UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Disenchantment of the World and Ontological Wonder Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5d33r6j4 Author Becker, Martin Stephan Publication Date 2019 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California 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). I thank my dear brother Arnulf for his intellectual support at different stages of this project. For his concern at a crucial moment of the prospectus, and for pushing me to rethink the project as it finally took form, I thank Professor Andrew Norris For the sagacity in his teaching, and for his erudition and modesty, an example of a true scholar, I thank Professor Elliot Wolfson. I am particularly grateful to Professor Thomas Carlson. In his teaching, advising, and careful reading of the various versions of the prospectus and the dissertation, Professor Carlson embodies solicitude’s “leap ahead.” To Claudia Cofré, I express my gratitude not only for formal help, but also for enduring my constant talk about modern enchantment and ontological wonder. With love and endless gratitude, I dedicate my dissertation to my parents: Arnulf Becker and Angélica Lorca. iii VITA OF MARTIN BECKER LORCA March 2019 EDUCATION Ph.D. University of California, Santa Barbara, Expected 2019 M.A., Religious Studies University of California, Santa Barbara, 2013 Certificate of Science of Religion University of Chile, 2009 B.A., Philosophy Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, 2004 PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT 2016 Instructor, “Christian Mysticism,” Comparative Literature and Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, Summer quarter. 2015 Instructor, “Christian Mysticism,” Comparative Literature and Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, Summer quarter. 2014 Instructor, “Christian Mysticism,” Comparative Literature and Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, Summer quarter. 2013 Teaching Assistant, “Western Civilization Modernity,” Department of Religious Studies, Spring quarter. 2012 Teaching Assistant, “Introduction to Religious Studies,” Department of Religious Studies, Fall quarter. 2004-2009 Teacher, History of Religions; Almenar del Maipo School, Santiago, Chile. 2005-2006 Teacher, History of Religion; Obispo Alvear School, Santiago, Chile. PUBLICATIONS “El desencantamiento del Retorno de la Religión: una Lectura a Max Weber y Peter Sloterdijk”, chapter in Breviario multidisciplinario sobre el fenómeno religioso, edit. Boris Briones Soto y Stefanie Butendieck Hijerra (Santiago: CLACSO, 2018). FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS 2012-2016 Becas Chile for Ph.D. 2010-2012 Becas Chile for M.A. PH.D. FIELD EXAMS “Modern Philosophy and Christian Thought,” completed with Thomas Carlson. “Platonic Tradition and Historiography,” completed with Christine Thomas. iv “Existentialism and Frankfurt School,” completed with Andrew Norris. CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS 2018 “Más allá de las creencias: El asombro como aproximación afectiva al fenómeno religióso” in Diversidad de creencias y de sentido en una sociedad plural, Segundo Congreso Internacional de Estudios de la Religión Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile. 2017 “Crítica al desencantamiento del mundo y al retorno de las religiones” in II Congreso Nacional sobre el Fenómeno Religioso en el mundo contemporáneo, Universidad Alberto Hurtado y Universidad de Chile, Santiago. 2017 “El desencantamiento del Retorno de la Religión: una Lectura a Max Weber y Peter Sloterdijk,” in Primer Congreso Internacional de la Sociedad Chilena de Ciencias de las Religiones, Concepción, Chile. 2016 “The Nihil within Nihilism: The Uncanniest of All Specters,” in Specters, Hauntings, Presences, Graduate Student Conference, Northwestern University, Evanston. 2016 “The Wonder that things are instead of nothing: the uncanny gift of nihilism,” in Wonder and the Natural World, International Conference by the IU Consortium for the Study of Religion, Ethics, and Society, Indiana University, Bloomington. 2016 “Between Mind and Body: Spiritual Senses in Ernesto Cardenal’s Mystical Poetry,” in Unveiling the Body, XVI Lusophone and Hispanic Graduate Student Conference, University of California, Santa Barbara. LANGUAGES Spanish: fluent German: fluent French: reading ability Latin: reading ability Greek: elementary v ABSTRACT The Disenchantment of the World and Ontological Wonder by Martin Becker Lorca Only a hundred years ago, Max Weber argued that the process of rationalization has caused the disenchantment of the modern world. When rationalization eclipses all mystery and wonder, then what remains is a disenchanted world ready for exploitation. Recent authors have suggested that re-enchantment could prevent the exploitation of nature that is associated with rationalization. However, by challenging the notion that the modern “rational,” instrumental relation to nature is necessarily opposed to wonder, I develop an hermeneutic of enchantment that makes visible the implicit enchantment of modern rationalization. I argue that the experience of ontological wonder both reveals the modern invisible enchantment and yields care for all beings, thus challenging the domination of nature. In Part I, I elucidate Weber’s disenchantment thesis and explore its contemporary interpretations in Jane Bennett’s The Enchantment of Modern Life, Jason Josephson-Storm’s The Myth of Disenchantment, and Joshua Landy and Michael Saler’s The Re-Enchantment of the World. Taking seriously Weber’s identification of value spheres as modern gods, I demonstrate that, contrary to the widespread interpretation, Weberian disenchantment does not vi signal a lack of enchantment, but instead describes the struggle of competing forces of enchantment. Then, based on Dialectic of Enlightenment, I study the entanglement of enchantment and disenchantment, and use the notion of domination of nature as the standpoint from which I can assess these different sources of contemporary enchantment as they relate to the ecological crisis. In Part II, I focus on Martin Heidegger’s work in order to develop the concept of ontological wonder. When attuned by ontological wonder, we do not marvel at what something is, but are instead struck suddenly by the obvious but usually unrecognized fact that beings are. Contrary to Heidegger’s doubts regarding wonder’s capacity to reveal Being in modernity, I explore the capacity of wonder (articulated together with anxiety) to disclose beings in their concealed strangeness. Following Heidegger’s counterintuitive logic according to which Being reveals itself in its refusal, I propose that modern nihilism makes the highest revelation of Being possible. Thus, reading Heidegger against himself, I articulate a “positive” reading of modernity in which the experience of Being is available precisely in its unavailability. Crucially, this “positive” reading deconstructs the simple oppositional structure with which I started. Rather than being opposed, ontological wonder and the rationalized domination of nature share the same root: Being. To conclude, I define two functions of ontological wonder regarding modern enchantment. First, ontological wonder interrupts our implicit sense of worldhood; the disclosure of ontological thatness thus brings the world’s otherwise invisible enchantment to the fore. Although there is no assurance that ontological wonder stops the enchantment of rationalization, it makes the latter patent thereby exposing it to possible critique. Second, I claim that wonder has an ethical role: the insight into the thatness of beings breaks the logic of vii instrumental rationality. While there is no strictly necessary