DISENCHANTMENT, RE-ENCHANTMENT, AND ENCHANTMENT

Max Weber described the modern world as disenchanted. By contrast, some contemporary writers have said that postmodernism and other developments are re-enchanting the world. I put Weber and these writers alongside each other, and then undercut the discussion by considering a third possibility raised by some recent writers on theological aesthetics: that the world is still enchanted in certain ways. But this third point of view depends on a wide reading of the concept of "sacrament", and one very different from Weber's understanding.