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How is Re-Enchantment Possible? - Coggle Diagram
How is Re-Enchantment Possible?
Goldsworth
Kosky introduces an artist named Goldsworthy, whose works include exclusively materials that are found at the sites where he will display them. Also, by nature of the works being displayed in nature and made of natural materials, they are rarely ever permanent and their natural decay is often a core aspect of his work.
To Kosky, the way that Goldsworthy works in relationship to nature, rather than as a master over it, with no need to construct something with permanence, demonstrates the temporality of this world and of the human condition in the most accurate way.
If this this temporality is accurate, which Kosky believes it is, then in order to be a truly secular individual, one must accept this as an aspect of the material, pysical world.
In this way, relating to nature within the limitations of time and decay, a secular person can re-enchant the world around them without losing their secularity.
Hands and Tools
Goldsworth typically only uses his hands to create his works of art, but sometimes uses tools as a supplement.
Aristotle notes that humans are the only beings that are able to create and use practically any tool that they find they might need.
Rather than understanding humanity's creation and use of tools to be supplements to our lives as something that goes against nature, Aristotle identifies our hands as the main tool and defense mechanism in this world. Where other animals have claws or long necks or wings to do what they need to do, humans have hands that can create whatever it is they need.
Discovery
Goldsworth says that "Each work is a discovery," (149).
Kosky uses this to emphasize that work done by hand is different from that done by modern machinery in what it uncovers about the world. In a world without unpredictability, there is nothing new to learn by creating because everything created has already been imagined and/or understood.
Varying Forms of Disenchantment/Enchantment
Religious Disenchanment
This comes from a religion which, through fundamentalism and strict dogma, keeps unpredictability out of ones life and thus disenchants the life of the religious person.
Secular Enchantment
This is the kind of enchantment that Kosky believes his line of thinking can bring to life. It is where one has a secular view of the world but, because they have maintained the value of unpredictability and do not attempt to master nature/the world around them, one's worldview can remain enchanted.
Religious Enchantment
This is when a religious person has more of an open worldview wherein they do not purport to know everything about the way the world functions and do not attempt to master the world around them.
Secular Disenchantment
This kind of disenchantment is the one that Kosky is arguing against most potently in this book, which is where modern science and philosophy negates all unpredictability and believes all things in life to be masterable.