The Disenchantment Of The World

A summary of:
Szerszynski, B. (2005). Nature, Technology as well as the Sacred: Religion as well as Spirituality inward the Modern World. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford.
Preface & Chapter 1: The Disenchantment of the World

I read Berman quite some fourth dimension ago, but felt I should post service a summary of his declaration before doing ane for Szerszynski, because the 2 convey real dissimilar ways of agreement the same epistemological shift. Specifically, Szerszynski criticizes the notion of the “disenchantment of nature” that Berman bemoans; as well as indeed that Weber describes inward his operate on bureaucracy (“The disenchantment of nature is primal to Weber’s account: inward a disenchanted monastic enjoin ‘there are inward regulation no mysterious, incalculable powers at work’ – everything is capable of existence explained (Weber, 1989: 13))” (5).

Szerszyski does non deny that it would seem from appearances that in that place is indeed a disenchantment of sorts occurring inward the modern age: “Nature is mathematical – something to move counted, measured as well as mapped. Nature is immanent – it operates according to its ain internal processes, rather than existence shaped or guided past times a supernatural hand. It is mechanical, behaving according to movement as well as effect, non seeking teleological goals. It is a resource, to move owned or held inward common, to move used or preserved. It gives upwards its meanings to careful observation as well as scientific theory, non to mythology or divination. This is the nature of scientific, industrial modernity, the nature whose existence is mastered past times science, whose value is measured past times economics, as well as whose potentiality is determined past times technology” (5).

This sounds rather similar Berman. But as well as thus Szerszynki pauses as well as decides to expect deeper. He asks, “to paraphrase Mark Twain, what if reports of the decease of nature convey been greatly exaggerated? What if the narrative of the disenchantment of nature is niggling to a greater extent than than a creation myth of modern monastic enjoin – a half-truth told inward monastic enjoin to secure a sense of modernity’s exceptionality, its discontinuity amongst before cultures (Crook, 1991; Latour, 1993)” (7)?

The key departure inward his interpretation of the tendency is that it’s non that God is dead; but rather, a shuffle has occurred, which has produced a dissimilar ordering of the sacred inward our lived reality: “I do non desire exactly to pose exceptions to a general, assumed disenchantment of nature; instead, I desire to suggest a shift inward the whole way nosotros hollo upwards of that disenchantment, inward price of an overarching laid upwards of transformations inward the sacral ordering of the world” (xi-xii). So, bizarrely, it seems that fifty-fifty the clear trends toward secularization – the thinning out of congregations, for event – is only a manifestation of this restructuring: “…rather than detail orderings of the sacred existence a answer to a detail sense or agreement of God, I would rather come across whatever detail agreement of God (including the catch that in that place is no God) equally a characteristic of a detail ordering of the sacred, equally solely intelligible when that monastic enjoin is grasped equally a Gestalt” (ix-x). Similarly, nosotros should non hail the “revival of ‘nature religion’” inward contemporary societies equally a “‘return of the repressed’, equally an eruption of a long-suppressed infidel cosmology as well as sensibility” (9): “Instead, nosotros should sympathise contemporary ideas of as well as practices roughly nature equally prove of a postmodern sacred, a way of being-in-the-world as well as a cosmology that is the production of a long as well as distinctive historical process, as well as shaped past times distinctively contemporary conditions” (9).

So similar Berman, Szerszynski concedes that epistemologies are ‘situation-bound’ (“…what Heidegger calls our ‘throwness’ inward history agency that our being-in-the-world is mediated through – no, stronger, is incarnated inward – the cultural currents into which nosotros are thrown…. (x)), as well as that they are self-reinforcing (“And it is solely when nosotros approach nature inward a technological way – inward a way that is concerned higher upwards all amongst prediction as well as command – that the kinds of noesis offered past times scientific discipline as well as economic science move intelligible as well as useful (Habermas, 1971a)” (5)); but he makes the claim that in that place is a thread that connects these ways of knowing: “whatever grapheme the local eddies powerfulness have, [I promise to present that] the wide swell is e'er that of the sacred” (x).

In other words, his mass aims to present that the sacred is non dead; it is non lost; it is incognito, disguised equally secularization, atheism, disenchantment, etc.. All the while, the sacred nevertheless guides our agreement of the globe on a fundamental level.