The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences

[luc]

The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences
Jason A. Josephson-Storm

This is a must-read, IMO, for understanding our current thinking and debates around enlightenment vs. postmodernism, religion vs. science, the paranormal and esoteric.

After finishing this book, I felt strangely liberated, as if I got a short peek behind the Wizard of OZ's curtain, realizing that we had been under a spell all along - a spell that is surprisingly thin and superficial, yet at the same time extremely crafty.

The book kind of takes you on a whirlwind journey, making you relive 250 years of intellectual history and thought about enchantment and disenchantment in a crazy time-lapse. The author weaves all these different intellectual currents together quite masterfully, showing not only the astonishing number of academics, scientists and intellectuals who were knee-deep into the paranormal, the occult, and various esoteric ideas, but how these directly relate and interact with much of their (and by extension, our) secular theories and ideas. It really makes you reconsider where we came from and why our thinking is shaped as it is.

Josephson-Storm hails from a background in critical theory, so there were a few "rolling eyes" moments because of the jargon and political bias here and there - but this is mostly concentrated in the introduction and otherwise very minor. To his credit, he takes the "critical method" very seriously and applies it to his own thought as well. And the amount of reading and leg work he has done, and the mastery he achieved, is super impressive.

Reading this work for me wasn't so much about labelling thinkers or certain traditions as good or bad, but about understanding how the heck we have got to where we are, and this requires a sort of untangling of the dynamics in modern and postmodern thought, and how they played out. There are tons of fascinating details in the book that turned the light bulbs on in my head, and if postmodern thought is good for anything, it surely is great at showing how our history consists largely of various myths created at specific times which then got retrojected into the past, and how even while debunking such myths, you end up perpetuating them and creating new ones. When coupled with in-depth research and deep thought, this method can be super productive, and this book is a great example. In any event, Josephson-Storm might not deliver the one and only true story (which in some sense perhaps can never be done), but he delivers a fascinating story that hadn't been told like that before.

I could go into more detail, but if you are interested not only in the history of modern Western esotericism and its various currents, but how they were part of and interacted with so-called "mainstream thought" (which in some sense could be seen as yet another myth), and how this relates even to our current discussions about logic, reason, religion, science, cosmology, hyperdimensional cosmology, facts vs. feelings, wokeism etc., I highly recommend it!


Link to the book at Chicago University Press

Edit: Here's the table of contents:

Introduction
A Philosophical Archaeology of the Disenchantment of the World
Reflexive Religious Studies: The Entangled Formation of Religion, Science, and Magic
Overview of the Work: Europe Is Not Europe

1 Enchanted (Post) Modernity
Weird America
Haunted Europe
Conclusion: New Age (Post) Modernists?

Part 1: God’s Shadow

2 Revenge of the Magicians
Francis Bacon and the Science of Magic
The Philosophes and the Science of Good and Evil Spirits
Conclusion: The Myth of Enlightenment

3 The Myth of Absence
Nihilism, Revolution, and the Death of God: F. H. Jacobi and G. W. F. Hegel
The Eclipse of the Gods: Friedrich Schiller
The Romantic Spiral: Friedrich Hölderlin
A Myth in Search of History: Jacob Burckhardt
Conclusion: The Myth of the Modern Loss of Myth

4 The Shadow of God
Spirits of a Vanishing God
The Haunted Anthropologist: E. B. Tylor
The Magician and the Philologist: Éliphas Lévi and Max Müller
Theosophical Disenchantment: Helena Blavatsky
Conclusion: Specters of the Transcendent

5 The Decline of Magic: J. G. Frazer
The Cultural Ruins of Paganism
The Golden Bough before Disenchantment
The Departure of the Fairies
The Dreams of Magic
The Lost Theory: Despiritualizing the Universe
Conclusion: A Devil’s Advocate

6 The Revival of Magick: Aleister Crowley
The Great Beast: A Biographical Sketch
The God-Eater and the Golden Bough
Disenchanted Magic
Conclusion: From The Golden Bough to the Golden Dawn

Part 2: The Horrors of Metaphysics

7 The Black Tide: Mysticism, Rationality, and the German Occult Revival
Degeneration and Mysticism: Max Nordau
Kant the Necromancer: Carl du Prel and Arthur Schopenhauer
Hidden Depths: Sigmund Freud
Conclusion: The Cosmic Night

8 Dialectic of Darkness: The Magical Foundations of Critical Theory
The Cosmic Circle
Magical Philosophy and Disenchantment: Ludwig Klages
The Esoteric Constellations of Critical Theory: Walter Benjamin
Conclusion: The Magic of Theory

9 The Ghosts of Metaphysics: Logical Positivism and Disenchantment
Philosophical Technocracy: Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer
Revolutionary Antimetaphysics: Positivist Disenchantment and Re-enchantment; Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath
Positivists in Paranormal Vienna: Rudolf Carnap and Hans Hahn
Conclusion: The Magic of Disenchantment

10 The World of Enchantment; or, Max Weber at the End of History
The Disenchantment of the World
Weber the Mystic and the Return from the God Eclipse
Conclusion: Disenchantment Disenchanted

