Alas my instruction to breathe came too late. The whole point is the mutuality of relationships of understanding. — unenlightened

Isn't it also important not to be too quick to conclude that the other has failed to understand?

Otherwise, sage words indeed, as befit your role.

And some of us have reached an understanding with a significant other. This is the enchantment of romantic love - a mutual accommodation. — unenlightened

I tend to experience romantic love more like being hit on the head with a mallet, causing brain damage, madness, and aberrant behaviour. I think I experience understanding like that too sometimes. Or, to use a different metaphor, it's like immersion, and the accommodation may never come.

Are you saying that we cannot be unenchanted, but that we can be enchanted well, genuine understanding and romantic love being the models we should look to?

EDIT: I hadn't seen your last paragraph when I wrote this.

A post to sort things out in my head (and maybe yours too)...

The OP mixes up two topics, related and both interesting but perhaps better treated separately. It begins and ends with the disenchantment and possible re-enchantment of power, but in the middle there's a very speculative digression into the "polytheism" of small enchantments.

But what's done is done, and I don't mind discussing either.

A uniform is an enchantment. One puts on the accoutrements of a nurse, or the police, or a soldier, or a bank robber, and one becomes that identity; one behaves and is treated in a different way, as if one had special powers. One has united ones' being with the Orisha of Nursing, and one really has healing and comforting hands, and one speaks with the comforting authority of the healer. — unenlightened

Thank you for enriching my stew of ideas.

I am actually in battle with the huge army that serves under the banner of "The Enlightenment", as anyone who pays attention to my posts will be aware. — unenlightened

I'm still on the fence on that one. Or rather, I'm for and against.

Surely the most dangerous and potent enchantment is the one that induces the belief in the person that they are not enchanted and are immune from enchantment and the enchantment does not exist? — unenlightened

You talking about me‽

"I'm not affected by ads" — unenlightened

I once said this to a friend of mine, who is a marketing manager but is actually very intelligent and interesting. He roared with laughter and spoke for an hour to prove I was talking bollocks. Quite convincing.

Such blind and absolute faith in oneself makes one open to every horror — unenlightened

The enchantment I mentioned as being the most important one today was the economy, which was just my secret code for capitalism (I dishonestly avoided making the post look too Marxist). This one works in the way you describe I think. I still have to sort out the differences between magic, enchantment, and ideology. Magic is a knowing use of objects and rituals, whereas enchantment is to be under a magic spell, often unknowingly, and it's the latter that fits with the concept of ideology. Anyway yeah, I agree.

There's a current academic who has criticized the 'disenchantment' thesis - Jason Josephen-Storm - a review here - review also mentions the Frankfurt School — Wayfarer

Yep, I've been looking into his work and I've read a few articles, but not the book (yet). As for the Institute for Social Research, as you may know I've been working through their work, and my OP is clearly informed by that--they made great use of the concept of disenchantment, and I'm attempting to use something along the lines of their approach to the critique of ideology. That might come out more explicitly in the discussion, but as they're focused on reason more generally, I'm not sure exactly how it fits. The "culture industry" is relevant though, for sure.

G K Chesterton quote, 'When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.' — Wayfarer

Also quoted by @unenlightened above.

There's a deep sense that nobody knows what is real anymore. Not even scientists, with their mad dreams of multiple universes or dimensions. Makes it easy to believe in anything. Life is like a movie, but unfortunately with real blood. — Wayfarer

I think you're right.

You know, 'disenchantment' has it's own Wikipedia entry — Wayfarer

Of course, but it’s not great. The SEP article on Weber is better, particularly on re-enchantment, which is of relevance to the OP.

Highly relevant and interesting, thanks. No I don’t think I was aware of these dialogues.

So far I haven’t read Habermas, I admit partly because superficially his work seems a bit boring compared to that of the original Frankfurt lineup.

There's a bogus, but profound, Einstein quote, 'either everything is a miracle, or nothing is'. I think there has to be an element of that feeling in life, otherwise, as Neitszche also glumly predicted, nihilism engulfs everything. — Wayfarer

Yes, in fact I’ve vaguely hinted at the need for re-enchantment, so I’m not saying it’s all bad. Just that, well, the bad stuff is bad. Otherwise, I’m groping towards (though not so far in this particular discussion) the idea of the sacred as a positive thing. Since I personally think I have a feeling for the sacred while being non-religious and mostly non-mystical, I think we can get to some secular version of the sacred.

