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The presence of the dragon („zmeul”) in the Romanian fairy tale is obvious in two important moments of the subsequent construction of the disenchantment. On the one hand, we have an aggressive manifestation marked by the abduction of the virgin and, on the other hand, we capture it defensively when the hero "traps" its territory. Our intention was to observe to what extent the discourse in the Romanian folklore combines the two elements into a single construct. The disenchantment not only recalls the name of the fantastic being, but will even include it among the nine degrees of the demonic beings, the antipode of the angelic beings. The connection between the dragons and Avestiţa, the female killer, female demon associated by the researchers with Lilith, the undead and the aggressive lion (Nergal), will send us to the Semitic demonology. As demonic beings, they block the passage, a gesture identical to the victim's attack, felt in the form of the disease.

This article explores the Reformation's influence on the secularization of Western society according to the conceptions of Ch. Taylor and B. Gregory. Both authors point to the Reformation as a watershed moment in this process. However, they focus on different aspects of this historical phenomenon and assess its effects in contrasting ways. In Ch. Taylor's book "A Secular Age" he reviews the Reformation in light of M. Webber's ideas and agrees that it has caused important reverberations, namely: disenchantment of time and space leading to the formation of instrumental reason, rehabilitation of work as a social activity and the spread of high moral standards to the masses, which then became a precondition for the formation of disciplinary societies. Hence, Ch. Taylor perceives the Reformation as a religious factor of predominant social progress. At the same time, he notices that the exacerbation of the doctrine of predestination in Protestantism became an obstacle for the intellectuals of the Modern Age to apprehend Christianity. On the other hand, B. Gregory poses a more critical review of the Reformation in his book "The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society". He argues that doctrinal disagreements caused by Protestants' numerous convictions have consequently hindered contemporary Western society. Some of the unintended effects he identifies are the subjectivization of moral standards and the replacement of the substantial ethics of good by formal ethics of rights. Additionally, B. Gregory asserts that Protestant doctrines were influenced by the metaphysical univocity of being to a certain extent, which entailed the naturalistic character of modern science. However, several of his critics have questioned his research emphasizing the lack of evidence to support this last claim. Critics have also observed that his understanding of the Reformation as a destructive deviation from medieval Christianity is mainly based on an idealized view of the Middle Ages. Still, notwithstanding the one-sided character of B. Gregory's representation of the Reformation and the lack of reasonableness of some of his arguments, he correctly demonstrates its ethical consequences. This allows the conclusion that among the Reformation's consequences were both, those that contributed to the social progress and those that led to the emergence of the new ethical problems. This mean that the one-sided assessment of the Reformation as an exclusively positive or entirely negative phenomenon is inaccurate since it does not take into account the plurality of its direct and indirect, intended and unintended consequences. In this respect, Ch. Taylor is more moderate in his analysis of the Reformation, because he takes into consideration both aspects of its influence, in contrast to B. Gregory who notices only the destructive ones.

This study intends to articulate correspondences between the visionary imagination and the fissures produced by an industrial and protestant modernity in a selection of poems and referential writings by William Blake, R. W. Emerson, and Walt Whitman. The relationship between the integrative nature of a mundus imaginalis and its figuration in the works of the poets is also relevant. As a result, we can better appreciate poetic visions that converse, simultaneously, with an imaginal site and its necessary counterpart, a disenchanted modern culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of the article is the interpretation of Christianity by Alain de Benoist, thinker of the New Right. He believes that Christianity has brought about a revolution in the world-view of European peoples. Stating that it is 'Paganism' that was the original and authentic basis of European spirituality, mentality, and axiology, Benoist calls Christianity the "Bolshevism of Antiquity". The article outlines the concepts of Christian desacralisation of the world, the inaugural dissociation, and the theory of progress. The analysis showed that the foremost revolutionary trait of Christianity is the radical dualism of the created and uncreated being, which is in direct contradiction with the pre-Christian/European ontological monism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dominant perspectives on technology adoption and consumption tend to be cognitive, instrumental, and individualistic. We offer a desire-centered, future-oriented, and culturally grounded alternative model called the Disenchanted Enchantment Model (DEM). Drawing on historical evidence and revised interpretations of theories of enchantment and disenchantment by Weber and Saler, we show that desire is at the heart of technology consumption's enchantments, and how its fulfilment is temporary, skeptical, and ironic. We provide an important cultural counterbalance to models such as the Technology Acceptance Model, which replace wonder with reason. Instead we theorize the process that drives contemporary technology adoption as centering on desirous senses