Weber taught that scientific rationality had disenchanted the world. It dispelled myths and made the natural and social worlds transparent and prosaic. Religious and supernatural accounts of the universe lost credibility. An old magical picture of reality made way for a new one: gods and spirits fled, leaving material processes behind them. This course looks at the historical process that Weber described as one of disenchantment. We will watch gods and demons being expelled from the heights of western culture – and reappearing there in new forms. By the end we may wonder if they ever left – and if we were ever modern.
