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The Re-Disenchantment of the World: Thinking, Feeling, and Secularity
October 25, 2023 @ 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
This event is hosted by the religious studies department.
“The Re-Disenchantment of the World: Thinking, Feeling, and Secularity”
Wednesday, October 25, 3:30pm-5:00pm, Murray Hall (Hamilton Hall), Room G201
Donovan Schaefer, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, will deliver a talk as part of the McLester Lecture and Colloquium.
Charles Taylor once wrote that “everyone can agree that one of the big differences between us and our ancestors of 500 years ago is that they lived in an ‘enchanted’ world and we do not.” But what disenchantment means is a moving target. By re-evaluating the relationship between thinking and feeling, this talk opens the door to a new view of disenchantment—neither embracing Taylor’s story of decline nor dismissing disenchantment as mere “myth.” Rather than the eradication of feeling, disenchantment is a rearrangement of the way modernity feels. This calls on us to rethink how disenchantment fits in to theories of secularization.
A reception will follow Schaefer’s remarks in Carolina Hall.
Co-sponsored by the Institute for the Arts and Humanities and Duke University’s department of religious studies.