of wonderment and anticipation. We offer current and recent examples of the DEM process and discuss the implications this model holds for a new understanding of technology, consumption, desire, and broader consumer culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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There is a need to analyse the environmental conflicts that arise out of species reintroduction proposals and what these conflicts can tell us not just about rewilding as a form of "conservation," but also the broader societal conditions in which the conflicts occur. This paper analyses the emblematic nature of the contested proposal to reintroduce the Eurasian lynx into the Lake District, where a complex history has resulted in both a distinctive landscape and unique economy. It is within this context that the emblematic nature of the reintroduction conflict must be analysed. The author argues that the spirituality of the Lakes, conjured through the artistic expression of the Lake Romantics, was within the context of the industrial revolution and the processes of industrialisation, urbanisation, and rationalisation. On the other hand, the proposal to reintroduce the lynx and the focus on personal redemption and "wildness" are a product of the capitalism of late modernity, defined by global capital and information flows, individualism, and the extension of rationalisation and financialisation into the social and natural world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudios Filosóficos is the property of Estudios Filosoficos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Thinking Nature is essay in negative ecology, written in part to commemorate the deaths nature has died, pace Morton, Žižek, and even Latour. We have killed it; what now should we do? How to move forward? The path ahead will require eco-political action, to be sure. But brazen activism without the guidance of contemplative thought, McGrath argues, will not be sufficient to meet the demands of the present. Such a task demands discernment regarding the deeper roots of our ecological crisis, and knowledge of the developments that make possible both the emergence and the collapse of modernity, with its advancements in science and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumption practices that are environmentally and socially more conscious have been studied previously; however, consumers who entirely reject market society and the ideologies associated with it in search for alternatives have received little attention. The participants in this study have had the means to enjoy all of the privileges of market society, yet chose to drop out of their well‐paid corporate positions in search of more meaningful lives. A framework to understand their motivations for this choice, the alternatives they present, and the challenges they face is developed through a qualitative inquiry using in‐depth interviews, secondary data sources and observation. To these individuals, living in market society represents an eventually dreaded path leading to a vast emptiness, contrarily their departure appears to be a decision of "choosing life." In their alternative lives, they find meaning in sharing with and helping others, also through an existence with, not against nature. Choosing to have only occasional marketplace interactions, they exhibit a willingness to exist within and navigate multiple organizations of life, even if preference for the one experimented with is strong. The practices of such members of society show potentials for greater change to alleviate the shortcomings of a solely market‐driven way of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This interview with Charles Taylor explores a central concern throughout his work, namely, his concern to 'reenchant' self and world through a careful examination of value as emanating from the world rather than from ourselves. It focuses especially on the status of his central doctrine of 'strong evaluation' against the background of mainstream meta-ethical theories, such as neo-Kantian constructivism and robust realist non-naturalism. Additionally, the relationship between Taylor's theism and his moral–political philosophy is discussed. A key issue that is examined is what ontological background picture can make sense of the strong evaluative experience of higher worth. Some other related issues that are explored revolve around Taylor's papers 'Disenchantment-Reenchantment' and 'Recovering the Sacred', which tentatively explore the meaning of reenchantment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1863, the publication of Vie de Jésus makes Renan part of the movement of "desymbolisation" and secularization of sacred texts. Eliminating the notion of miracles from his writing on religion, Renan anticipates the pattern of Weber and Gauchet's "disenchantment of the world". It is thus by the methods of scientific analysis (eviction of miracles and psychological explications instead) that Renan is able to piece together the Messiah's life, putting forward the idea of an organic Parousia, and making science a new religious ideal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legacy of Jacob Grimm, one of the Grimm brothers, is not limited to philological, mythological and folklore studies but also includes significant research into law and legal culture, which was seen as archaeological in his time. This resonated in classics of social and legal anthropology but was largely repudiated due to the anti–German sentiments raised around the World Wars. Some scholars have praised Jacob as the founder of legal ethnography and archaeology as well as legal pluralism, while others have criticized him as a nationalist inventor of a single German customary law. This paper argues that while Jacob's legal research was tightly related to the German politics of self–determination; it is a distinct scholarly work whose many aspects are pertinent even for more recent socio–legal ethnographies. It points out especially the philological origins of his concept of law and the idea of legal poetry as a key factor in the formation of anthropological legal pluralism. Finally, Jacob's attempt to understand the law in the past is seen as a transitional scholarly moment of the disenchantment of the law, which was closed before in theological and philological forms, that inaugurated the road to contemporary legal anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Nueva Revista del Pacífico is the property of Universidad de Playa Ancha de Ciencias de la Educacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

