Against Disenchantment

Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)The past few years have seen a resurgence of interest in the Frankfurt School – a group of German sociologists, philosophers, cultural theorists, psychoanalysts and their students – whose work is now synonymous with critical theory. The Dialectic of Enlightenment provides an account of the ascendancy of enlightenment explicitly keyed to the ‘disenchantment of the world’, which they suggest first and foremost meant ‘the extirpation of animism’ and the end of belief in magic, spirits and demons. Even if you ignore the Harry Potter craze and other fictionalised depictions of wizards, ghosts and witches, studies of American reading habits suggest that ‘New Age’ print culture is incredibly lucrative, with ‘non-fiction books’ about magic, guardian angels and near-death experiences frequently appearing in the upper echelons of Amazon’s bestseller lists.

Source: aeon.co