we have never Gods of Greece.” First published been disenchanted.” Thus “we should in 1788, the poem became a key be less surprised than we usually expression of a nostalgic longing for are to find scientists of all stripes a time when primordial man was in keeping company with magicians.” harmonious union with the natural “Séance and science” have often gone world and the gods who animated it. hand in hand, and “it is unclear... The Romantics bemoaned their age Winter 2018 ~ 97 Copyright 2018. All rights reserved. Print copies available at TheNewAtlantis.com/BackIssues. Doug Sikkema when man felt himself no longer a writings it anticipated, was a reaction part of nature but now a thing apart against a narrow, parochial moment, from it, no longer a semi-divine par- “a literal secularization” as “German ticipant in material life’s drama but a states appropriated property pre- detached observer of it. Schiller: viously belonging to the Church.” “Many Catholic universities were ...Ah! how diff ’rent was it in that suspended, thousands of monasteries day! were disbanded, and the ecclesiastical When the people still thy temples territories previously governed by crown’d, bishops were given over to secular Venus Amathusia! states.” It is no wonder the gods When the magic veil of Poesy are thought to have been eclipsed, Still round Truth entwin’d its lov- Josephson-Storm implies, when sec- ing chain — ularism turns violent in neighboring Through creation pour’d Life’s ful- France and the Holy Roman Empire ness free, (including Germany) collapses soon Things then felt, which ne’er can thereafter. feel again. But those most influenced by the Then to press her ‘gainst the poem — the thinkers who were cru- breast of Love, cial in perpetuating the disenchant- They on Nature nobler power ment myth — removed it from this bestow’d, — context and treated the story of All, to eyes enlighten’d from above, Of a God the traces show’d.... God’s disappearance as a larger his- torical development. Hegel, Max Beauteous World, where art thou Weber, the Scottish anthropologist gone? O, thou, James George Frazer, Freud, the Nature’s blooming youth, return German philosopher and psychol- once more! ogist Ludwig Klages, and other Ah, but in Song’s fairy region now lesser-known figures all not only Lives thy fabled trace so dear of referenced Schiller’s poem but large- yore! ly assumed the broader architectonic Cold and perish’d, sorrow now the patterns of history as laid out by plains, the German Romantics. This pat- Not one Godhead greets my long- tern assumed a linear movement ing sight; Ah, the Shadow only now remains of disenchantment, with increased Of yon living Image bright! alienation of humans from both the gods and the natural world, culmi- Josephson-Storm explains that nating in industrialized technologies in its own time and place Schiller’s and revolutionary political orders. poem, like the later German Romantic Indeed, through their acceptance and 98 ~ The New Atlantis Copyright 2018. All rights reserved. Print copies available at TheNewAtlantis.com/BackIssues. Disenchantment, Actually dissemination of this narrative, these But these hopes are frustrated. thinkers began the important work Now, Josephson-Storm does concede of encoding the myth, adding texture that the logical positivists attempted and detail to a world picture that “to refashion philosophy in scientific arguably still captivates the imagina- terms.” Theirs was “essentially a tion today. secularization project,” aiming to do away with notions of God and the he remainder of the book moves supernatural. Indeed, the positivists’ Ton to deal with the myth’s per- aim was broader even than this: They petuation. This is where things start sought “the elimination of metaphys- to get a bit fuzzy. ics,” the aspect of philosophy — the As story after story reveals, many cogito of Descartes, the “thing-in- of the post-Romantic scientists and itself ” of Kant, the idea of “nothing” peddlers of the disenchantment nar- in Heidegger — that they thought rative cultivated a deep and ongoing had become entirely unhinged from fascination with magic, the occult, human experience and the possi- and the paranormal, not to mention bility of empirical or logical veri- religious beliefs of all sorts. None fication. To sum up, according to of this, Josephson-Storm continu- Josephson-Storm, the positivists ally reminds us, fits the perception were anti- religion, anti-magic, and that “people no longer believe in anti-philosophy in the established magic and spirits.” And while the sense, opposed to anything that book admirably achieves its aim to evaded rigorous scientific thinking. “push back against this narrative,” As their forefather Auguste Comte, one niggling question persists: Why the original positivist of the nine- then does disenchantment continue teenth century, articulated it, theolo- to find traction today? gy always gives way to metaphysical In hopes of an answer to this philosophy, which in turn gives way question, I approached one of the to science. So, we might think, if we final chapters, on the Vienna Circle want to find a reason for why the of logical positivists, with bated myth of disenchantment has sur- breath. Surely, I thought, these early vived to our time, we should need to twentieth-century thinkers are the look no further. true culprits; these are the actual dis- But then Josephson-Storm leans enchanters who bastardized science back on his prior strategy.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences'
