It's amazing to me that a book published in 1981 can be so universal in scope, that in 2013, all the epigraphs feel stunningly and accurately important to contemporary issues. The first epigraph to the opening chapter (Introduction: The Modern Landscape) is from William Morris in 1891"You see all around 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."A passage from Descartes in 1637 opens the "Birth of Modern Scientific Consciousness" could be spoken by the CEO of an energy company, or investor in a pipeline, or fracking operation.What is the role of consciousness, what sort of relationships have we traded in since the 16th century?There are two chapters for Disenchantment. The first (46 pages) starts with Weber's "die Entzauberung der Welt" , also called the "disgodding" of nature, delves into the Hermetic wisdom, alchemy and a brief history, which is often discarded as equally mad as Don Quixote's quests for significance. Our Western minds have been trained to balk at simultaneous truths, and this chapter will provide the background, which includes the role of organized religion. Disenchantment (2) starts with two faces of Newton and proceeds for 17 pages concluding that "modern science and technology are based not only of the hostile attitudes of science towards nature/environment and repression of the body and unconscious" that sets the background for the rest of the book. What does it mean: to be a human being? to relate to another human being? to relate to a society that does not seemingly care about human beings?Berman will provide ample sources to consider such questions and the later chapters call particularly on the work ofGregory Bateson as he discussed "tomorrow's metaphysics" - which like disenchantment, is also discussed in two chapters.I particularly enjoyed the illustrations, the tables and epigraphs for instance of Kabir, "The flute of interior time is played whether we hear it or not." And from Levi-Strauss, "A well-ordered humanism does not begin with itself, but puts things back in their place. It puts the world before life, life before man and the respect of others before love of self. This is the lesson that the people we call "savages" teach us: a lesson of modesty, decency and discretion in the face of a world that preceded our species and that will survive it."An important book. Berman quotes T.S. Eliot from Little Gidding -- which, sums up for me the idea of starting out with reading this book,and feeling it is one worth reading again, each time discovering "at the end of our exploration will be the arrival where we started and know the place for the first time."
Like many of the other reviewers here, this is a monumentally important book for me. I would just like to add one interesting observation that people may appreciate. I'm a book dealer who specializes in alchemy and related subjects, scholarly and rare books mainly. Over the decades I've met quite a few very dedicated students of alchemy and Hermetic philosophy and among those people I've met a number of practical alchemists, i.e people who also do laboratory work. If you haven't read this book then you might laugh at that notion. But if you have read it you'll understand that alchemy is more than just a thought process, a psychological dynamic, more than just the history of an old science. It is also something that you do physically with your body to interact with nature. And many of those practical alchemists have told me that this book explains the truth of physical alchemy better than any they had encountered.
Do You like book The Reenchantment Of The World (1981)?
I didn't actually finish this book in its entirety, but I was saturated with enough information from it that I feel like I have. It was beginning to make me anxious so I abandoned it. Plus a lot of stuff in it seemed pretty dated. I think we're already in the midst of the "paradigm shift" that Berman calls for, and though Bateson is cool or whatever, I think the real harbingers of change are women of color. I also think Berman's position discredits medical advances with real benefits for people, which is a bit ableist.
—Mary
I discovered this book recently and it spoke to me so strongly, was so consonant with my interests in and emerging understanding of history and consciousness and environment and science, that I wondered that I had never encountered it before. And then I had such a strong feeling of deja vu while reading it that I am half-convinced I must have read it as a teenager and completely repressed it, as I went on with my life to study and contemplate exactly these topics and explore these lines of argument.Regardless, this is one of my top books / recommendations of all time.
—Brent Ranalli
Thanks Guy. Certainly rational economics are turning NZ into a third-world country! Every day the gap between rich and poor gets bigger here. I suppose it's all you can expect when the prime minister's a millionaire who used to be called "the smiling assassin" when he worked at Merryl Lynch and smiled hugely when he gave people the sack!
—Guy
