Disenchantment

The disenchantment of the world is one of the economist and sociologist Max Weber in his later published lecture science as a profession in 1917 developed and used at various points of his work term with which he summarizes the development that results from the intellectualization and rationalization, the associated primarily with the development of science.

"The increasing intellectualization and rationalization does not mean that is an increasing general awareness of living conditions, under which one. But it means something else: the knowledge thereof, or the belief: that if you just wanted to, you could learn it at any time, so that there is in principle no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play there, that in fact all things - in principle - could dominate by calculating. But this means that the disenchantment of the world. Not anymore, as the savage, for there were those powers, one must resort to magical means in order to control the spirits or solicit. Instead, technical means and calculating afford das. This mainly means the intellectualization as such. "

The move away from " magical means " that makes Weber in this process, can be seen in the context of the increasing de-Christianisation and secularisation of Western society (see also: occidental rationalism ).

A similar trend Friedrich Schiller described poetically in his poem The Gods Graecia in which he calls "the godless nature" describes.

The German philosopher Markus Gabriel said in a lecture at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna on February 18, 2014, that this sentence will usually misunderstood: Weber do not claim that modernity is essentially a process of disenchantment. Modernity is rather influenced by the illusion that the world is disenchanted! " The modern reality of life has become much more complex than was the case in the early modernist, she is now almost completely unmanageable and opaque. " "He just does not claim that modernity is a transparent, totally transparent and disenchanted in this world of sense. " " the demystification takes place in that we assume that the social order an underlying rationality - regardless of whether it really is them or not. " this misconception prevents us from recognizing our ideological assumptions.