The Reenchantment of the World
Read The Reenchantment of the World Online
Authors: Morris Berman
"WE HAVE, AS DANTE WROTE IN THE
DIVINE COMEDY
,
AWOKEN TO FIND OURSELVES IN A DARK WOODS."
DIVINE COMEDY
,
AWOKEN TO FIND OURSELVES IN A DARK WOODS."
"What will serve to stabilize things today is fairly obscure; but it is aFor three friends:
major premise of this book that because disenchantment is intrinsic to the
scientific world view, the modern epoch contained, from its inception, an
inherent instability that severely limited its ability to sustain itself
for more than a few centuries. For more than 99 percent of human history,
the world was enchanted and man saw himself as an integral part of it. The
complete reversal of this perception in a mere four hundred years or so
has destroyed the continuity of the human experience and the integrity
of the human psyche. It has very nearly wrecked the planet as well. The
only hope, or so it seems to me, lies in a reenchantment of the world."
--Morris Berman, in the Introduction
________________________________________________________________________
"Morris Berman's book addresses what I consider to be the most important
topic at our present moment in history. He is searching for the
underpinnings of a new world view that can give rise to a culture capable
of relating gently and self-sustainingly to the earth."
--Frederick Ferré
Charles A. Dana, Professor of Philosophy,
Dickinson College
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The Reenchantment
of the World
MORRIS BERMAN
BANTAM BOOKS
TORONTO * NEW YORK * LONDON * SYDNEY * AUCKLAND
Cornell University Press gratefully acknowledges a grant from the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation that aided in bringing this book to publication.
This edition contains the complete text
of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED
THE REENCHANTMENT OF THE WORLD
A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with
Cornell University Press
PRINTING HISTORY
Cornell University Press edition published November 1981
Bantam edition / May 1984
2nd printing . . . July 1988
Acknowledgment is made to:
The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., for excerpts from René Descartes,
Discourse on Method, translated by Laurence I. Lafleur; copyright ©
1950, 1956, by the Liberal Arts Press, Inc.; reprinted by permission of
the Liberal Arts Press Division of the Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc.
Doubleday & Company, Inc., for permission to quote excerpts from The
Poetry and Prose of William Blake, edited by David V. Erdman; copyright
© 1965 by David V. Erdman and Harold Bloom; and an excerpt from The Birth
of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated
by Francis Golffing; copyright © 1956 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., for permission to quote specified
brief excerpts from Steps to an Ecology of Mind by Gregory Bateson
(T.Y. Crowell); copyright © 1972 by Harper & Row, Publishers Inc.
Charles Scribner's Sons for permission to use an illustration by Fons
van Woerkom from The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game by Paul
Shepard illustrated by Fons van Woerkom; text copyright © 1973 by Paul
Shepard, illustrations copyright © 1973 by Fons van Woerkom.
New Age and the accompanying figure design as well as the statement "the
search for meaning, growth and change" are trademarks of Bantam Books.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © by Morris Berman
Cover art copyright © 1984 by Leo and Diane Dillon.
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0 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Michael Crisp
David Kubrin
John Trotter
God and philosophy could not live together peacefully; can philosophy
survive without God? Once its adversary has disappeared, metaphysics
ceases to be the science of sciences and becomes logic, psychology,
anthropology, history, economics, linguistics. What was once the great
realm of philosophy has today become the ever-shrinking territory not yet
explored by the experimental sciences. If we are to believe the logicians,
all that remains of metaphysics is no more than the nonscientific residuum
of thought -- a few errors of language. Perhaps tomorrows metaphysics,
should man feel a need to think metaphysically, will begin as a critique
of science, just as in classical antiquity it began as a critique of the
gods. This metaphysics would ask itself the same questions as in classical
philosophy, but the starting point of the interrogation would not be
the traditional one
before
all science but one
after
the sciences.