    H-Ideas Ungureanu on Josephson-Storm, 'The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences' Discussion published by Madeleine Elfenbein on Tuesday, October 16, 2018 Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm. The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2017. xiv + 411 pp. $96.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-226-40322-9; $32.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-226-40336-6. Reviewed by James Ungureanu (University of Queensland) Published on H-Sci-Med-Tech (October, 2018) Commissioned by Daniel Liu (Universty of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities) Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=51225 Auguste Viatte, in his two-volume classic, Les sources occultes du Romantisme (1928), was perhaps the first modern scholar to emphasize the importance of occult, theosophical, and esoteric movements in Enlightenment thought. Paul Oskar Kristeller then expanded on Viatte’s thesis by pointing out that Renaissance humanism was also permeated with elements from esoteric writings. “Western Esotericism,” as it is now called by scholars, is a mixture of philosophy, religion, art, literature, music, and even science, whose representative figures sought to return to “ancient” foundational texts, “original” forms of religious practice, and a more “natural” religion. The academic study of Western Esotericism has become an important feature in modern religious studies. Scholars such as W. J. Hanegraaff, Kocku von Stuckrad, and Egil Asprem, to name only a few, all argue that this originalist attitude is a major undercurrent of modernity, a religious subculture abundantly present in mainstream theological, philosophical, and scientific discourse.
    [Show full text]
  • Friedrich Schlegel, Romanticism, and the Re‐Enchantment of Nature
    This article was downloaded by: [Lancaster University Library] On: 07 June 2012, At: 07:09 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/sinq20 Friedrich Schlegel, Romanticism, and the Re‐enchantment of Nature Alison Stone a a Lancaster University, UK b Institute for Environment, Philosophy & Public Policy, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YG, UK E-mail: Available online: 21 Aug 2006 To cite this article: Alison Stone (2005): Friedrich Schlegel, Romanticism, and the Re‐enchantment of Nature, Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 48:1, 3-25 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00201740510015338 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
    [Show full text]
  • UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara the Disenchantment of The
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara The Disenchantment of the World and Ontological Wonder A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Studies by Martin Becker Lorca Committee in charge: Professor Thomas A. Carlson, Chair Professor Elliot R. Wolfson Professor Andrew Norris June 2019 The dissertation of Martin Becker Lorca is approved. ____________________________________________ Elliot R. Wolfson ____________________________________________ Andrew Norris ____________________________________________ Thomas A. Carlson, Committee Chair March 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation could not have been finished without the help of family and friends, I would like them thank here: In thank my classmates at UCSB, Dusty Hoesly, Michael Kinsella, Matt Robertson and Sohaira Siddiqui, for their intellectual companionship and friendship. For making possible the practice of reflection as a communal enterprise, I thank my friends: Eva Braunstein, Chris Morales, Samantha Kang, Lucas Wright, and Tim Snediker, who gave life to the philosophical group at Santa Barbara. With deep gratitude, for his precious help in editing and in giving essential feedback, I thank my friend Garrett Baer, with whom, in our philosophical walks at Lake Los Carneros (Goleta)—embodying the old peripatetic tradition—let ourselves to philosophize freely and sincerely. For crucial help editing this work, I thank Garrett Baer, Ryan Kelley, Allice Haynes, Kali Handelman, Kevin Johnston, Alexander Cohen, and Arnulf Becker Lorca. Much of the interpretation of “the nothing” comes from long and deep conversations with Franco Bertossa and Ricardo Pulido. I thank them for raising the question of Being, the one that touches “to the point where our entire nature is so shaken that is will never again be the same” (Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?, 179).