Conclusion: The Myth of Modernity
The Myths of (Post) Modernity
The Myth of Disenchantment as Regulative Ideal
Against the Tide of Disenchantment
Notes
Index

 

[luc]

To add a few thoughts:

I think the book is a good example of applying Collingwood's ideas about the need to re-enact history in order to understand both history and ourselves. Although of course Josephson-Storm might misjudge things, overall he is very good at working out what animated all those thinkers and intellectuals, what their presuppositions were, what questions occupied their minds. As Collingwood said elsewhere, it is often a mistake to think that philosophers and scientists were always concerned with the same timeless questions and just gave different answers; rather, the questions they were concerned with were often radically different from the questions later generations asked, and that we ourselves ask. This is one of the reasons I found the book so fascinating and liberating, whether one agrees with everything or not: JS showcases how lots of research coupled with the attempt to suspend our own judgements and theories can give us real insights into what people were up to in the past, and how their various discourses form the basis of many things we take for granted today without even realizing it.

The book in many ways also gives much context for some of the things discussed on the Carl Jung thread. For example, the "paranormal" has been attacked constantly both by religion (heresy, demonic, etc.) and by science worshipers/enlightenment believers (irrational, superstitious, pseudo-science, etc.). Then there is the trope that connects esotericism with Nazism, popularized by the Frankfurt School, which is a half-truth at best--certainly it doesn't mean that everybody who was ever interested in the paranormal was a proto-fascist. And yet much of our thinking is still conditioned by such "narrative tropes", and JS does a great job disentangling all of that.

Turns out that the picture is so much more complicated, and there is an undercurrent that goes through our intellectual history and canon where people tried to find the truth of the matter by rebelling either against the "rationalist" or the "Christian" tropes in various ways, often against both, producing different results. Yet those results have somehow been suppressed, or discredited in various ways: for instance, much of the thinking in the German tradition has been labelled as leftist, proto-communist, irrational, anti-science etc. OR, often by the same people, as proto-fascist, paving the way to Nazism, and so on. But these are quite recent narratives or myths, which we often forget. People at the time might have thought very differently about such things (again, they asked different questions).

Now, we know how the "occult" or "paranormal" can be dangerous and open one up to all kinds of nasty things, and this seems to have happened quite a bit (so the Christian labelling it as heresy and demonic has a point); and we also know that such things can easily spiral into the irrational, so the science-types have a point, too. But on the other hand, the paranormal, if taken seriously and thought about in rational ways, is a first step towards a hyperdimensional cosmology. And you can see people taking such steps in the tradition as well. For example, the book quotes one 19th century researcher (a baroness) who speculated that mediumship and telekinesis works by punching a hole into "hyperspace". People like Friedrich Schiller and Max Weber also seemed to have been on the right track at some point.

I like to think about it like this: studying the paranormal/esoteric can lead to more integration and rationality/reason, or it can lead to disintegration and irrationality.

The funny thing is that the book which seeks to answer the question, "how did we end up believing we live in a disenchanted world?", doesn't really give a straight answer, but after reading it, you can connect some dots. For instance, it seems to me that Freud and the Frankfurt School in many ways channelled the positive aspects of 19th century spiritualism into certain waters, where they kept some of it and satisfied certain impulses, but ultimately derailed a movement that was actively studying and reflecting the paranormal in rational and informed ways. But in many ways they acted as historical figures, being influenced by the debates of their time, and weren't conscious of it. So if there is a hyperdimensional aspect to it, i.e. some sort of cover-up or steering of history, I think it is subtle: a tiny little push here and there... For example, at one point Freud was about to go public that he believes in telepathy, but one of his inner circle persuaded him not to do it in the last minute, so to speak. Would history have unfolded differently with Freud promoting telepathy? Hard to say of course, but it may often be small manipulations that are enough to change the trajectory.

Well, should anybody decide to take the plunge, I'm curious what you think about all of that.

 

[Jones]

I bought the book today and am very interested in reading it based on what you've said so far. Don't expect fast feedback from me though because it can take me a long time to distil thoughts in any degree of coherence without at least a second reading and attached discussions. Apart from that, thanks for the recommendation, sounds very interesting.

Have also lined up some material to listen to on my way to and from work this week:

 

[Ryan]

But on the other hand, the paranormal, if taken seriously and thought about in rational ways, is a first step towards a hyperdimensional cosmology.

Well, should anybody decide to take the plunge, I'm curious what you think about all of that.

Thanks luc, in my opinion your post represents no small amount of effort at presenting a clear picture of the information contained in such an arcane book. What you've written is thoroughly fascinating, and offers insight into the connection between magic and science, and how the paranormal, properly viewed, may exist in a delicate balance between the two. Although "there be dragons" most assuredly, only by charting such unknown waters can we dispel superstition and reveal the truth of the hyperdimensional "promised land", or so it seems to me, anyway.

Where does physics and mathematics enter into this? Although there are no direct references in the table of contents you quoted, I suspect it would be interesting to contrast the philosophy and work of the great physicists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the influences that Josephson-Storm presents. There may be more points of commonality than one would immediately expect, and could bring a new perspective to the work of Fort, Keel and the paranormal and UFOlogical fields. And of course, there are always the all-embracing astronomical and cosmic implications to consider.

