Is the World Disenchanted if Everything is Just Matter in Motion?
Abram Brummett, MA, Teaching Assistant, PhD, Saint Louis University
A sense of disenchantment with being can arise from a thoroughgoing physicalism—the view that all existence amounts to physical stuff responding to natural laws. Disenchantment arises because physicalism leaves no place for genuine mystery in the world, everything is mere matter in motion, and only the quantifiable counts as real. This mechanistic view of being clashes with our sense of meaning when mechanism threatens to invade even the most sacred aspects of human life. For example, can something like love be completely explained in naturalistic terms? Does love reduce to facts of biology, chemistry and physics—with no more room for genuine mystery than any other mechanistic/robotic process? Because the mechanistic view is thought to drain the things it explains of meaning, some attempt to argue that at least some aspects of reality contain an element of mystery. Mystery gives us reason to stand in awe and reverence of being, to respect its intrinsic meaning and value.
I use Heidegger’s critique of technology to better articulate the worry that we lose meaning through mechanism, that we disenchant and flatten the world when naturalism becomes a totalizing lens through which we view all of being. Heidegger called this view the “technological enframing” or “the gestell.” We totalize naturalism when we come to believe that only what is revealed through science is real. Since all that is revealed through science is mechanistic being—physical stuff acting in accordance with natural laws—our world is rendered intrinsically meaningless, just one thing after another. Through such a lens, we come to see everything as bestand, or standing reserve—a potential resource on standby for exploitation if we can only uncover its secrets. As inhabitants of this mechanistic world, we too can be reduced, studied and modified. Through the gestell, nothing is sacred, nothing escapes the reduction of all being, including us, into meaningless stuff to be used.
In this essay I challenge the notion that something precious is lost when we come to see all of being as purely mechanistic. I do this by posing a dilemma; is the mystery needed for meaning an epistemological or an ontological mystery? I argue that epistemological mystery does not solve the problem of disenchantment, because all it offers is phenomena that are mysterious to us, but which ultimately retain a mechanistic explanation. On the other hand, ontological mystery runs the risk of obscurantism, because it is not clear what ontological mystery means. Ontological mystery must not just be mysterious to us, but mysterious in and of itself. If we need mystery for meaning, we do so without a clear meaning of mystery.
Ultimately I wish to argue that we can retain a mechanistic view of being with a sense of meaning and enchantment of our world. Meaning and mechanism are not mutually exclusive. Instead of re-enchanting medicine with religion, we should change the way we think about mechanism.
A sense of disenchantment with being can arise from a thoroughgoing physicalism—the view that all existence amounts to physical stuff responding to natural laws. Disenchantment arises because physicalism leaves no place for genuine mystery in the world, everything is mere matter in motion, and only the quantifiable counts as real. This mechanistic view of being clashes with our sense of meaning when mechanism threatens to invade even the most sacred aspects of human life. For example, can something like love be completely explained in naturalistic terms? Does love reduce to facts of biology, chemistry and physics—with no more room for genuine mystery than any other mechanistic/robotic process? Because the mechanistic view is thought to drain the things it explains of meaning, some attempt to argue that at least some aspects of reality contain an element of mystery. Mystery gives us reason to stand in awe and reverence of being, to respect its intrinsic meaning and value.
I use Heidegger’s critique of technology to better articulate the worry that we lose meaning through mechanism, that we disenchant and flatten the world when naturalism becomes a totalizing lens through which we view all of being. Heidegger called this view the “technological enframing” or “the gestell.” We totalize naturalism when we come to believe that only what is revealed through science is real. Since all that is revealed through science is mechanistic being—physical stuff acting in accordance with natural laws—our world is rendered intrinsically meaningless, just one thing after another. Through such a lens, we come to see everything as bestand, or standing reserve—a potential resource on standby for exploitation if we can only uncover its secrets. As inhabitants of this mechanistic world, we too can be reduced, studied and modified. Through the gestell, nothing is sacred, nothing escapes the reduction of all being, including us, into meaningless stuff to be used.
In this essay I challenge the notion that something precious is lost when we come to see all of being as purely mechanistic. I do this by posing a dilemma; is the mystery needed for meaning an epistemological or an ontological mystery? I argue that epistemological mystery does not solve the problem of disenchantment, because all it offers is phenomena that are mysterious to us, but which ultimately retain a mechanistic explanation. On the other hand, ontological mystery runs the risk of obscurantism, because it is not clear what ontological mystery means. Ontological mystery must not just be mysterious to us, but mysterious in and of itself. If we need mystery for meaning, we do so without a clear meaning of mystery.
Ultimately I wish to argue that we can retain a mechanistic view of being with a sense of meaning and enchantment of our world. Meaning and mechanism are not mutually exclusive. Instead of re-enchanting medicine with religion, we should change the way we think about mechanism.