From a secular POV (which everyone, of course, doesn't share) we never were enchanted by magic spells so we can't be disenchanted now. There never was any such thing as 'magic' if by 'magic' we mean 'effective control over the material world'. — BC

Magic is "a way of thinking that looks to invisible forces to influence events, effect change in material conditions, or present the illusion of change" (Source)

I'd add something like a mode of behaviour to "a way of thinking". It's real, as real as religion, although like religion, it might not always work, or work in the way people think.

I admit I’ve used the concept loosely. Maybe I’ll write a post delving into it.

Yes. Magic, like Marketing, is in the business or creating desirable images in the mind of observers. The power of mis-direction does not force, but merely leads the sheep willingly to the fold. That's only a bad thing when mutton is on the menu — Gnomon

Nicely put.

This sometimes vulgar display of material wealth not only enslaves the employee but also the employer — invicta

Yes, I see what you mean. It’s not only the actual relationship between the two which is enslaving, but the display—the bewitching images of desired-for wealth. As you say, the American Dream, which probably could have made my list.

Your list is infused with incommensurable value-fragmentation and plurality of alternative metanarratives — BC

People are always telling me that.

Conspiracy theory–a shared narrative which unites an 'out group' around a supposed falsehood–is entirely separate from science. I'm not sure what anyone means by 'scientism'. Demagoguery*** is in disfavor, and isn't equivalent to nationalism and populism, which are currently in ill repute in some circles. New Age spirituality is one of my pet peeves, so no quarrel there. "Progress / Decline / Catastrophe" Consumerism ..... All four terms have meaning, of course, but what did you mean? — BC

Weber talks about the fragmentation of values following society’s secularization, resulting in a “polytheism”, an array of smaller enchantments. The idea is that we now have numerous gods and demons, but they look different, and some of them are secular. The conspiracy theorist doesn’t arrive at the idea that the moon landings didn’t happen via a process of rational enquiry, but because they are looking for meaning; and once they have found it, it is incontestable—they will not be dissuaded (at least for a while).

It’s odd that you say demagoguery and populism are disfavoured, when they have so recently made a resurgence. It’s not only Trump (and…do think he and his style of politics have just gone away now?)

This is from 2019 and I think it identifies a real phenomenon:

The rise of new political movements is transforming the political systems of many advanced democracies. Three changes in particular are taking place.

1. The dimensions of political conflict have changed. The traditional economic and redistributive conflict between left and right is waning. In its place, a new conflict between nationalist and socially conservative versus cosmopolitan and socially progressive positions has emerged. These changing dimensions of political conflict are apparent from voting outcomes and the positioning of political parties (Inglehart and Norris 2019), from changes in the composition of party supporters (Piketty 2018), and from survey data (Gennaioli and Tabellini 2019).

2. Support for traditional social democratic parties has shrunk, and new parties have emerged and have rapidly gained consensus, positioning themselves on the new dimension of political conflict.

3. Many of these new parties, so-called populists, campaign on anti-establishment and anti-elite platforms, and claim to represent the ‘true interests’ of the people at large (depicting the latter as a homogeneous group). — The Rise of Populism

I didn't mean to suggest that populism was equivalent to nationalism, but they seemed to belong together, and do sometimes go together in the real world.

Progress / Decline / Catastrophe: these are narratives that frame the way we perceive and describe the world. On the one hand there is the view that everything is getting worse (you seem to be under the power of this spell sometimes yourself), and on the other hand (Pinker) there is the view that capitalism and science are super and will lead us onwards and upwards unless we lose our nerve. I suggested them as candidate magic spells because of the way they work as articles of faith, or as real forces rather than mere ideas.

Consumerism: this is quite commonly identified as an ideology, meaning a system of false beliefs that obscures reality (and in the OP I’m conflating ideology with magic and enchantment). Consumerism is the belief that buying stuff will make you happy or help you to forge a meaningful identity or raise your status. I think it’s also connected with commodity fetishism, fetishism being a concept from the anthropology of magic.

