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Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe
This major work offers a new interpretation of the witchcraft beliefs of European intellectuals between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, showing how these beliefs fitted rationally with other beliefs of the period and how far the nature of rationality is dependent on its historical context.
850 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
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November 14, 2022Clark is a proponant of historians studying context in the people of the time's own terms -- which sounds obvious, but was a relatively new approach in history as a discipline when this was published. I'm not rating it because I read only parts of it, long ago, and I never really got Saussure to begin with.
The assumption [by modern historians] that beliefs in witchcraft were essentially incorrect has prevailed in witchcraft studies for so long because of an overriding, though largely unspoken, commitment to the realist model of knowledge. In this model, language is seen as a straightforward reflection of a reality outside itself and utterances are judged to be true or false according to how accurately they describe objective things.
...One tested in this manner, witchcraft beliefs have either been dismissed out of hand as mistaken and, hence, irrational, or they have been explained away as the secondary consequences of some genuinely real determining condition--that is to say, some set of circumstances (social, political, economic, biological, psychic, or whatever) that was objectively real in itself but gave rise to objectively false beliefs.
...
Surveys of witchcraft studies used to speak of deep differences... between 'rationalists' who treated witchcraft beliefs as delusions... 'romantics' who presented them as, albeit distorted, descriptions of activities that actually went on; and 'social scientists' who saw them as the products of various stresses and strains in early modern society. But from the perspective of theories of language and meaning, these various approaches do not differ at all.
...
if what was signified was supposed by the language user to be a truth (or, for that matter, an error) concerning the external world--the world of referents--then its capacity to convey the meaning of truth (or error) would not longer be a matter of its correspondence to that world, but of its relationship to other signs. ...In post-Saussurean linguistics and semiology it hs not been thought necessary to give any attention to the problem of reference to a real world, and those who do give it attention hve been said to commit the 'referential fallacy.
Related reading:
Local Knowledge: Further Essays In Interpretive Anthropology
Witchcraft and Magic in 16th and 17th-Century Europe
Philosophical Papers, Volume 1: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth
The Broken Spell
Primordial Characters
The assumption [by modern historians] that beliefs in witchcraft were essentially incorrect has prevailed in witchcraft studies for so long because of an overriding, though largely unspoken, commitment to the realist model of knowledge. In this model, language is seen as a straightforward reflection of a reality outside itself and utterances are judged to be true or false according to how accurately they describe objective things.
...One tested in this manner, witchcraft beliefs have either been dismissed out of hand as mistaken and, hence, irrational, or they have been explained away as the secondary consequences of some genuinely real determining condition--that is to say, some set of circumstances (social, political, economic, biological, psychic, or whatever) that was objectively real in itself but gave rise to objectively false beliefs.
...
Surveys of witchcraft studies used to speak of deep differences... between 'rationalists' who treated witchcraft beliefs as delusions... 'romantics' who presented them as, albeit distorted, descriptions of activities that actually went on; and 'social scientists' who saw them as the products of various stresses and strains in early modern society. But from the perspective of theories of language and meaning, these various approaches do not differ at all.
...
if what was signified was supposed by the language user to be a truth (or, for that matter, an error) concerning the external world--the world of referents--then its capacity to convey the meaning of truth (or error) would not longer be a matter of its correspondence to that world, but of its relationship to other signs. ...In post-Saussurean linguistics and semiology it hs not been thought necessary to give any attention to the problem of reference to a real world, and those who do give it attention hve been said to commit the 'referential fallacy.
Related reading:
Local Knowledge: Further Essays In Interpretive Anthropology
Witchcraft and Magic in 16th and 17th-Century Europe
Philosophical Papers, Volume 1: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth
The Broken Spell
Primordial Characters
January 22, 2019
Crucial and maybe important even for the sheer colossality of its effort, but gets bogged down in too much abstruse, pomo theorizing that, in the end, doesn't seem as crucial as you first thought at the beginning of this sentence.
A kind of history of "mentalites", Clark's goal is great from the outset: how did intellectuals think about witchcraft and why, and what was the intellectual context in which they formulated these ideas? One certainly can't fault Clark for skimping, because he delves with gusto into the source material covering several centuries, dividing the analysis into science, history, religion, and politics as the lenses through which various thinkers of the time viewed witchcraft. The introductory section doing the same thing through linguistic/structuralist/whateverthefuckist nearly brought my reading to a screeching halt. It isn't bad, and certainly the idea of contrariety and inversion is neat (simply put: mindsets governed by black/white ideals of the universe) but probably not worth the nearly 800-page slog for the lay reader.
Oh, and lay reader: you aren't gonna get anything here about actual witchcraft or practices or ancient pagan roots or any of that neat stuff, and that's the other flaw in works like this from their inception. There is no other voice or attempt at a voice here except for the thinkers themselves. Context would seem to want to include the people being discussed, almost as if a history of slavery had been written taking into account only the reasoning of the slavers. But there is no place here for discussing actual events on the ground. Hell, the trials themselves only appear tangentially and rarely at that.
A kind of history of "mentalites", Clark's goal is great from the outset: how did intellectuals think about witchcraft and why, and what was the intellectual context in which they formulated these ideas? One certainly can't fault Clark for skimping, because he delves with gusto into the source material covering several centuries, dividing the analysis into science, history, religion, and politics as the lenses through which various thinkers of the time viewed witchcraft. The introductory section doing the same thing through linguistic/structuralist/whateverthefuckist nearly brought my reading to a screeching halt. It isn't bad, and certainly the idea of contrariety and inversion is neat (simply put: mindsets governed by black/white ideals of the universe) but probably not worth the nearly 800-page slog for the lay reader.
