ABSTRACT
This concluding chapter gives an account of the discussion between Bennett and Bilgrami on how to understand enchantment, disenchantment, and reenchantment, and of their shared interest in the notion of a “call from outside.” It starts with Bennett’s commentary of Bilgrami’s essay “What Is Enchantment?” and ends with Bilgrami’s reply. There is no doubt that Bennett’s and Bilgrami’s conceptions of (re)enchantment have much in common: they both understand the world (nature, matter) in a non-mechanized, enchanted way by defending the idea that there is an external source of value to which we are responsive, and they also share a non-theistic notion of (re)enchantment that explicitly avoids reference to a transcendent creator-God. However, they give quite different answers to three central questions: How to conceive of nature and matter? Is there a need to “re-enchant” the secular world? What are the implications of (re)enchantment for our understanding of agency and ethics?
