Is Resonance What We Are Looking for When We Talk about Reenchantment?

The talk will begin with an invitation to dig up a personal experience of enchantment that will serve as a backdrop for the subsequent interpretive effort. The argument’s starting point is the process that regularly leads from the moment when things appear to us in a new light, endowed with potential that would have seemed unrealistic only hours earlier, to the subsequent and at first glance inescapable disillusionment. The goal is to probe the soundness of the insights on which the existential primacy of disillusionment rests by investigating three interconnected questions. To begin with, I want to understand why experiences of enchantment must always give way to disenchantment: is this an inherent property of the human condition and, if so, what kind of inescapability are we dealing with here? Second, since episodes of enchantment nonetheless happen, I would like to understand what kind of potential they embody, using music as a paradigmatic example. Finally, taking my cue from the Weberian metaphor of “religiöse Musikalität”, I will try to establish whether the experience of resonance has the qualities for changing the balance between enchantment and disenchantment and the respective weight that the two opposing ways of entering into relationship with the world have in modern individuals’ lives.

Speaker: Paolo Costa, FBK-ISR

Scientific coordination: Massimo Leone, Direttore FBK-ISR

Cycle of seminars: “(Dis-)Enchantment in Religion and Ethics“

The talk will be in English or Italian depending on the audience.

The presentation will be in-person in the FBK Aula Piccola while seats last and online.

Registration by January 15, 2024 at 12:00 a.m. is required in order to arrange the connection.

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Image:
Fresco of Schweitzer