According to the German sociologist Norbert Elias it was Max Weber who labeled a social phenomenon that had no name at that time. In his seminal study Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Weber devised a theory of charismatic leadership, where charisma stands for out of the ordinary (Ausseralltäglich) qualities attributed to a person. Charisma exists as long as there are people to acknowledge it and believe in its magical power. The world we live in is in no way short of charismatic or would-be charismatic persons. And history has taught us that charisma has also a dark side to it. But what is it that makes us more inclined to surrender to someone`s personal magnetism? Is it because we are social creatures who have evolved a prosocial behavior for our own good? Or maybe the answer lies in the nature of our “disenchanted” world? My paper attempts to show that there is no contradiction between the two while tackling both Max Weber`s theory of charismatic leadership and the newest research in the field of social and evolutionary psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on a pioneering figure in the philological study of language and literature in early modern Japan, Motoori Norinaga 本居宣長 (1730–1801). In his studies of Japan's "ancient Way," Norinaga describes the correct understanding of the syntactical elements of the ancient Japanese language as a way to restore a lost sense of the world as enchanted, the abode of powerful presences known as kami. For Norinaga, the study of Japan's ancient literature and language was thus situated within a broader interpretive framework. This article will show how philology contributed to the configuration of this framework as the method by which the disciplined individual was empowered to retrieve a lost sense of enchantment. As such, it takes the position that Norinaga's philological restoration of enchantment is best understood as a re-enchantment, an attempt to transcend (early) modern disenchantment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a 1977 interview with Frederick Olafson, Marcuse denied that any aspect of Heidegger's philosophy was redeemable, suggesting that its latent Nazism was clear to him 'ex-post'. This tiny phrase raises a significant problem for Heideggerian scholarship: the equivocal nature of hindsight's seeming clarity. Playing with the notion of disenchantment, I retrace Marcuse's disenchantment with Heidegger, from the Olafson interview to their 1947–8 exchange of letters, to Marcuse's little-known 'German philosophy, 1871–1933' and finally to Being and Time itself, to argue that Heidegger's theory of death and guilt provides an answer to the problem of the ex-post: a way in which we can recreate from beginning to end the disenchanting story of how Heidegger's Nazism informed his thought, yet still retrace from end to beginning the way in which Heidegger's thought was fertile philosophical territory in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a pervasive form of psychological distress occurring among people undergoing a sudden and acute collapse of faith in the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka LDS, or Mormon Church). Drawing on 18 months of fieldwork in Utah, I trace the cultural-historical etiology of this unique form of psycho-existential trauma, focusing on ex-Mormons' narratives of 'world collapse'-in which the all-encompassing symbolic-existential framework of reality once provided by religion disintegrated once they lost faith in the Mormon Church. Although marked by symptoms resembling depression, anxiety, dissociation and paranoia, this condition is however unlike mental health disorders described in psychiatric diagnostic manuals, and has thus been largely overlooked within the mental health professions. I thereby discuss the extent to which the distress of religious disenchantment constitutes a unique form of 'cultural syndrome' (Hinton and Lewis-Fernandez in Cult Med Psychiatry 34(2):209-218, 2010), reflective of complex historical, cultural, and religious transformations occurring within contemporary Utah Mormonism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hyde claims that the trickster spirit is necessary for the renewal of culture, and that he lives only in the 'complex terrain of polytheism'. Fortunately for those of us in monotheistic cultures, Weber gives reasons for thinking that polytheism is making a return, albeit in a new, disenchanted form. The plan of this paper is to elaborate some basic notions from Weber (rationalisation, disenchantment, bureaucracy), to explore Hyde's thesis in more detail and then to take up the question of the plurality of spirits both around and within us and whether the trickster is one of them. Weber has three roles in this argument. First, he theorises rationalisation, disenchantment and bureaucracy; second, he offers an argument that in a certain sense polytheism is returning (if it ever went away); and third, he presents a way to translate the mytho-poetic register in which Hyde works into terms acceptable to social science of a more materialist bent. The claim of the paper is that polytheism as a practical attitude means recognising that there are diverse and contradictory ethical orders built into the world around us and active with our psyches. Weber explains why this is especially difficult for us (because our