    [Show full text]
  • The Disenchantment of Logically Formal Legal Rationality, Or Max Weber’S Sociology in the Genealogy of the Contemporary Mode of Western Legal Thought
    The Disenchantment of Logically Formal Legal Rationality, or Max Weber’s Sociology in the Genealogy of the Contemporary Mode of Western Legal Thought Duncan Kennedy* Introduction Max Weber began his sociology of law with a description of the then present of Western legal thought, along with a brief summary of its pre- vious stages. This appreciation begins with a summary description of the Western legal thought of Weber’s time, as it looks from our present one hundred years later, emphasizing the contrast between the mainstream of his time, now called Classical Legal Thought, and its critics in the “social current.” Part II presents Weber’s sociology of law, comparing and con- trasting his approach with that of the social current. The most striking thing about Weber’s sociology of law, from the perspective of legal the- ory a century after he wrote, is his ambivalent endorsement of legal for- malism. This entailed rejection of the social current’s critique, a critique that is close to universally accepted today. In Part III, I explain Weber’s attitude toward legal formalism as motivated by the internal require- ments of his theory of domination, in which, after the demise of all ear- lier modes of legitimation, the Iron Cage of modernity is held together by bureaucrats defined by their adherence to that mode of legal reasoning. Part IV argues that Weber’s approach was inconsistent with the irration- alist and decisionist strands in his own theory of modernity, a theory that helps in understanding the current situation of legal thought, if we take the un-Weberian step of applying it to legal formalism.
    [Show full text]
  • About Modern Society and Culture
    UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) The problem of disenchantment: scientific naturalism and esoteric discourse, 1900-1939 Asprem, E. Publication date 2013 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Asprem, E. (2013). The problem of disenchantment: scientific naturalism and esoteric discourse, 1900-1939. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:03 Oct 2021 1 The Intellectual Sacrifice You need to beware of the word Entzauberung as cautiously as you beware of the word secularization. Both describe processes where it is easy to have fanciful pictures of an earlier age, and as easy to have illusions of our own generation. We got rid of imps and demons but we pushed them into the subconscious and called them by different names.
    [Show full text]
  • Two Meanings of Disenchantment: Sociological Condition Vs
    Philosophy & Th eology 17, 1 & 2 51 TWO MEANINGS OF DISENCHANTMENT: SOCIOLOGICAL CONDITION VS. PHILOSOPHICAL ACT— REASSESSING MAX WEBER’S THESIS OF THE DISENCHANTMENT OF THE WORLD Jeffrey E. Green Harvard University Abstract Although the primary meaning of Max Weber’s concept of dis- enchantment is as a sociological condition (the retreat of magic and myth from social life through processes of secularization and rationalization), as Weber himself makes clear in his address, “Sci- ence as a Vocation,” disenchantment can also be a philosophical act: an unusual form of moral discourse that derives new ethical direction out of the very untenability of a previously robust moral tradition. The philosophical variant of disenchantment is significant both because it contradicts numerous elements of the sociological version and because it suggests there are forms of cognition unique to moral philosophy (insofar as the derivation of a moral teaching from the very absence of one is foreign to both a religious and a scientific mindset). “Que sommes-nous donc sans le secours de ce qui n’existe pas?” —Paul Valéry For Anthony Kronman According to the biographical account of Max Weber written by his wife, the most fundamental animating concern underlying Weber’s vast body of research was the following dynamic: “He was moved, 52 Green: Two Meanings of Disenchantment above all, by the fact that on its earthly course an idea always and everywhere operates in opposition to its original meaning and thereby destroys itself” (Weber 1975, 337).1 This dialectic between an idea’s intended meaning and the effective truth of it actual implementation can be found in a variety of places within the Weberian corpus.
    [Show full text]
  • Being “A Good Animal”: Adorno, Posthumanism and International Relations
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by UEL Research Repository at University of East London Being “a Good Animal”: Adorno, Posthumanism and International Relations Stephen Hobden University of East London UK E-mail: [email protected] Abstract: This article examines the potential contribution of the work of Theodor Adorno to the development of a posthuman analysis of international relations. Despite a recent blossoming of “Adorno studies,” his writings on nature, particularly his concerns regarding human relations with other species, have received comparatively little attention. The article argues that many of the central concerns driving the recent development of posthuman analyses of international relations overlap with some of Adorno’s core preoccupations. In Dialectic of Enlightenment in particular, much concern is directed at the perceived disenchantment with nature and the impacts of this disenchantment both on human relations with the rest of nature, but also with inter-human relations. Adorno’s focus on the attention to suffering being the “condition for all truth” is not restricted simply to the human and coincides with the ethical concerns of posthuman approaches. Finally, whilst it has been claimed that Adorno’s work, especially his notion of the totally administered society, leads to a political impasse, it will be suggested here that recent work by Fabian Freyenhagen on the practical elements of Adorno’s philosophy suggest that our priority, rather than living rightly, should be on “living less wrongly.” Keywords Adorno, posthumanism, international relations theory, inter-species relations, suffering, Critical Theory Being “a Good Animal”: Adorno, Posthumanism and International Relations Stephen Hobden “What's driving there in the car and sticking out its long trunk? Its a mammoth, its a mammoth, and its driving home”1 Introduction The photograph of Theodor Adorno from 1943 is somewhat surprising.
