Reenchantment Of The World

A summary of:
Berman, M. (1981). The Reenchantment of the World. Cornell University Press: London.

Berman is – to state the to the lowest degree – non thrilled alongside the state of things as he sees them. And he writes this inwards 1981. I tin solely imagine the mood he’s inwards today.

In his book, he traces the arc of scientific thought to its hapless zenith:
“Scientific consciousness is alienated consciousness: at that topographic point is no ecstatic merger alongside nature, but rather total separation from it. Subject together with object are ever seen inwards opposition to each other. I am non my experiences, together with thus non actually a utilization of the public unopen to me. The logical destination betoken of this public sentiment is a feeling of total reification: everything is an object, alien, not-me; together with I am ultimately an object too, an alienated “thing” inwards a public of othere, as meaningless things. This public is non of my ain making; the cosmos cares nada for me, together with I create non actually similar a sense of belonging to it. What I feel, inwards fact, is a sickness inwards the soul” (17). To Berman, “We have, as Dante wrote inwards the Divine Comedy, awoken to notice ourselves inwards a black woods” (23). It is black exactly because at that topographic point is no light, i.e. no God: “The phrase is Weber’s: die Entzauberung der Welt. Schiller, a century earlier, had an as telling aspect for it: die Entgotterung der Natur, the ‘disgodding’ of nature’” (69).

His betoken is actually that scientific thinking is becoming our human nature (much as Carr together with others would argue): “What I am disputation is that the scientific public sentiment is integral to modernity, volume society, together with the province of affairs described above. It is our consciousness, inwards the Western industrial nations…” (22). Just as Carr mightiness argue, together with Marx, together with evidently Marcuse concluded: “they bring function what they own” (17).

Berman argues that nosotros must non recollect of scientific as beingness ‘better’ than other ways of knowing. Scientific thinking, the scientific method – these are “situation-bound” (150), i.e. a production of their time; together with therefore, it cannot bring “epistemological superiority” over other ways of knowing. As an alternative, for example, at that topographic point are to a greater extent than enchanted ways of agreement the world. Berman may live criticized for romanticizing the past, disputation that, “For to a greater extent than than 99 per centum of human history, the public was enchanted together with human being saw himself as an integral utilization of it” (23). He blames this disenchantment for our recent toxic human relationship alongside the earth, non to advert the devastating psychological effects this has on humans. Consider these:

• “The history of the West… is the progressive removal of mind, or spirit, from phenomenal appearances” (69).

• “Modern scientific discipline together with applied scientific discipline are based non solely on a hostile mental attitude toward the environment, but on the repression of the trunk together with the unconscious; together with unless these tin live recovered, unless participating consciousness tin live restored inwards a way that is scientifically (or at to the lowest degree rationally) credible together with non simply a relapse into naïve animism, together with then what it agency to live a human beingness volition forever live lost” (132).

He suggests that the solely hope for us is to re-enchant the world; together with to a greater extent than specifically, “Some type of holistic, or participating, consciousness together with a corresponding sociopolitical formation bring to emerge if nosotros are to last as a species” (23).

The problem is, you lot can’t just forget the things that bring function utilization of your worldview. “Here, then, is the crux of the modern dilemma. We cannot function dorsum to alchemy or animism – at to the lowest degree that does non seem likely” (23). On the other hand, Berman cannot breadbasket the thought of living inwards the public that scientific progress promises to Pb us toward. And it’s true, I would rather alive inwards a public similar the i Heraclitus knew (“ ‘What is divine escapes men’s notice because of their incredulity’” (95)) than the public of Simon Stevin (“What appears a wonder is non a wonder” (67)) or Isaac Newton (“The mystery of nearly ii millennia was over: i could live reassured that the heavens that human face upwardly us on a starry black held no to a greater extent than secrets than a few grains of sand running through our fingers” (42)).

One of the troubling features of the scientific worldview for Berman is that it changes the questions nosotros ask: “So long as men were content to enquire why objects fell, why phenomena occurred, the enquiry of how they brutal or occurred was irrelevant. These ii questions are non mutually exclusive, at to the lowest degree non inwards theory; but inwards historical price they bring proven to live so. ‘How’ became increasingly important, ‘why’ increasingly irrelevant. In the twentieth century, as nosotros shall see, ‘how’ has function our ‘why’” (28). This, inwards fact, is non so dissimilar from what Wertheim argues.

This obsession alongside the how has caused us to sentiment the public as beingness a big, complex, machine. For example, “Man’s activity as a thinking beingness – together with that is his essence, according to Descartes – is purely mechanical” (34). From this perspective, nosotros bring developed the scientific method (which farther reinforces this worldview, it should live noted): “Subdivide, measure, combine; subdivide, measure, combine…. This method may properly live called ‘atomistic,’ inwards the sense that knowing consists of subdividing a matter into its smallest components” (34). Max Weber recognized how this variety of thinking stripped hitherto natural processes of purpose, making them meaningful or valuable solely insomuch as they are instrumentally valuable, profitable, expedient: “Max Weber called this mental attitude of heed zweckrational, that is, purposively rational, or instrumentally rational” (40).

The other goal of scientific discipline is control; obsessive, pathological control: “Finally, atomism, quantifiability, together with the deliberate human activity of viewing nature as an abstraction from which i tin distance oneself – all opened upwardly the possibility that Bacon proclaimed as the truthful goal of science: control” (46). Calculation was of course of educational activity necessary for the evolution of modern capitalism; together with “The High German sociologist Georg Simmel argued that the coin economic scheme ‘created the ideal of exact numerical calculation,’ together with that the ‘mathematically exact interpretation of the cosmos’ was the ‘theoretical counterpart of a coin economy’” (55).

And, as I bring been harping on most forever, the resultant is that, “modern scientific discipline is grounded inwards a precipitous distinction betwixt fact together with value; it tin solely tell us how to create something, non what to create or whether nosotros should create it” (51).