As for scientism:

Well I think one can find the same kind of rigidity on these boards very easily. There is no science of morality, or subjectivity, or aesthetics or value, therefore these things do not exist. — unenlightened

No. Taken in, possibly, but not enchanted. And the taking-in is both conditional (Will this potion put me one up on my rival?) and temporary (a new fad will replace it; a new idol will replace him). We now have the attention-span of flies: we're all for something as long as it smells good.

Thanks to the CEO's (whom most Americans revere and value - I don't think it's the same in Europe) and their armies of ad-men, we want everything for a very short time and hate everything for only slightly longer. The magic of divine right, class privilege and noblesse oblige was longevity, stability, the security of permanence. I think we miss that. While turnstile novelty keeps the adrenaline pumping, it leaves us very anxious. — Vera Mont

I don't really disagree, but I think it's probably compatible with what I was saying. I'm not denying there's a huge difference between, on the one hand, the magic of divine right and a world infused with God, etc., and on the other hand the magical pull of a new pair of Nikes. And yet it doesn't seem too mistaken to describe them both as magical in the way that Weber seemed to be suggesting, as being like the difference between theism and polytheism.

That's off-the-top and I'm aware that this enormous topic requires a good deal more thought, but I'll take a drive-by at the questions. — Vera Mont

Off-the-top answers are welcome. The OP was rather off-the-top itself.

No, we always had those, and scapegoats to go with them.
No, we always had those as well. How do you get to be a god's chosen people, except though a belief in your tribe's specialness? (I don't think alt-right belongs there; the flag-carrier can as easily shout "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" as "Germany, Germany, Above All" or "For King and Country")
Yes, absolutely. Quantum Entropy has a lot of candle-power.
No, that's more personal; flakes don't do lock-step.
That's just a description of how we as a species operate.
That's a compensation for the loss of something - maybe enchantment, conviction, fulfillment, recognition, self-esteem - like gluttony and alcoholism. — Vera Mont

Again, while I don't disagree with your characterizations, I do think they might be compatible with my position. Having said that, I'm not really wedded to my suggestion, that these are all magic spells equivalent to Enchantment with a capital E.

Good point about "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". This has been a French motto since the Revolution but it didn't stop them suppressing slave revolts and colonizing all over the place.

Regarding consumerism, first, just because it's a compensation doesn't mean it can't be viewed as some kind of magic; and second, I think it's much more than a compensation--it seems it can be more like a default belief or behaviour, no longer confined to the rich or available to people merely when things go wrong. It's more like we begin in consumerism and when that doesn't satisfy us, that's when we turn to alcohol. (That was merely half serious, but the serious half is very serious)

So why would workers find it more difficult to submit to captains of industry? Because they don't see a real difference in them, they are just as base as the workers and so there is no perceived natural difference in rank between them that maybe could justify their "rule". — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, exactly.

Maybe you could say some of the current ideas are substitutes for the religions of old in that they employ some of the same methods. In Nietzsche conception though the problem is rather with the valuations they promote, not necessarily with the method. Capitalism seeks to merely fulfill desires in the most efficient manner, it strives for contentment, happiness for the largest number. Mere utility therefor is its main value. Religions of old, and Nietzsche, saw those as something to be overcome... the aim should be over-man. — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, thanks. I wasn't really exploring Nietzsche's angle on it, merely reacting to one of his insights about the perception of those in power as ordinary, in which I saw a parallel with Weber's concept of disenchantment.

Left it too late. My mind moves fast.

Yep, you don’t have to stay in the Ukraine thread if you don’t feel like it. :wink:

I think I understand and pretty much agree with all of your points, but I've run out of steam on this topic.

It doesn't look like your argument construes things getting better as part of any narrative or ideology. Pinker's quote attributes the "successful way of thinking" to be "Enlightenment". You've left it unspecified. — fdrake

I now think that the steel man argument was a distraction and wasn't well thought-out. I think I left the Enlightenment unspecified to allow me to focus on Progress (general progress, or progressive history) rather than attempting to encompass everything in the quotation. In which case I should have proposed a different argument, omitting any mention of "ways of thinking," which was just an allusion to the Enlightenment.