--Octavio Paz,
Alternating Current
ContentsAcknowledgments
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XIII
INTRODUCTION: THE MODERN LANDSCAPE 1
1. The Birth of Modern Scientific Consciousness 13
2. Consciousness and Society in Early Modern Europe 37
3. The Disenchantment of the World (1) 57
4. The Disenchantment of the World (2) 107
5. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics 127
6. Eros Regained 147
7. Tomorrow's Metaphysics (1) 187
8. Tomorrow's Metaphysics (2) 235
9. The Politics of Consciousness 267
NOTES 305
GLOSSARY 351
INDEX 359
lllustrations
PLATES
1. The Aristotelian theory of projectile motion 53
2. The Ourobouros, symbol of integration 68
3. The alchemical androgyne 69
4. The green lion swallowing the sun 70
5. Sol niger: the nigredo 71
6. The sun and his shadow complete the work 72
7. René Magritte, "The Explanation" (1952) 88
8. Salvador Dali, "The Persistence of Memory" (1931) 89
9. The Ptolemaic universe 91
10. Engineering illustration from "Elim: (1629) 92
11. Separating gold from silver 96
12. Isaac Newton, 1689 118
13. Isaac Newton, 1702 119
14. Isaac Newton, ca. 1710 120
15. Isaac Newton, 1726 121
16. Wtlliam Blake, Newton (1795) 122
17. Luis Jimenez; Jr., "The American Dream" (1969/76) 165
18. Donald Brodeur, "Eros Regained" (1975) 184
19. M. C. Escher, "Three Worlds" (1955) 259
20. Fons van Woerkom, Illustration for
Chapter 6 of Paul Shepard's "The Tender Carnivore
and the Sacred Game" (1973) 268-69
FIGURES
1. R. D. Laing's schematic drawing of healthy interaction 5
2. R. D. Laing's schematic drawing of schizoid interaction 6
3. Descartes' conception of mind-body interaction 22
4. Galileo's experiment for showing that
motion does not require a mover 25
5. Galileo's experiment for deriving the law of free-fall 26
6. Newton's subdivision of white light into monochromatic rays 32
7. Newton's recombination of
monochromatic light rays into white light 33
8. The new cycle of economic/scientific life
in early modern Europe 45
9. Aristotelian conception of projectile motion 52
10. N. R. Hanson's illustration of gestalt perception 129
11. N. R. Hanson's illustration of gestalt perception 129
12. Wilhelm Reich's schema of the neurotic personality 171
13. Wilhelm Reich's schema of the healthy personality 172
14. Gregory Bateson's illustration of Epimenides' Paradox 217
Several people read all or part of the manuscript version of this book
and offered significant criticisms and suggestions, and I am particularly
grateful to Paul Ryan, Carolyn Merchant of the University of California,
Berkeley, Frederick Ferré of Dickinson College, and W. David Lewis
of Auburn University. There is, of course, no unanimous agreement on
the final content of the work, and as is usually the case, errors of
fact or interpretation are strictly my own. There are also a number of
other friends who, although they did not read the manuscript, exerted
an important influence on my life through the example of their own,
making it possible for me to clarify certain issues that ultimately
came to be reflected in this book. Bill Williams, Jack London, David
Kubrin, and Deirdre Rand have, over the years, profoundly touched me
and even altered my definition of reality, and it is a pleasure for me
to acknowledge my debt to them at this time.
I doubt there is any way I can adequately thank my critic and dear
friend Michael Crisp, who acted as an astute and untiring reader and
who significantly influenced my thinking, particularly in the case of
Chapter 3, much of which grew out of discussions we had on the magical
tradition. On more than one occasion, Mr. Crisp helped me to resolve some
problem of logic or exposition, andI can only hope that his inclusion
in the dedication to my book will repay him in some small measure for
his great interest and generous assistance.
I wish, finally, to acknowledge my very large debt to John Ackerman at
Cornell University Press, whose ruthless editing did much to improve
the final form of my manuscript.
