The Reenchantment of the World Read Free

a very technical monograph, I was

able only to hint at some of the problems that characterize life in the

Western industrial nations, problems that I find profoundly disturbing.1

I began that study in the belief that the roots of our dilemma were

social and economic in nature; by the time I had completed it, I was

convinced that I had omitted a whole epistemological dimension. I began

to feel, in other words, that something was wrong with our entire world

view. Western life seems to be drifting toward increasing entropy,

economic and technological chaos, ecological disaster, and ultimately,

psychic dismemberment and disintegration; and I have come to doubt that

sociology and economics can by themselves generate an adequate explanation

for such a state of affairs.

The present book, then, is an attempt to take my previous analysis one

step further; to grasp the modern era, from the sixteenth century to

the present, as a whole, and to come to terms with the metaphysical

presuppositions that define this period. This is not to treat mind,

or consciousness, as an independent entity, cut off from material

life; I hardly believe such is the case. For purposes of discussion,

however, it is often necessary to separate these two aspects of human

experience; and although I shall make every effort to demonstrate their

interpenetration, my primary focus in this book is the transformations

of the human mind. This emphasis stems from my conviction that the

fundamental issues confronted by any civilization in its history, or by

any person in his or her life, are issues of meaning . And historically,

our loss of meaning in an ultimate philosophical or religious sense --

the split between fact and value which characterizes the modern age --

is rooted in the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries. Why should this be so?

The view of nature which predominated in the West down to the eve of

the Scientific Revolution was that of an enchanted world. Rocks, trees,

rivers, and clouds were all seen as wondrous, alive, and human beings

felt at home in this environment. The cosmos, in short, was a place

of belonging . A. member of this cosmos was not an alienated observer

of it but a direct participant in its drama. His personal destiny was

bound up with its destiny, and this relationship gave meaning to his

life. This type of consciousness -- what I shall refer to in this book

as "participating consciousness" -- involves merger, or identification,

with one's surroundings, and bespeaks a psychic wholeness that has long

since passed from the scene. Alchemy, as it turns out, was the last

great coherent expression of participating consciousness in the West.

The story of the modern epoch, at least on the level of mind, is

one of progressive disenchantment. From the sixteenth century on,

mind has been progressively expunged from the phenomenal world. At

least in theory, the reference points for all scientific explanation

are matter and motion -- what historians of science refer to as the

"mechanical philosophy." Developments that have thrown this world view

into question -- quantum mechanics, for example, or certain types of

contemporary ecological research -- have not made any significant dent

in the dominant mode of thinking. That mode can best be described as

disenchantment, nonparticipation, for it insists on a rigid distinction

between observer and observed. Scientific consciousness is alienated

consciousness: there is no ecstatic merger with nature, but rather total

separation from it. Subject and object are always seen in opposition

to each other. I am not my experiences, and thus not really a part

of the world around me. The logical end point of this world view is a

feeling of total reification: everything is an object, alien, not-me;

and I am ultimately an object too, an alienated "thing" in a world of

other, equally meaningless things. This world is not of my own