Sale Now on! Extra 5% off Sitewide

The Myth Of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, And The Birth Of The Human Sciences

University of Chicago Press
SKU:
9780226403366
|
ISBN13:
9780226403366
$43.67
(No reviews yet)
Condition:
New
Usually Ships in 24hrs
Current Stock:
Estimated Delivery by: | Fastest delivery by:
Adding to cart… The item has been added
Buy ebook
A great many theorists have argued that the defining feature of modernity is that people no longer believe in spirits, myths, or magic. Jason A. Josephson-Storm argues that as broad cultural history goes, this narrative is wrong, as attempts to suppress magic have failed more often than they have succeeded. Even the human sciences have been more enchanted than is commonly supposed. But that raises the question: How did a magical, spiritualist, mesmerized Europe ever convince itself that it was disenchanted? Josephson-Storm traces the history of the myth of disenchantment in the births of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. Ironically, the myth of mythless modernity formed at the very time that Britain, France, and Germany were in the midst of occult and spiritualist revivals. Indeed, Josephson-Storm argues, these disciplines’ founding figures were not only aware of, but profoundly enmeshed in, the occult milieu; and it was specifically in response to this burgeoning culture of spirits and magic that they produced notions of a disenchanted world. By providing a novel history of the human sciences and their connection to esotericism, The Myth of Disenchantment dispatches with most widely held accounts of modernity and its break from the premodern past.
  • | Author: Jason Ananda Josephson Storm, Jason Ananda Josephson
  • | Publisher: University of Chicago Press
  • | Publication Date: May 16, 2017
  • | Number of Pages: 428 pages
  • | Language: English
  • | Binding: Paperback/History
  • | ISBN-10: 022640336X
  • | ISBN-13: 9780226403366
Author:
Jason Ananda Josephson Storm, Jason Ananda Josephson
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Publication Date:
May 16, 2017
Number of pages:
428 pages
Language:
English
Binding:
Paperback/History
ISBN-10:
022640336X
ISBN-13:
9780226403366