lives are so thoroughly rationalised), and Hyde offers us the hope that we may be tricky enough to cope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The visionary Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) is India's most famous director. His visual style fused the aesthetics of European realism with evocative symbolic realism, which he based on classic Indian iconography, the aesthetic and narrative principles of rasa, the energies of shakti and shakta, the principles of dharma, and the practice of darsha dena/darsha lena. He incorporated these aesthetic elements in a self-reflective manner as a means of observing and recording the human condition in a rapidly changing world. This unique amalgam of self-expression expanded over four decades that cover three periods of Bengali history, offering a fictional ethnography of a nation in transition from agricultural, feudal societies to a capitalist economy. His films show the emotional impact of the social, economic, and political changes, on the personal lives of his characters. They expand from the Indian declaration of Independence (1947) and the period of industrialization and secularization of the 1950s and 1960s, to the rise of nationalism and Marxism in the 1970s, followed by the rapid transformation of India in the 1980s. Through the Eyes of his characters, Ray's films reflected upon the changes in the conscious collective of the society and the time they were produced, while offering a historical record of this transformation of his imagined India, the 'India' that I got to know while watching his films; an 'India' that I can relate to. The paper highlights an affinity between Ray's method of filmmaking with ethnography and Kantian anthropology. For this, it returns to the notion of the charismatic auteur as a narrator of his time, working within the liminal space in-between fiction and reality, subjectivity and objectivity, culture and history respectively, in order to reflect upon the complementary ontological relationship between the charismatic auteur and the role of the amateur anthropologist in an ever-changing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many city dwellers in Pakistan the distant memory of outdoor cinemas in their ancestral villages rekindles the thrill of first contact with film exhibition. This paper considers attempts made in colonial British India and postcolonial Pakistan to understand, wield, and benefit from the staging of such memorable and affective filmic events. In its cultivation of "cinema-minded" subjects, the British Empire commissioned studies of audiences and their reactions to film exhibition in hopes of managing the unruly morality and materiality of the cinematic apparatus. After Partition and the creation of the Dominion of Pakistan, similar studies continued, evincing a residual strategy of elicited contact. The elicitation of film contact aimed at the exertion and commandment of the event of film exhibition for the purposes of knowing their constituent subjects at a moment of malleability. Yet the Empire's struggle with the perceived problems of "Muslim tastes" and audience members' ambivalence over rural screenings in post-Partition Pakistan calls for a reconsideration of the efficacy of these tactics. I argue that what complicated these encounters are affective responses that questioned the address, permissibility, and efficacy of film exhibition. In these tactics of elucidation, disenchantment, and denial, ruptures are refused and the new is dismissed as inoperable, incompatible, or impermissible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divergent theories of tragedy in the anthropology of secularism have been articulated with reference to the work of Talal Asad, yet he himself disavows a tragic sensibility. In seeking to understand this disjuncture, I sketch out political and analytical consequences of invoking tragedy when approaching Muslims in Europe and colonial-era shifts in Islamic law. I then align Asad's demurral of tragedy with Walter Benjamin's differentiation between classical tragedy and baroque drama. Benjamin demonstrates how anthropology could register (without affirming) secularism's promise of disenchantment. Rather than tragedy, whose catharsis remains available for conscription by secular power, Asad's critical project is animated by a methodological antihistoricism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluation as a free-standing discipline arose out of the ashes of World War II, a time of optimism, when government turned to the academy to guide public policy. The evaluation pioneers shared a bracing vision: a search for truth in the public interest. Seventy years later the glitter has faded, and disenchantment has taken hold. Evaluation, a quintessential public good, has become a market good, and eminent evaluation thinkers are asking the same questions about evaluation that they have been routinely asking of others—with sobering results. Yet, countervailing currents and turbulent streams lie just below the surface. Once a tipping point is reached, a new wave of evaluation diffusion will begin to curl. What might it look like? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to pythagoreanism and later Plato, if the world is perfect and ruled by mathematical laws, the movement of the planets is harmonious, drawing perfect circles and producing music. In this way, the "Harmony of the Spheres" theory considers that planets themselves have an eternal and beautiful "soul". Thus, we want to show in our article that the modern conception of "planet" has lost its spiritual meaning under the guise of rationality. If science claims to be more objective than before, in fact it reduces evey being to a simple material object. By opposition, Edmund Husserl calls the "Lifeworld" (Lebenswelt) the natural perception humans have of their world. According to him, the Earth itself is not a planet, because it is the "Arch" where Humans live in accordance with a natural world. We will question that point of view through the filter of disenchantment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Arenal.Revista de Historia de las Mujeres is the property of Arenal. Revista de Historia de las Mujeres and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article explores enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment in reference to modern medicine's view of the body. Before considering Weber's enchantment paradigm, I question some core assumptions regarding sociology as methodologically scientific and value-free. Furthermore, I draw on Jenkins who helps to illustrate the difficulty of rooting terms such as enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment; the question remains "which" historical and cultural period is employed as the basis for such sociological terms. Such questions are critical, but not entirely dismissive of modern medicine as "disenchanted"; with some more explicit foundational and presuppositional context, disenchantment can be a helpful notion for approaching questions of the "new body." St. Gregory Palamas' Christian materialism and mystical anthropology present such an explicit foundation. Moreover, this Patristic foundation moves past the postmodern aporia of emphasizing either immanence or transcendence—two polar attractions that factor heavily in the way modern medicine views the body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his 1917 lecture "Science as a Vocation," Max Weber challenged current and aspiring scholars to abandon any pretense that science (Wissenschaft) bears within itself any meaning. In a disenchanted age, he argued, science could at best offer "knowledge of the techniques whereby we can control life... through calculation," and any meaning or moral direction to scientific research—including religious meaning—must be imposed on it from without. Weber presciently anticipated that many present-day health care practitioners would struggle to find meaning for their work within complex "state-capitalist" health care systems, along with predictable quasi-religious responses. But how are Christian practitioners to practice faithfully in a disenchanted age? The authors of this special issue lean deeply into the loci of Christian theology and Christian practice, some challenging the views of the body and of nature that informed Weber's theory of disenchantment, and all offering resources and paths by which practitioners might "look the fate of the age full in the face" with courage and wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In "Science as a Vocation," Max Weber identifies a trajectory within modernity of increased rationalization, which results in a dangerous loss of meaning, a marginalization of religion, and a disenchanted view of the world. Weber's misunderstanding of religion as premodern and "magical" results in his underestimating how religion can contribute to "re-enchanting" a field of knowledge, specifically medicine. This article proposes to turn to a theology of the Holy Spirit as "giver of life" for resources to "re-enchant" medicine. Re-enchantment does not require returning to a magical view of the world but retrieving a real sense of God at work in the world, thereby enabling the health care worker and scientist to arrive at a deeper understanding of vocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Late modernity has witnessed a growing semantic shift from "religion" to "spirituality." In this article, I argue what underlies this shift is a cultural structure I call the religion of the heart. I begin with an explication of what I mean by the "religion of the heart," and draw on the work of Ernst Troeltsch and Colin Campbell to identify what I take to be its historical antecedents. Second, I analyze the ambiguous relationships fostered between the religion of the heart and the discourses of science and religion, respectively, in late modernity. I illuminate how the social conditions of late modernity undermine or challenge what we conventionally think of as scientific and religious authorities, while at the same time creating existential needs that the religion of the heart is well adapted to meet. I conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of this process, especially as it relates to the sustainability of science and religion, as independent enterprises, in the twenty‐first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of a collective conscience of a new epoch, the Anthropocene, has brought to the fore scientists' predictions of irreversible damage done to the Earth's ecosystems within barely a decade. The passive attitude worldwide of placing the task of overcoming the evil consequences of human activity on specialized forums (e.g., national governments and international organizations) has already proved to be insufficient. In this context, Hamilton seeks to continue Becker's project of laying down the foundations of an "anthropodicy," seen as a humanistic science meant to bring a participatory dimension to the humanity's dealing with the degradation of the conditions of civilized life on Earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One-third of all adults under the age of thirty in the United States of America are ‘nones’. Nones include atheists, agnostics, and those who answer “nothing in particular” to religious survey questions. In this article the authors examine the rise of the nones, drawing upon the work of Mary Eberstadt, Charles Taylor, and Joseph Bottum. We classify the nones into three groups: naturalists, transcendent spiritualists, and non-transcendent spiritualists. After discussing various challenges for evangelization among the nones, we propose some ideas to address these challenges. Here we draw upon the work of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Jacques Maritain, and Mariano Artigas. Finally, we discuss some cultural concerns and problems that would probably result if the rise of the nones is left unaddressed.