The Disenchantment of Magic

Spells, Charms, and Superstition in Early European Witchcraft Literature

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8024095
AutoresMichael D Bailey (0000-0002-0250-9164, autor de correspondencia)
Año2006
Volumen111
Número2
Páginas383-404
Fecha de publicación2006-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0002-8762 • E-ISSN: 1937-5239
EditorialOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1086/ahr.111.2.383
OpenAlexW1991520932
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas24

IN 1917, IN A LECTURE IN MUNICH on “Science as a Vocation,” Max Weber first articulated his notion of “the disenchantment of the world,” later also incorporated into his seminal Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. He presented disenchantment as a hallmark feature of modern Western society, which had come into full vigor with the Protestant Reformation. Initially Weber described this development, in relation to science, as entailing primarily the conviction that “there are no mysterious incalculable forces” and that “one need no longer have recourse to magical means in order to master or implore spirits.” Later, and rather more evocatively in relation to religion, he described it as a historical force that had progressively “repudiated all magical means to salvation as superstition and sin.”1 Weber’s assertions were hardly uncontroversial, and they have been challenged repeatedly in the century since they were first made.2 Nevertheless, the basic notion of disenchantment remains very influential on many academic disciplines’ understanding of the modern world. Magic and cultural perceptions of the magical occupy a critical place particularly in sociological and anthropological conceptions of modernity, and issues of “magical thought” and “superstition” in opposition to “scientific rationalism” frame discussions not only of the modern West but of instances in which Western modernity confronts the traditional beliefs and practices of other world cultures.3

Aesthetics · Afterlife · Disenchantment · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Instrumentalism · MAGIC (telescope · Modernity · Political science · Protestantism · Relation (database · Sociology · Superstition · Theology · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious studies · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory