Marx Weber's Conception of History: Disenchantment
Contents
- Introduction
- Disenchantment of the World
- Disenchantment of Nature
- Summary
Introduction
Marx Weber defines disenchantment as the process by which spiritual magic and mystery are expelled from the world, nature is managed rather than enchanted, the spiritual loses meaning, and institutions and laws do not depend on religion for their legitimacy. rationalization and devaluation of mysticism including visible God in modern society. Max Weber uses it to describe the character of modernized, bureaucratic and secularized Western society, where science is valued more than faith and where processes are directed towards rational goals in contrast to traditional society where, in Weber's words, the world is a large enchanted garden.
As already mentioned, religious beliefs and symbols are disenchanted and abandoned. If you look closely at Weber's entire disenchantment polemic, you realize that there are two salient points it makes. These are the disenchantment of the world and the disenchantment of nature. I will briefly discuss these two points separately, although they are interconnected.
Disenchantment of the World
What does it mean to say that the world has been disenchanted? According to Weber, the answer is simple and straightforward. The world becomes disillusioned when it assumes that in principle all things can be controlled by calculation. In other words, Weber affirms that the destiny of our time is the disenchantment of the world, by which he meant the disappearance of mysterious and incalculable forces from the functioning of nature. He argues that an intellectual rationalism fostered primarily by the growing empirical sciences had changed people's epistemic attitudes towards the world, and now argues that every phenomenon is in principle knowable and that knowledge and mastery of the world can be obtained through technical and calculations. The disenchantment of the world has had precise consequences on the relationship between religion and science. So basically, for Weber, the world is disenchanted when man's attitudes towards his natural and social environment are influenced by the belief that they can be manipulated through calculation. In this context, Weber rejects de facto domination of the world because it is not a prerequisite for disenchantment; rather, the world is disillusioned when viewed as a potential object of domination, regardless of the actual level of calculated control achieved by any particular social order.
Furthermore, Weber also makes it clear in his arguments that, based on what was said in the previous few lines, the disenchanted world no longer has to resort to magical means to control or implore the mind, as did the savages, for whom such mysterious forces existed. Now technical means and calculations manage the service. Science and technology preferentially replace magic as a means of control. The general picture that Weber paints here for a disenchanted world is one in which all domains of society are restructured in accordance with the demands of technological rationality. He assumes that all things can be controlled by calculation, as already mentioned18, and that scientific progress is the most important element in the intellectualization of the world.
Disenchantment of Nature
Weber speaks of disenchantment with the world to point out that modernity is characterized by an understanding that presupposes everything and does not simply make extra-human nature manageable by calculation. Henceforth the object of a disenchanted world includes the natural and the human dimension is added to it. In Weber's natural society, reality was met through mediation. Here, the spirit slips between the human and the natural. Thus, whereas in the magical society reality was confronted through mediation or indirectly, modern science directly confronts its object. Thus the current wizard counterpart no longer operates under the assumption that nature is alive and possesses an unfathomable life force. Rather than seeing nature as some kind of recalcitrant benefactor who needs to be persuaded to serve a few meager things; modern scientists regard nature as an impersonal order whose rapture is an illusion created by human ignorance of its ways. The return of the world from this height is quite dramatic.
Summary
In short, the disenchantment with nature from Weber's point of view becomes simply a departure from the deification of the world and from the world controlling instead of being controlled. The enchantment of the world in the form of administrators loses its flavor in a disenchanted world where world domination is the hour of time. Rather than seeing the world as being directed, controlled, or conditioned by spiritual forces, the world is simply seen as it is, and there is nothing as spectacular or fascinating about it.
References
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