The Re-enchantment of the World: Art versus Religion

by Gordon Graham

The Re-enchantment of the World is a philosophical exploration of the role of art and religion as sources of meaning in an increasingly material world dominated by science. Gordon Graham takes as his starting point Max Weber's idea that contemporary Western culture is marked by a 'disenchantment of the world' -- the loss of spiritual value in the wake of religion's decline and the triumph of the physical and biological sciences. Relating themes in Hegel, Nietzsche, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer, and Gadamer to topics in contemporary philosophy of the arts, Graham explores the idea that art, now freed from its previous service to religion, has the potential to re-enchant the world. In so doing, he develops an argument that draws on the strengths of both 'analytical' and 'continental' traditions of philosophical reflection.
The opening chapter examines ways in which human lives can be made meaningful as a background to the debates surrounding secularization and secularism. Subsequent chapters are devoted to painting, literature, music, architecture, and festival with special attention given to Surrealism, 19th-century fiction, James Joyce, the music of J. S. Bach and the operas of Wagner. Graham concludes that that only religion properly so called can 'enchant the world', and that modern art's ambition to do so fails.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology

212 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2007

About the author

Gordon Graham is Director of the Edinburgh Sacred Arts Festival. He previously taught philosophy at the University of St Andrews, University of Aberdeen, and Princeton Theological Seminary. The author of twenty books on a wide range of subjects in aesthetics, politics and moral philosophy, he has also published extensively on the Scottish philosophical tradition. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and winner of an Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society Lifetime Achievement Award, he was founding editor of the Journal of Scottish Philosophy and general editor of the Oxford History of Scottish Philosophy. His books include Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment (Edinburgh University Press, 2022).

Reviews

[Lucy Pollard-Gott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philosopher Gordon Graham carefully considers the possibility and inherent difficulties of art's project of filling the role of religion and supplying meaning for human life. He asks this question in turn of literature, visual art, music, architecture, and festival. Fascinating, especially since he finds some crucial gaps in what art affords us despite taking it on the terms suggested by philosophers as diverse as Nietzsche, Gadamer, Schopenhauer, and others.