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The disenchantment of the world : a political history of religion / Marcel Gauchet ; translated by Oscar Burge ; with a foreword by Charles Taylor.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Gauchet, Marcel, author.
- Series:
- New French Thought
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Religions.
- Religion.
- Religion and politics.
- Civilization, Secular.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (248 pages)
- Place of Publication:
- Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [1997]
- Summary:
- Marcel Gauchet has launched one of the most ambitious and controversial works of speculative history recently to appear, based on the contention that Christianity is "the religion of the end of religion." In The Disenchantment of the World, Gauchet reinterprets the development of the modern west, with all its political and psychological complexities, in terms of mankind's changing relation to religion. He views Western history as a movement away from religious society, beginning with prophetic Judaism, gaining tremendous momentum in Christianity, and eventually leading to the rise of the political state. Gauchet's view that monotheistic religion itself was a form of social revolution is rich with implications for readers in fields across the humanities and social sciences.Life in religious society, Gauchet reminds us, involves a very different way of being than we know in our secular age: we must imagine prehistoric times where ever-present gods controlled every aspect of daily reality, and where ancestor worship grounded life's meaning in a far-off past. As prophecy-oriented religions shaped the concept of a single omnipotent God, one removed from the world and yet potentially knowable through prayer and reflection, human beings became increasingly free. Gauchet's paradoxical argument is that the development of human political and psychological autonomy must be understood against the backdrop of this double movement in religious consciousness--the growth of divine power and its increasing distance from human activity.In a fitting tribute to this passionate and brilliantly argued book, Charles Taylor offers an equally provocative foreword. Offering interpretations of key concepts proposed by Gauchet, Taylor also explores an important question: Does religion have a place in the future of Western society? The book does not close the door on religion but rather invites us to explore its socially constructive powers, which continue to shape Western politics and conceptions of the state.
- Contents:
- Cover Page
- Half-title Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Foreword
- Introduction
- Part One: The Metamorphoses of the Divine: The Origin, Meaning, and Development of the Religious
- The Historicity of the Religious
- Chapter 1. Primeval Religion or the Reign of the Absolute Past
- Chapter 2. The State as Sacral Transforming Agent
- Hierarchy
- Domination
- Conquest
- The Axial Age
- Chapter 3. The Dynamics of Transcendence
- Distancing God and Understanding the World
- Divine Greatness, Human Liberty
- From Myth to Reason
- From Dependence to Autonomy
- Chapter 4. From Immersion in Nature to Transforming Nature
- Indebtedness to the Gods, the Inter-Human Bond, and the relation to things
- The Political Machine
- The Vitality of Change
- The Other World and Appropriating This World
- Heaven and Earth: Christianity's Specificity
- Orthodoxy and Heresy
- Incarnation and Interpretation
- Prayer and Work
- The Structure of Terrestrial Integrity
- The Crowded World
- Collective Permanence
- Peace
- Homo Oeconomicus
- Part Two: The Apogee and Death of God Christianity and Western Development
- Chapter 5. The Powers of the Divine Subject
- A Religion for Departing from Religion
- Israel: Inventing God-as-One
- Moses: Dominating Domination
- The Covenant and Trial By Adversity
- The Prophets
- Jesus: The God-Man
- Messianism
- The Second Moses
- An Inverted Messiah
- Saint Paul: The Universal God
- Christology
- Conquering The Conquerors
- The Christian Revolution: Faith, Church, King
- The Greeks: The Religion of Reason
- The Turn toward Equality
- Chapter 6. Figures of the Human Subject
- Being-a-Self: Consciousness, the Unconscious
- Collective-Being: Governing the Future
- From Subjugated Society To Social-Subject
- The Age of Ideology
- The Child and the Future.
- Bureaucracy, Democracy
- The Power of the Identical and the Society of the New
- Living-with-Ourselves: Absorbing the Other
- Political Conflict
- The Separation of the State
- The Religious after Religion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index.
- Notes:
- Translated from the French edition of Marcel Gauchet, Le désenchantement du monde.
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [221]-223) and index.
- Description based on print version record.
- ISBN:
- 0-691-23836-7
- OCLC:
- 1273975977
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