Antinomial Approach

Michael Saler describes the
pattern of historiography when dealing with the supernatural in the nineteenth
century. The previous view that modernity resulted in disenchantment as
spirituality was replaced by secularism and scientific thought has been
replaced by more recent historiography which asserts that there was a
continuing belief in the spiritual alongside scientific advancement. Looking at
modernity in a binary way; that is to either see it as a period of enchantment
or disenchantment is limiting our narration of the past. He presents three
ideals that underlie historians’ analysis of modernity and enchantment. The
binary and the dialectical approaches are based on either/or logic and were
used since the nineteenth century. The antinomial approach suggests a both/and
logic which has been used more recently but before one can apply this one has
to define the terms modernity and enchantment looking at the binary and
dialectical views.

Modernity is a mixture of
political social intellectual economic technological and psychological factors
which emerged in the west. This happened alongside the rise of democracy,
consumerism, scientism, capitalism, nationalism and secularism. Thus historians
only consistently agreed on the characteristic of disenchantment as coined by
Max Weber. The binery discourse argues that enchantment is the residual other
to rational thinking and so there cannot be both that and science. This
detailed superstitions of religion and magic as popular culture which elites viewed
as potentially dangerous. The rise of social history in the twentieth century
pushed for a study of the occult and supernatural but still accepted a binary
view. The dialectical discourse says modernity is irrational, inhumane and oppressive.
It gets rid of individuality and autonomy thus it had to be secular and
rational. Postmodern approaches view the binary discourse as ideological and
not a realistic view.

The antinomial discourse sees
modernity as ‘unresolved contradictions and oppositions’. In the last decause
historians have realised that they have ignored cultural history and that there
was not just a medieval and early modern monopoly on the supernatural but a
continuation of it in the modern period. Thus this approach sees modernity as a
period of both enchantment and disenchantment.

Enchantment has been defined by
Paston and Park in the medieval and early modern periods as intellectual and
emotional ‘wonder’. They thought that prior to the modern period elites
monopolised wonders but in the modern period it was seen as vulgar and of the
masses. They assume it ended with the enlightenment and only remained in popular
culture but this assumes a unanimity among the elites. Later generations have
seen it as cyclical between the mass and elite cultures.

The antinomial approach sees
science and magic as compatible for example when looking at the belief in
mesmerism in popular and intellectual thinking. Trietal argues that in Germany
occultism spanned geographies and social and political compositions which
represents an ambivalent modernity. It is now accepted that elites tried to
make modernity a period of disenchantment but it enchantment continued many
still incorporated the supernatural with scientific thought.