    [Show full text]
  • INTRODUCTION the Limits of Reason
    INTRODUCTION The Limits of Reason Nature is false; but I’m a bit of a liar myself. — aleister crowley, The Book of Lies, ch. 79 this book is about people who have sought to explore the outer limits of reason. Some of them were eminent natural scientists, some were philosophers, while others were steeped in the currents of occultism. They all shared an opposition to certain epistemological presuppositions that had been dominant since the Enlightenment. They re-visited fundamental questions concerning the possibility of metaphysics, freedom of will, and the explicability of the natural world. They redrew the relations between facts and values, mechanism and purpose, and science and religion. The solutions our protagonists came up with may appear heterodox when judged against the received view of Enlightenment thought. Yet, their ostensibly deviant responses were formulated in the middle of one of the most extraordinary periods of scientific development in recorded human history. Indeed, some of our protagonists contributed directly to those very developments. The core argument of this book revolves around the famous thesis attributed to Max Weber that a process of intellectualisation and ratio- nalisation has led to the “disenchantment of the world”.1 This process was thought to be theological in origin: the invention of monotheism in antiq- uity pushed the divine, mysterious, capricious and “magical” out of the mundane affairs of the world, paving the way for a rationalisation of ethi- cal systems and economic behaviour as well as epistemology.2 The move from theological immanence to transcendence was radicalised during the Reformation, in polemical exchanges where the “pagan” immanence of Roman Catholicism was singled out as heretical by Lutheran and Calvinist 1 See especially Weber, ‘Wissenschaft als Beruf’.
    [Show full text]
  • Weber's Science As a Vocation
    JCS0010.1177/1468795X19851408Journal of Classical SociologyShapin 851408research-article2019 Article Journal of Classical Sociology 1 –18 Weber’s Science as a © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: Vocation: A moment in the sagepub.com/journals-permissions https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X19851408DOI: 10.1177/1468795X19851408 history of “is” and “ought” journals.sagepub.com/home/jcs Steven Shapin Harvard University, USA Abstract This essay situates Weber’s 1917 lecture Science as a Vocation in relevant historical contexts. The first context is thought about the changing nature of the scientific role and its place in institutions of higher education, and attention is drawn to broadly similar sentiments expressed by Thorstein Veblen. The second context is that of scientific naturalism and materialism and related sentiments about the “conflicts” between natural science and religion. Finally, there is the context of Weber’s lecture as a performance played out before a specific academic audience at the University of Munich, and the essay suggests the pertinence of that performance to an appreciation of the lecture’s meaning. Keywords Max Weber, vocation, science, Thorstein Veblen, scientific naturalism, scientific materialism Science as a vocation: Its past and present Here are several things typical of modern academic performances, whether written or oral. First, there is a display of efforts to get the facts right, to show that matters are indeed as they are said to be. Second, there is an expectation that at least some of those facts are, to a degree, novel, non-obvious, worth pointing out, and that the interpretations or explanations in which the facts are enlisted are plausible, similarly novel, and meriting consideration.
    [Show full text]
  • What Is Esotericism? Does It Exist? How Can It Be Understood?