This book draws on, and often explicates, the work of Carl Jung, Wilhelm
Reich, and Gregory Bateson, among others, but I am not aware of having
followed the conceptual framework of any particular philosophical
school. It is, nevertheless, a product of its times and reflects a
holistic world view that is very much "in the air." Although I have not
read all or even most of their work, my outlook has much in. common with
such writers as R.D. Laing, Theodore Roszak, and Philip Slater, and in
many ways we seem to inhabit the same mental universe. In particular,
their hope for a humanized culture in which science would play a very
different role than it has hitherto is my hope as well.
M.B.
San Francisco
Grateful acknowledgment is also extended to the following for permission
to reprint copyright material:
Robert Bly for permission to reprint Poem Number 16 of
The Kabir Book
,
version by Robert Bly, published by Beacon Press; copyright © 1971 by
Robert Bly.
Cambridge University Press for two diagrams from
Patterns of Discovery
by Norwood Russell Hanson; copyright © 1958, 1965 by Cambridge University
Press.
Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc., for two diagrams reprinted by permission
of Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc., from
Depression and the Body
by Alexander Lowen, MD; copyright © 1972 by Alexander Lowen, MD.
Grove Press, Inc., for excerpt from
The Labyrinth of Solitude
by
Octavio Paz; reprinted by permission of Grove Press, Inc.; copyright &
1961 by Grove Press, Inc.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber and Faber Ltd., for lines from
"Little Gidding" by T. S. Eliot, from
Four Quartets
in T. S. Eliot,
The Complete Poems and Plays
, 1909-1950; copyright © 1952 by Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; and in
Collected Poems
, 1909-1962; copyright
© 1963 by Faber and Faber Ltd.
Humanities Press, New Jersey, for an excerpt from
The Metaphysical
Foundations of Modern Science
by E.A. Burtt; copyright © 1932 by
Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Maclen Music, Inc.; for lyrics from "When I'm Sixty Four" (John Lennon and
Paul McCartney); copyright © 1967 by Northern Songs Limited. All rights
for the USA, Mexico and the Philippines controlled by Maclen Music,
Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., for lines from Shakespeare's
Henry IV
,
Part I," edited by James L. Sanderson; copyright © 1969 by W. W. Norton
&
Company, Inc.
Oxford University Press for an excerpt from
Micrographia
, by Robert
Hooke, in vol. XIII of
Early Science in Oxford
, edited by R.T. Gunther.
Penguin Books Ltd., for an excerpt from
The Politics of Experience and
the Bird of Paradise
by R.D. Laing; reprinted by permission of Penguin
Books Ltd.; copyright © 1967 by R.D. Laing.
Random House, Inc., for two diagrams and specified excerpts from
The
Divided Self
by R.D. Laing; copyright © 1962 by Pantheon Books Inc.,
a Division of Random House, Inc.; and Associated Book Publishers Ltd.;
copyright © Tavistock Publications (1959) Ltd. 1960.
Viking Penguin Inc. for permission to quote excerpts from
The World
Turned Upside Down
by Christopher Hill; copyright © 1972 by Christopher
Hill; and an excerpt from
Alternating Current
by Octavio Paz; copyright
© 1973 by Octavio Paz.
Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. for excerpt from Claude Lévi-Strauss interview;
reprinted from
Psychology Today
magazine; copyright © 1972,
Ziff-Davis Publishing Co.
Introduction:
The Modern Landscape
You see all round you people engaged in making others live
lives which are not their own, while they themselves care
nothing for their own real lives -- men who hate life though
they fear death.
-- William Morris,
News from Nowhere
(1891)
For several years now I have intended to write a semipopular book, dealing
with certain contemporary problems, and based on my knowledge of the
history of science. In an earlier work, 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 making;
the cosmos cares nothing for me, and I do not really feel a sense of
belonging to it. What I feel, in fact, is a sickness in the soul.
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