Reenchantment as Resonance

The standard thesis of the disenchantment of the world appears as a self-referential claim maintaining something about the claimant. In a nutshell, it contends that we, moderns, live in a world that does not resonate with us, which is mute, indifferent, mindless and therefore usable, exploitable, consumable, but not intrinsically worthy or meaningful. In my essay, I discuss an alternative view of the relationship between self and world by taking three interrelated steps. First, starting from a first-person perspective, I wonder why the experiences of enchantment have to cave in and give way to disillusionment: is this an inescapable feature of the human condition and, if such is the case, what sort of inescapability are we dealing with here? Second, as long as episodes of enchantment do happen, I ask then what kind of human potential is embodied by them. Third, I conclude my argument by considering whether there are ways to account for the reasons supporting the two contrasting stances (i.e., enchantment and disenchantment) without making them mutually incompatible. To this aim, I proceed by (a) examining Alfred Schutz’s notion of “multiple realities”, (b) outlining the critique of Weber’s disenchantment thesis undertaken by Hans Joas in his book The Power of the Sacred, (c) testing the fruitfulness of the metaphor of “religious unmusicality” and, finally, (d) focusing on Hartmut Rosa’s theory of resonance and asking whether a resonant world can be plausibly described as a reenchanted world. My answer to the last question is a qualified yes, to the effect that a resonant mode of relationship between self and world can be regarded as the product of a non-alienated way of life that empowers the subject by making her more receptive to the inherent worth built into the human agents’ intentional environment.