Where I was going with it was to prompt myself to properly justify my attribution of myth, or irrational faith, to the concept of "primitive conditions", and thereby to Progress--before we even got to the ideology that might be thought to ensure it, i.e., Enlightenment. Whether they can be divided up neatly like that, I'm not sure.

This was productive — Benj96

I prefer enlightenment to productivity, seeking the truth to maximizing profits. But whatever works for you :smile:

No, this is exactly what I'm trying to avoid thinking, that primitive is contrasted with sophisticated. I don't think that's what it means in philosophy — L'éléphant

But I agreed with you, and the word “sophisticated” fits perfectly. You said primitive in philosophy means “basic and simple, as in the ordinary means of dealing with things,” and I agreed, using the examples of naive realism and the natural attitude. Sophisticated is the appropriate opposite, meaning developed to a high degree of complexity or made in a complicated way.

Anyway, I’m happy not to dwell on it any more.

That’s a fascinating connection I hadn’t thought about.

:cool:

How did you find #3?

In philosophy, and perhaps in art as well, the all-encompassing term is the world, and this is different from the universe, which is an object of science. There are things that exist in the world, like unicorns, Sancho Panza, and arguably justice, love, and numbers, which do not exist in the universe.

This is the view of Markus Gabriel, explained in Why the World Does Not Exist. I like his position on this. He says that although the world does not exist, everything else does:

There are planets, my dreams, evolution, the toilet flush, hair loss, hopes, elementary particles, and even unicorns on the far side of the moon, to mention only a few examples. The principle that the world does not exist entails that everything else exists.

From this point of view, the universe is smaller than the world. The universe is a scientific category, and the world, which is the “everything” you refer to, is just the field of all possible existences within it. The field of possible existence cannot itself be said to exist. A thing exists in a domain—the domain of physical things or the domain of mathematics or the domain of fictional characters—but the world is just the domain of all domains.

So the everything is the container of all containers in which things can be said to exist—but this means it doesn’t make sense to say that this super-container itself exists, because it’s the condition of all existence. But that is a definition, which is what you’re looking for.

Whether such a founding idea has merely not been lived up to, as you say, or else is in some way wrong or deficient is a difficult question that I’d need to spend some time on. I think it’s both.

My reply to your citation of the Declaration was an initial reaction. I’m not disavowing it but I’m not ready to debate it, at least not here. The Adorno quotation made me think, and the Declaration didn’t seem like a satisfactory response (although it was an appropriate one). I have some ideas around this issue, particularly the contradiction between the French Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen and the attempted suppression of the Haitian slave revolt—which is a similar issue—but I wasn’t prepared for a debate about it. Can I go now?

Looks like unjustified arrogance — frank

That’s my middle name.

I think I need a beer — invicta

You’ve had enough already.

I guess everything is hunky dory then. Well done.

This is a thread in which we announce what we’ve been reading and sometimes talk about it. I posted an interesting quotation from Adorno, which is what @T Clark replied to. If you have no interest in that quotation then I’m not interested in a discussion. I certainly have little interest in discussing your Declaration. It came up, and I replied, not unreasonably.

That’s a bit rude. If you had actually engaged with what Adorno was saying then I’d be happy to debate it, but it’s pretty clear that you’re in a possibly drunken frenzy, and I have no time for that.

Fair enough. I have no wish to trigger sensitive Americans so I’ll retreat from this conversation.

Maybe lay off the booze before your next post.

So what?

Have you intervened merely to defend the United States Declaration of Independence or do you have something to say about the tension between legal equality and real inequality?

And what has free speech got to do with it?

Yes, good point and I see that. But it’s not enough is it? That a country beset with racism was founded on egalitarianism might prompt us to wonder if there’s something wrong, or at least deficient, with that founding idea.

Interesting passage I’ve just read from Minima Moralia. It goes against the sort of view I’ve usually advocated:

The familiar argument of tolerance, that all people and all races are equal, is a boomerang. It lays itself open to the simple refutation of the senses, and the most compelling anthropological proofs that the Jews are not a race will, in the event of a pogrom, scarcely alter the fact that the totalitarians know full well whom they do and whom they do not intend to murder. If the equality of all who have human shape were demanded as an ideal instead of being assumed as a fact, it would not greatly help. Abstract utopia is all too compatible with the most insidious tendencies of society. That all men are alike is exactly what society would like to hear. It regards factual or imagined differences as marks of shame, which reveal, that one has not brought things far enough; that something somewhere has been left free of the machine, is not totally determined by the totality. … An emancipated society however would be no unitary state, but the realization of the generality in the reconciliation of differences. A politics which took this seriously should therefore not propagate even the idea of the abstract equality of human beings. They should rather point to the bad equality of today … and think of the better condition as the one in which one could be different without fear. — Adorno, Minima Moralia

Fits very well with current arguments against “colour blindness”.

