The disenchantment of the world removed the limit God placed on human mastery
Evidence
God meant, first and foremost, a limit to human potential: a constraint, imposed by what man may do over what man could do and dare do. The assumed omnipotence of God drew a borderline over what man was allowed to do and to dare. Commandments limited the freedom of humans as individuals; but they also set limits to what humans together, as a society, could legislate; they presented the human capacity to legislate and manipulate the world’s principles as being inherently limited. Modern science, which displaced and replaced God, removed that obstacle. It also created a vacancy: the office of the supreme legislator-cum-manager, of the designer and administrator of the world order, was now horrifyingly empty. It had to be filled, or else … God was dethroned, but the throne was still in one place. The emptiness of the throne was throughout the modern era a standing and tempting invitation to visionaries and adventurers. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 619
Categorization
- XREF: Feeds forward to the reading purpose’s Orientalism/biopolitics sequence: the empty throne of supreme legislator is what colonial and racial-biopolitical projects seek to fill. — connects to: Discipline repurposed religious ascetic exercise toward indefinite worldly domination. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 244; Institutions laicized religious minute-discipline into technical control of everyday life — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 217; Science was framed as replacing religion by giving humanity its definitive self-explanation (+1 more)
- DEFINE: Defines disenchantment/‘death of God’ as removal of limits on human mastery, not just loss of religious belief.
Related
Broader Connections
- Discipline repurposed religious ascetic exercise toward indefinite worldly domination.
#corroborates(0.85) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 244 - Institutions laicized religious minute-discipline into technical control of everyday life
#expands(0.82) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 217