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Literature and Disenchantment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Extract
Literary criticism much too often ignores the contributions of the sociology of religions. And yet it would benefit from understanding that all culture has its source in a religious relationship to the world, even a negative one, and proceeds from a separation of the visible from the invisible. Such, in fact, is the principal characteristic of the religious element that Dilthey, for example, emphasizes. “Everywhere we encounter something that bears the name religion, its distinctive mark is its dealing with the visible”.
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- Copyright © 1989 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 Dilthey, Le Monde de l'esprit, Paris, Aubier, 1947, tr. M. Rémy, p. 381.
2 M. Gauchet, Le Désenchantement du monde, Paris, Gallimard, 1985, p. 1. For Max Weber, the expression "disenchantment of the world" signifies in a more res trictive manner "the elimination of magic as a technique of salvation", cf. L'É thique protestante et l'esprit du capitalisme, Paris, Agora, 1985, p. 134.
3 A. Koyré, Du Monde clos à l'univers infini, Paris, Gallimard, 1973, p. 336.
4 L. Goldmann, Le Dieu caché, Paris, Gallimard, 1959, p. 41.
5 J. Brun, L'Europe philosophe, Paris, Stock, 1988, p. 142, "With Nicolas de Cusa, vision began taking the place of listening".
6 On this point see M. Foucault, Les Mots et les choses, Paris, Gallimard, 1966, pp. 53-55, and Jean Brun who cites this significant text by Galileo (1623): "Philosophy is written in this vast book that is eternally open before our eyes—I mean the Universe—but one cannot read it before learning the language and be coming familiar with the characters in which it is written". Op. cit., p. 166.
7 Le Dieu caché, op. cit., p. 336.
8 P. Lacoue Labarthe and J.L. Nancy, L'Absolu littéraire, Paris, Seuil, 1978.
9 M. Weber, L ‘Objectivité de la connaissance, quoted in J. Freund, Max Weber, Paris, PUF, 1969, p. 26; "The irrational reality of life and its capacity for possible meanings remain inexhaustible".
10 Le Désenchantement du monde, op. cit., p. 11.
11 G. Lukacs, La Théorie du roman, Paris, Gonthier, 1963; M. Foucault, Les Mots et les choses, op. cit.; M. Kundera, L ‘Art du roman, Paris, Gallimard, 1986.
12 Cf. S. Felman, La Folie et la chose littéraire, Paris, Seuil, 1978.
13 L ‘Absolu littéraire, op. cit., p. 21.
14 P. Bénichou, Le Sacre de l'écrivain, Paris, Corti, 1973; Les Temps des prophètes, Paris, Gallimard, 1977 and Les Mages romantiques, Paris, Gallimard, 1988.
15 Blank ("blanc") transformed into "the small yellow wall" in Proust. Cf. G. Bachelard, L'Eau et les rêves, Paris, Corti, 1940: "And in the whiteness, in the kingdom of the imagination, it will not be difficult. If a golden ray of moonlight falls across the river, the formal and superficial imagination of colors will not be troubled. The imagination of the surface will see as white what is yellow (…)".
16 We know how successful was the theme of the romantic storm, from Géricault to Michelet (La Mer) and from the book by Deperthes published in 1781 and re vised by Eyriès in 1815, Histoire des naufrages.
17 Le Désenchantement du monde, op. cit., p. 241.
18 Cf. H. Blumenberg, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1981.
19 R. Barthes, Le Degré zéro de l'écriture, Paris, Seuil, 1953, p. 37.
20 Le Degré zéro de l'écriture, op. cit., p. 37.
21 Ibid., p. 38.
22 Le Désenchantement du monde, op. cit., p. 239.
23 Quoted in D. Boorstin, Les Découvreurs, Paris, Laffont, 1988, p. 527.
24 One of the works announcing this is the book by Volney, Les Ruines ou médi tations sur les révolutions des empires, 1791.
25 G. Gusdorf, Fondements du savoir romantique, Paris, Payot, 1982, p. 462.
26 J. Le Rider, "Freud et la littérature", in Histoire de la psychanalyse, Paris, Hachette, 1982, p. 61.
27 Le Désenchantement du monde, op. cit., p. 298.
28 Y. Bonnefoy, Anti-Platon, Paris, Mercure de France, 1947.
29 In a recent interview with K. Brincourt, (Figaro littéraire of 2 May 1989), E. Jünger himself remarked, "Today's world, which speaks with the universal lan guage of technology, brings the emergence not of spiritual unity but a new poly theism".
This return to the Greeks also seems to be at the heart of the most modern science when, for example, it reflects on the concept of autonomy in the cognitive sciences (J. Varela, Autonomie et connaissance, Paris, Seuil, 1989) or in physics (cf. I. Prigogine, I. Stengers, La Nouvelle alliance, Paris, Gallimard, 1979: "The metamorphosis of contemporary sciences is not a breaking away (…). They (peasants and sailors) know that the weather cannot be commanded and that growth of living things cannot be hurried, this autonomous process of transformation that the Greeks called physis. In this sense our science has at last become a physical science since at last it has admitted the autonomy of things, and not only of living things", p. 294. For an illustration see the theory of dissipative structures developed by Prigogine).
30 This topic has been dealt with a great deal recently. See for example, G. Lipovetsky, L ‘Ère du vide, Paris, Gallimard, 1983 and L ‘Empire de l'éphémère, Paris, Gallimard, 1987; A. Bloom, L ‘Âme désarmée, Paris, Julliard, 1987; A. Finkielkraut, La Défaite de la pensée, Paris, Gallimard, 1987; M. Henry, La Bar barie, Paris, Grasset, 1987.
31 This is the collapse that Husserl analyzed in his time under the title "Krisis" in the famous lectures he delivered in 1935 in Vienna and in Prague.
32 Manuscript by E. Husserl, May 1934, translated by D. Franck, in Philosophie, No. 1, January 1984.
33 H. Arendt, La Crise de la culture, Paris, Gallimard, 1972.