ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explores Max Weber's thesis concerning the 'disenchantment of the world' through a discussion of the emergence of Spiritualism in nineteenth-century America. Weber utilised this expression, which he borrowed from the eighteenth-century Romantic Friedrich Schiller, to describe the central characteristic of his pessimistic vision of modernity. In a disenchanted world, Weber argued, 'the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life'; the magical, 'mysterious incalculable forces' give way to 'calculation', scientific rationalism and bureaucracy. Spiritualism, the author argues, emerged as a reaction to a perceived disenchantment within American culture at this time; a disenchantment brought about by its transition into modernity. He explores three sites of 'disenchantment' – science, technology and the modern understanding of death – and discusses how the Spiritualists attempted to (re-)enchant them to produce what they believed to be 'a Religion of Reason for all those who see this as an Age of Reason'.
