The Disenchantment of the World

A Political History of Religion (New French Thought Series)

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by Marcel Gauchet,

Translated by Oscar Burge,

by Charles Taylor

Princeton University Press

Due/Published October 1999, 272 pages, paper

ISBN 0691029377

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.

Review

With a statements like Christianity is "the religion of the end of religion" and his project of exploring history in view of mankind's changing relationship to religion, Gauchet, a Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, has staked out an ambitious, if not controversial project. Gauchet's study examines the movement of secularization in the West. Though this is a topic that has been taken on by other thinkers, e.g. Weber and Durkheim (and in many ways Gauchet is influenced by Durkheiman thought), the points of departure and subsequent arguments presented by Gauchet are both novel and challenging. The Disenchantment of the World traces the change in human consciousness affected by the transformation from "primitive" religions to "higher" religions, i.e. Judaism and Christianity. In primitive religions man's place in the world was fixed in a world controlled by gods embedded in nature and the primeval past which grounded life's meaning. Judaic prophetic tradition and then later Christianity changed our conception of ourselves vis-a-vis the divine and ourselves as subjects. In the Judeo-Christian tradition a God is potentially knowable through prayer and meditation, creating a more active and autonomous individual. Gauchet follows this examination of the historical growth of Judaism and Christianity by charting the inevitability of the modern political state. Thus, he reworks the birth of monotheism as part of a monumental social revolution. Gauchet concludes with an equally worthy and compelling look at the future if any of religion in the West.