The reenchanted world
The philosopher Charles Taylor writes in his book A secular age (2007) about the disenchantment (from Webers entzauberung ) of the modern western world. To Taylor the disenchanted world is a place where the only locus of thoughts, feelings, spirituality in the cosmos, is in the human mind, while the enchanted world of our ancestors was a place of spirits and demons. The enchanted world was one in which these forces could cross the porous boundary of our selves and shape our lives, psychic and physical. In the disenchanted world the boundaries around us are experienced and understood as firmer. The sharpe boundaries between inner and outer implies that thought, meaning, purpose, are only in our minds, not out there in the world. Taylor calls this the buffered self. He writes: "The buffered self can see itself as invulnerable, as master of the meanings of things for it." The buffered self can be autonomous and even disengaged from whatever is outside the boundary, while the