Narratives of Disenchantment and Secularization Critiquing Max Weber's Idea of Modernity : Critiquing MaxWeber's Idea of Modernity

What does it really mean to be modern? The contributors to this collection offer critical attempts both to re-read Max Weber's historical idea of disenchantment and to develop further his understanding of what the contested relationship between modernity and religion represents. The approach is distinctive because it focuses on disenchantment as key to understanding those aspects of modern society and culture that Weber diagnosed. This is in opposition to approaches that focus on secularization , narrowly construed as the rise of secularism or the divide between religion and politics, and that then conflate this with modernization as a whole. Other novel contributions are discussions of temporality - meaning the sense of time or of historical change that posits a separation between an ostensibly secular modernity and its religious past - and of the manner in which such a sense of time is constructed and disseminated through narratives that themselves may resemble religious myths. It reflects the idea that disenchantment is a narrative with either Enlightenment, Romantic, or Christian roots, thereby developing a conversation between critical studies in the field of secularism (such as those of Talal Asad and Gil Anidjar) and conceptual history approaches to secularization and modernity (such as those of Karl Löwith and Reinhart Koselleck), and in the process creates something that is more than merely the sum of its parts. "What does it really mean to be modern? The contributors to this collection offer critical attempts both to re-read Max Weber's historical idea of disenchantment and to develop further his understanding of what the contested relationship between modernity and religion represents. The approach is distinctive because it focuses on disenchantment as key to understanding those aspects of modern society and culture that Weber diagnosed. This is in opposition to approaches that focus on secularization, narrowly construed as the rise of secularism or the divide between religion and politics, and that then conflate this with modernization as a whole. Other novel contributions are discussions of temporality - meaning the sense of time or of historical change that posits a separation between an ostensibly secular modernity and its religious past - and of the manner in which such a sense of time is constructed and disseminated through narratives that themselves may resemble religious myths. It reflects the idea that disenchantment is a narrative with either Enlightenment, Romantic, or Christian roots, thereby developing a conversation between critical studies in the field of secularism (such as those of Talal Asad and Gil Anidjar) and conceptual history approaches to secularization and modernity (such as those of Karl Löwith and Reinhart Koselleck), and in the process creates something that is more than merely the sum of its parts."--Publisher's description "What does it really mean to be modern? The contributors to this collection offer critical attempts both to re-read Max Weber's historical idea of disenchantment and to develop further his understanding of what the contested relationship between modernity and religion represents. The approach is distinctive because it focuses on disenchantment as key to understanding those aspects of modern society and culture that Weber diagnosed. This is in opposition to approaches that focus on secularization , narrowly construed as the rise of secularism or the divide between religion and politics, and that then conflate this with modernization as a whole. Other novel contributions are discussions of temporality - meaning the sense of time or of historical change that posits a separation between an ostensibly secular modernity and its religious past - and of the manner in which such a sense of time is constructed and disseminated through narratives that themselves may resemble religious myths. It reflects the idea that disenchantment is a narrative with either Enlightenment, Romantic, or Christian roots, thereby developing a conversation between critical studies in the field of secularism (such as those of Talal Asad and Gil Anidjar) and conceptual history approaches to secularization and modernity (such as those of Karl Løwith and Reinhart Koselleck), and in the process creates something that is more than merely the sum of its parts."-- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Contents 6 List of Contributors 7 Acknowledgments 9 Introduction Robert A. Yelle and Lorenz Trein 10 1 Dialectics of Disenchantment: The Devaluation of the Objective World and the Revaluation of Subjective Religiosity Hans G. Kippenberg 18 2 Max Weber and the Rationalization of Magic Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm 40 3 Science as a Commodity: Disenchantment and Conspicuous Consumption Egil Asprem 60 4 Multiple Times of Disenchantment and Secularization Lorenz Trein 80 5 The Disenchanted Enchantments of the Modern Imagination and “Fictionalism” Michael Saler 96 6 Narratives of Disenchantment, Narratives of Secularization: Radical Enlightenment and the Rise of the Illiberal Secular Jonathan Israel 120 7 “An Age of Miracles”: Disenchantment as a Secularized Theological Narrative Robert A. Yelle 138 8 Counter-Narratives to Secularization: Merits and Limits of Genealogy Critique Monika Wohlrab-Sahr 158 Notes 181 Bibliography 229 Index 259