You've offered much food for thought here, luc. Again, thanks very much!

 

[Michael B-C]

Thank you for the recommendation and perceptive overview Luc which has also prompted me to order a copy.

Another work I highly recommend and which I think may overlap with this topic is a fascinating overview book by parapsychologist George P. Hansen called 'The Trickster and the Paranormal'.

Paranormal and supernatural events have been reported for millennia. They have fostered history's most important cultural transformations (e.g., via the miracles of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed). Paranormal phenomena are frequently portrayed in the world's greatest art and literature, as well as in popular TV shows and movies. Most adults in the U.S. believe in them. Yet they have a marginal place in modern culture. No university departments are devoted to studying psychic phenomena. In fact, a panoply of scientists now aggressively denounces them.

These facts present a deeply puzzling situation. But they become coherent after pondering the trickster figure, an archaic being found worldwide in mythology and folklore. The trickster governs paradox and the irrational, but his messages are concealed. This book draws upon theories of the trickster from anthropology, folklore, sociology, semiotics, and literary criticism. It examines psychic phenomena and UFOs and explains why they are so problematical for science.

I was drawn to read this work after watching interviews with the very small number scientists willing to speak on the record of the bizarre and often life destructive events that haunted them once they began to explore liminal areas relating to the paranormal. Hansen covers much ground - the mythological/folklore surrounding the widespread concept of 'the trickster', the onetime understanding and reverence for liminal reality, structure and anti-structure, holy madness and shamanism, magico-religious practitioners, the close connection between magicians/psychics and the intelligence agencies, PSI and the struggles of scientists in the field to have their work taken seriously, the science of science (and the uncomfortable impact of systemically unavoidable, well documented bias and delusion that bedevils so much so called MS science), Max Weber and the impact of disenchantment on western thinking, etc. Its eclectic but very thorough and well argued, with many as you say lights on moments.

He argues that whilst yes its evidentially a genuine phenomenon possibly inherent to the very fabric of the universe itself, it remains an area that our culture is in elite level/public discourse denial of whilst seemingly equally intent on actively promoting through low culture all the time e.g. Hollywood. This schizophrenic approach has/is effectively sending us all mad. By expelling knowledge out into the wilds despite millennia of previous interaction and understanding in an effort to enforce a uniform materialistic dogma, by such denial we only serve to amplify the ability of this force (which he equates with liminal spaces/beings and which he identifies as/with a trickster persona) to play games with us unwitting humans from the shadows. He explores in depth the inherent and essential paradoxes, ambiguities and contradictions that lie at its heart and how they defy logic and yet are - and which regularly send unwitting humans over the edge of sanity as they attempt to wrestle with it on unequal terms. All in all a fascinating and provocative read.

 

[luc]

He argues that whilst yes its evidentially a genuine phenomenon possibly inherent to the very fabric of the universe itself, it remains an area that our culture is in elite level/public discourse denial of whilst seemingly equally intent on actively promoting through low culture all the time e.g. Hollywood. This schizophrenic approach has/is effectively sending us all mad. By expelling knowledge out into the wilds despite millennia of previous interaction and understanding in an effort to enforce a uniform materialistic dogma, by such denial we only serve to amplify the ability of this force (which he equates with liminal spaces/beings and which he identifies as/with a trickster persona) to play games with us unwitting humans from the shadows. He explores in depth the inherent and essential paradoxes, ambiguities and contradictions that lie at its heart and how they defy logic and yet are - and which regularly send unwitting humans over the edge of sanity as they attempt to wrestle with it on unequal terms. All in all a fascinating and provocative read.

That sounds fascinating, especially the "dialectic" between public culture/fiction and outright denial by the scientific establishment. I always thought that the presence of these things in movies etc. is more an attempt (and/or natural phenomenon) to fulfil a need that is clearly there, and to sort of satisfy it without people realizing what's going on. But there might be something more sinister to it, a sort of deliberate attempt to drive people nuts, and also to give "truth seekers at heart" enough clues that wash them into the hands of nefarious esoteric groups, magical orders and the like.

What I'm trying to wrap my head around is how exactly they do it - I mean suppressing these things. I mean, it's literally everywhere in the history of thought. Heck, even Kant wrote a book about it. Even the freaking Logical Positivists were deep into it!! (That really surprised me!) Many scientists talked and talk about it (it's unclear how many physicists ever believed in materialism for example -- this seems to have come more from philosophy, and a minority even there).

I guess so-called scientific institutions (those who proclaim they speak for The Science) have played a big role; but there is something subtle going on here as well I feel: sort of a strange zeitgeist that is somehow created, where people and intellectuals somehow know and feel what can and what can't be said without repercussions, even though there is no rule book and nobody ever told them. And this seems to be a very new thing as well in many ways: while there was some suppression going on in the late 19th century for sure (*cough* British Royal Society *cough*), the real "new program" seems to have been created only after WWII. The fact that there had been so many crazies among the esoteric groups (and later New Age types) seems to have helped, too--again the creation of some kind of clever dialectic. All very interesting.