Oh, and lay reader: you aren't gonna get anything here about actual witchcraft or practices or ancient pagan roots or any of that neat stuff, and that's the other flaw in works like this from their inception. There is no other voice or attempt at a voice here except for the thinkers themselves. Context would seem to want to include the people being discussed, almost as if a history of slavery had been written taking into account only the reasoning of the slavers. But there is no place here for discussing actual events on the ground. Hell, the trials themselves only appear tangentially and rarely at that.
February 19, 2013
This is a difficult but rewarding book to read. I can’t say I understood everything but I did learn many new ways to think about the period. Clark presents not simply ideas about witchcraft and demons but the whole worldview in which these ideas lived. Like an anthropologist, he wants to examine these issues as seen through early modern eyes, not ours.
“Mature and systematic witchcraft theory was possible because these ways of refl ecting about science, history, religion, and politics (and, no doubt, ways of reflecting about other things too) were available as intellectual options during the early modern centuries. It seems safe to presume that it only became possible when these options also took hold, and that it ceased to be possible when they too lost their appeal.”
“Mature and systematic witchcraft theory was possible because these ways of refl ecting about science, history, religion, and politics (and, no doubt, ways of reflecting about other things too) were available as intellectual options during the early modern centuries. It seems safe to presume that it only became possible when these options also took hold, and that it ceased to be possible when they too lost their appeal.”
April 14, 2009
Stuart Clark has attempted to re-think the great European witch-hunt in terms of the cultural turn, and has added a great deal to our understand thereof. He points out that previous approaches have analyzed this event wholly in terms of the "irrationality" of the participants, and have ignored the fact that, within their own premises of reality, they were acting in a completely rational manner. As such, his effort is to examine the ways in which a demonological world-view informed and determined the boundaries of discussion during the Early Modern period, or, as he puts it "in believing in witchcraft, writers of demonology took up positions in main areas of contemporary debate" (684). The areas he chooses to examine in (considerable) depth are science, history, religion, politics, and language.
As might be expected from a cultural historian, this last is the building-block of the others, and it is suggested that the ways in which people speak about a thing is determinative of the ways in which it is perceived and thought about. He finds that in concepts of "contrariety" and "inversion" the idea of the witch becomes an inevitable outgrowth of the nature of the universe as it was understood. If God and the faithful existed, logic demanded their opposite, the Devil and his witches. Clark is less interested in describing the downfall of the witch-paradigm, but it becomes clear that as people began to speak about the nature of the universe in different terms, due to shifts away from Aristotelianism and theology as the primary intellectual pursuit, witches became superfluous and even ridiculous.
Perhaps more surprising is Clark's finding in regards to "Maleficium," the use of harmful magic by witches. This, it seems, was most important at the popular level of witch-belief, but was looked at with some scorn by the intellectual class. The real danger they saw was people who thought they were faithful Christians seeking out "helpful" witches for protection against Maleficium. Since all witches were of necessity in league with Satan, these innocents were being deceived into sin by their superstitious belief in magic. Rather, they should bear up under hardship after the model of Job, who refused to ask the Devil for help during his trials.
This is by no means an introductory book on the subject, and would serve mostly to confuse students who are not familiar with at least some of the standard literature on the subject. It is, however, a masterful specialist exploration of a complex topic - one which never loses sight of exactly how complex of a topic it is, unlike many of its predecessors.
As might be expected from a cultural historian, this last is the building-block of the others, and it is suggested that the ways in which people speak about a thing is determinative of the ways in which it is perceived and thought about. He finds that in concepts of "contrariety" and "inversion" the idea of the witch becomes an inevitable outgrowth of the nature of the universe as it was understood. If God and the faithful existed, logic demanded their opposite, the Devil and his witches. Clark is less interested in describing the downfall of the witch-paradigm, but it becomes clear that as people began to speak about the nature of the universe in different terms, due to shifts away from Aristotelianism and theology as the primary intellectual pursuit, witches became superfluous and even ridiculous.
Perhaps more surprising is Clark's finding in regards to "Maleficium," the use of harmful magic by witches. This, it seems, was most important at the popular level of witch-belief, but was looked at with some scorn by the intellectual class. The real danger they saw was people who thought they were faithful Christians seeking out "helpful" witches for protection against Maleficium. Since all witches were of necessity in league with Satan, these innocents were being deceived into sin by their superstitious belief in magic. Rather, they should bear up under hardship after the model of Job, who refused to ask the Devil for help during his trials.
This is by no means an introductory book on the subject, and would serve mostly to confuse students who are not familiar with at least some of the standard literature on the subject. It is, however, a masterful specialist exploration of a complex topic - one which never loses sight of exactly how complex of a topic it is, unlike many of its predecessors.
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September 28, 2015This is one of two mandatory books on Early Modern Witchcraft (the other is Keith Thomas' Religion and the Decline of Magic). It's hard to summarize what is a monumental piece of work, but examines the idea of witches and how that idea functions through different intellectual sections of life. It has a bibliography that will make you weep with inadequacy and throw your work into the nearest witch-bonfire.
February 5, 2024
It’s amazing but dear God it’s long. The table of contents and index are very helpful. Excellent scholarship.
April 22, 2016
Massive. Not even as hard to read -- as plagued with abstractions -- as I'd thought. Study of the intellectual world of demonology, the mental constructs, and how language was a trap, or built a trap almost impossible for those of the time to escape from (beware: we do the same and are not conscious of it). Good for any early modern persons, for instance those into the written arts, plays and what-not.
March 13, 2015
I read this monster of a book at university. It was an eye-opener for me, personally. What I found most interesting is how Clark explained the system of dualities upon which medieval conceptions of witchcraft were based. Complex, enthralling but always rendered interesting by the author's erudite yet succint manner of explaining himself
February 26, 2008
Would have given it four and 1/2 stars if possible.
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