The Myth of Disenchantment by Jason A. Josephson-Storm

Author:Jason A. Josephson-Storm [Josephson-Storm, Jason Ā.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-226-40353-3
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2017-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

MAGICAL PHILOSOPHY AND DISENCHANTMENT: LUDWIG KLAGES

The philosophy of the academy is mechanistic theory, and their practice is mechanical. Magical philosophy rejects the [Aristotelian] law of identity [in favor of flux]; hence it denies unity, objects, duration, recurrence, and mathematics; it denies concepts and causality, because causality is the functional parallel to the logical correlation.

LUDWIG KLAGES, Rhythmen und Runen, 1944

The best way to introduce Ludwig Klages’s magical philosophy is to paint a recognizable pastiche figure so we have something to compare it to. If we threw everything we teach in American “continental philosophy” or “theory” courses into a blender, what would it look like? Put differently, I think if one were to assemble a Franco-Frankfurt-Frankenstein’s monster out of oft-taught fragments from German critical theory, French poststructuralism, a dash of feminism, and more than a hint of Heidegger, it might have the following qualities.

Despite writing philosophy, our monster would be resolutely antiphilosophy and especially antimetaphysics.23 It would position itself as a critic of modernity, instrumental rationality, and enlightenment.24 It would challenge the value of the binary opposition between civilized and primitive.25 Our monster would argue that the myth of “progress” is rooted in “the domination of nature”;26 that science and technology are nothing less than an abuse of the natural world, an attempt to render it lifeless in order to extract energy that can be exploited to further human goals.27

It would accuse us of holding on to an absurd faith in technology while nature has lost its mystery, becoming “disenchanted” and “reified.”28 In compensation for our alienation from the natural world, it would suggest, we have seen the rise of a meaningless cult of reason that despite its criticisms of fantasy and myth, has replaced the old myths with new cults.29 Our monster would characterize this process in terms of the privileging of the logos and instrumental or calculable reason, for which it would coin the term “logocentrism.”30

The Franco-Frankfurt-Frankenstein’s monster would also observe that this same process of rationalization has been connected to the rise of the patriarchy.31 That logocentrism has been rooted in the domination of men over women and the suppression of feminine ways of knowing and being.32 That modern heteronormative sexuality is fragmented into artificially rigid heterosexual norms and embodies a distorted form of the universality of human love and desire.33 It would argue that the contemporary world is fundamentally opposed to the natural flows of desire.34 To round out the picture, our monster would be harshly critical of Hegel’s Geist and would draw on Nietzsche as its progenitor, while at the same time distancing its project from Nietzsche’s “will to power.”35 To these claims, it would add a criticism of the globalization of the modes of American capitalism (or we might say today, neoliberalism) and draw our attention to the violence of colonization.36 Ultimately, in opposition to logocentrism, the monster would remind us of the importance of the body.37 It would emphasize the primacy of writing, and call for a renewal of our connection to a vitalized nature and the unleashing of the productive force of an orgasmic or unbounded desire.

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