"WE HAVE, AS DANTE WROTE IN THE DIVINE COMEDY,
AWOKEN TO FIND OURSELVES IN A DARK WOODS."
"What will serve to stabilize things today is fairly obscure; but it is a
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.
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Copyright © by Morris Berman
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For three friends:
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
Contents
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
Acknowledgments
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.
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