    Helmut Zander What Is Esotericism? Does It Exist? How Can It Be Understood? Abstract: The term “esotericism” has been used by practitioners since the late 18th century to describe non-hegemonic ideas and practices. The ideas behind this term were mainly Christian ideas – or ideas from other sources (e.g. “pagan” ones), inter- preted by Christians. In the 20th century, the term esotericism became a scientific concept in Western Europe and North America, following a theological path which was opened in the 17th century. This cultural relativity limits the possible application of this term to other regions, cultures or language traditions and claims to determine possible semantic, pragmatic or functional equivalents from a critical perspective. Consequently, there is no culturally invariant “essence” of “esotericism”.Eachcon- cept applied to “esotericism” contains only possible – not mandatory – features and involves normative decisions. If one uses such a “toolbox” of features, a com- parison of different phenomena or traditions is only possible with regard to specific features or a group of features. Consequence: Concrete definitions of esotericism apply only to concrete fields of research – which means: Different definitions of eso- tericism will overlap. They will have family resemblances but never be identical. Since our concepts of esotericism will alwaysbedifferent,intercultural comparison will remain difficult. However, scholarly research must resist (over-)simplification when it comes to interpreting reality. 1 The Religionist Problem of “Esotericism” The term “esotericism” (which will henceforth be used mainly without quota- tion marks) is a relatively recent production of the history of the English lan- guage. Comparable results are found for the other languages of Western Europe.1 This term first appeared in German in 1792 in a text on the “esotericism of the Order” of the ancient Pythagoreans,2 but remained extremely rare for a long time.
    [Show full text]
  • Rationalisation, Nihilism and Metaphysics ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ Jan Overwijk 3400247 August 14Th 2015
    Rationalisation, Nihilism and Metaphysics ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ Jan Overwijk 3400247 August 14th 2015 Supervisors: Prof. dr. Bert van den Brink Prof. dr. Gregg Lambert Prof. dr. Teun Tieleman Summary This thesis is concerned with the theme of modernisation as rationalisation in Jürgen Habermas’s social theory. It starts, in section I, with an exploration of the origins of the rationalisation thesis in Max Weber’s work. We will see that he represents rationalisation as the proliferation of a formal rationality throughout various social spheres due to technological advance. This formal, technical means-rationality drives out reasonings about substantive ends. Hence, the Weberian theme of rationalisation represents a species of nihilism. Habermas, as we see in section II, reformulates Weber’s sociological framework in terms of purposive action oriented to success and communicative action oriented to mutual understanding. Put simply, the former deals with means, the latter with ends. Habermas furthermore locates social spheres that house patterns of purposive and communicative action, namely respectively the system and the lifeworld. Like Weber, Habermas identifies the tendency for the system to drive out reasonings about ends, i.e. to ‘colonise’ the lifeworld. This colonisation thesis is Habermas’s central diagnosis of social pathologies in modern society. In section III, I will turn to a second-order analysis of works in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) in order to criticise Habermas’s notion of purposive rationality and the system. I will argue that Habermas’s Weberian depiction of rationalisation as a nihilist social force tends to become a metaphysics, because Habermas theorises technical rationality as a norm-free instrument.
    [Show full text]
  • A Pedagogy of Secularism for Counseling and Psychotherapy
    religions Article Disenchantment, Buffering, and Spiritual Reductionism: A Pedagogy of Secularism for Counseling and Psychotherapy Waleed Y. Sami * , John Mitchell Waters , Amelia Liadis, Aliza Lambert and Abigail H. Conley School of Education, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284, USA; [email protected] (J.M.W.); [email protected] (A.L.); [email protected] (A.L.); [email protected] (A.H.C.) * Correspondence: [email protected] Abstract: The various mental health disciplines (e.g., counseling, psychology, social work) all man- date competence in working with clients from diverse religious and spiritual backgrounds. However, there is growing evidence that practitioners feel ill-equipped to meet the needs of their religiously- and spiritually-diverse clients. Furthermore, formal education on religion and spirituality remains optional within coursework. Research on religion and spirituality is also noted for its reductionism to observable outcomes, leaving much of its nuance uncovered. This paper will utilize philosophies of secularism and explore the concepts of disenchantment, buffering, and coercion, to help illumi- nate why our contemporary society and our disciplines struggle with this incongruence between stated values and implementation. Case vignettes and recommendations will be provided to help practitioners and educators. Keywords: secularism; religion; spirituality; psychotherapy; counseling Citation: Sami, Waleed Y., John Mitchell Waters, Amelia Liadis, Aliza Lambert, and Abigail H. Conley. 2021. Disenchantment, Buffering, and 1. Introduction Spiritual Reductionism: A Pedagogy Research across many health disciplines affirms religion and spirituality are an im- of Secularism for Counseling and portant element for physical and mental health, including medicine (e.g., Demir 2019; Psychotherapy. Religions 12: 612. D’Souza 2007; Isaac et al.
    [Show full text]