The Origin of Negative Dialectics by Susan Buck-Morss — Jamal

Just finished this. A clear and excellent introduction to Adorno but not entry-level. Significantly focused on the influence of Walter Benjamin.

A break from Adorno now: The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche

For the first time in my life, I am able to spell his name without copying and pasting from a Google search. I decided to break it down: niet-z-sche, which is easy to remember.

Note that when I referred to “my original analysis” I was referring to the OP. The numbered argument presented above is my not-very-thorough attempt to steelman my opponent, who I am thinking about calling “Pinkerton”.

With that out of the way, you’ve made some good points. I intend to come back to this discussion in the next few days.

Thank you both. I’ll reply soonish.

The problem I have with that thinking is that it is impossible to separate science from the rest of culture. Changes in scientific thought run parallel with changes in ideas in the arts, politics, philosophy, moral theory, because they are all inexo intermeshed. If we’re going to argue that progress occurs in science and technology, then we have to concede that it takes place as a general feature of cultural history. — Joshs

But although science cannot be separated from the rest of culture, it can be distinguished, and it can be intermeshed such that what we call progress in science is combined with regress or stasis elsewhere, such as in ethics. For example, Hiroshima. I think that’s Gray’s central point.

I think we commonly mistake the definition of "primitive" as the past. I actually was first confused as to the use of the word when I came across the word in philosophy. I think in philosophy, primitive means basic and simple, as in the ordinary means of dealing with things. (I don't know, I'm trying to get to the definition that sounds satisfactory). — L'éléphant

Yes, I think in philosophy it could be contrasted with something like sophisticated. For example, naive realism might be described as primitive in that it’s not a consciously developed theory, just an unexamined belief. In contrast, some varieties of direct realism are worked out by philosophers, so they can be called sophisticated.

Similarly in phenomenology, maybe the natural attitude could be described as primitive, as opposed to philosophically deliberate bracketing.

However, in my opinion it’s pretty clear that Pinker means it in the sense I identified: characteristic of an earlier stage of development, when Enlightenment had not been brought to fruition in some way, or just when things were worse.

I wonder if my objection to “primitive conditions” is a trivial one, dressed up as a profundity. This is indeed how Pinker views the criticism of the idea of progress. Let’s see…

1. If something improves, e.g., the eradication of guinea worm disease, it happens in time, going from worse to better. The past condition is worse, closer to the beginning of a progressive development and thereby primitive.

2. If it gets worse again, this can rightfully be called a slide back to a primitive condition.

3. Many very important things have improved in tandem.

4. These things improved in tandem thanks to a way of thinking and a way of going about things.

5. If these things get worse again in the present and future, this can rightfully be called a general slide back to primitive conditions.

6. We have to maintain the successful way of thinking and going about things to prevent such a general slide back.

Seems reasonable. Before I do it myself, can anyone see how to save my original analysis?

Ah, the OP! I forgot about that.

So “us” may have referred to philosophers. Right. Well, as that isn’t remotely as interesting to me as what I was talking about, I’ll quietly leave…

The context is what exemplifies philosophical thought — Mww

Which context? If you mean the transcendental deduction, where the applicability of the categories is proved and the transcendental unity of apperception is established as the absolute requirement of experience, then I think you’re wrong. That’s about cognition in general, not only about philosophical thought. Or have I misunderstood you?

Otherwise, you haven’t been clear so I don’t know what you’re saying.

I’ll butt in here to note that John Gray, who has been criticizing the idea of progress for years and is probably much more pessimistic than I am, accepts that there is progress in science, but only in science. Elsewhere, it’s a matter of gains here and losses there, because, he says, there is no general moral improvement over time.

So it’s quite possible to say that progress is an irrational faith and a myth, and also accept steady scientific advance.