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The Romantic Life: Five Strategies to Re-Enchant the World
The world is disenchanted. Rationalization, intellectualization, and scientism rule the day. We used to see the world as a magical place, but now it’s just a material space. How did we get here? The shift comes in part from the rise of a certain kind of secularism, one that reduces human experiences to whatever is explainable through observation. Love? It’s just a biological drive. Joy, a rush of adrenaline. Beauty, an influx of dopamine. If you can’t test it, it isn’t true; or so the thinking goes.
The Romantic Life draws upon eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romanticism to provide five strategies to re-enchant the world, five ways to imbue the world with meaning, truth, and beauty. According to the Romantics, far from being useless, encounters with “impractical” things like the imagination, nature, symbolism, sincerity, and the sublime give our lives a richness and depth that cannot be attained on a purely material account of the world. By learning from their example, we can come to see “into the life of things,” as William Wordsworth called it. We can be re-enchanted.
The Romantic Life draws upon eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romanticism to provide five strategies to re-enchant the world, five ways to imbue the world with meaning, truth, and beauty. According to the Romantics, far from being useless, encounters with “impractical” things like the imagination, nature, symbolism, sincerity, and the sublime give our lives a richness and depth that cannot be attained on a purely material account of the world. By learning from their example, we can come to see “into the life of things,” as William Wordsworth called it. We can be re-enchanted.
340 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 14, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 19, 2022
I really enjoyed this book! Honestly I’ve been looking for something like this for nearly as long as I can remember. At times it was a bit too heady I felt and some points I disagreed with, but overall I greatly benefited from this book.
The intro and first chapter really excited me. He describes the disenchanted life in which we live. Regardless of whether or not we believe in anything beyond the physical world, our default position is that there is nothing beyond it. Even those of us who believe the world is beyond physical, it doesn’t feel that way. He wrote this book to help us draw from the Romantics (or four or five of them at least) and change our approach to the world so it comes with a sense of living enchantment rather than dead disenchantment.
Each subsequent chapter begins with a certain way that our culture disenchants (typically related to a strict materialism that refuses to accept any other ways of thinking about or defining the world, a disillusioned snarkiness or believing that what we can see is all there is). He then uses various artists (usually poets) from the Romantic period to show an alternative way of thinking and living which enchants, that is, brings life to our world around us. Each chapter is finished with a few practical steps to help cultivate a posture which enchants the world around us.
The intro and first chapter really excited me. He describes the disenchanted life in which we live. Regardless of whether or not we believe in anything beyond the physical world, our default position is that there is nothing beyond it. Even those of us who believe the world is beyond physical, it doesn’t feel that way. He wrote this book to help us draw from the Romantics (or four or five of them at least) and change our approach to the world so it comes with a sense of living enchantment rather than dead disenchantment.
Each subsequent chapter begins with a certain way that our culture disenchants (typically related to a strict materialism that refuses to accept any other ways of thinking about or defining the world, a disillusioned snarkiness or believing that what we can see is all there is). He then uses various artists (usually poets) from the Romantic period to show an alternative way of thinking and living which enchants, that is, brings life to our world around us. Each chapter is finished with a few practical steps to help cultivate a posture which enchants the world around us.
December 8, 2024
A book everyone should have to read.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews