Rewilding as Re-Enchantment
Abstract
:1. Introduction
“Beautiful world, where are you? Come back, / Nature’s graceful blossoming time! / Ah! merely in the fairyland of song / does your golden trail lives on!”
“Haven’t we shed enough tears over the disenchantment of the world?”
2. Rewilding and Re-Enchantment: Connections and Critiques
2.1. Defining Rewilding
“the process of rebuilding, following major human disturbance, a natural ecosystem by restoring natural processes and the complete or near complete food web at all trophic levels as a self-sustaining and resilient ecosystem with biota that would have been present had the disturbance not occurred. This will involve a paradigm shift in the relationship between humans and nature. The ultimate goal of rewilding is the restoration of functioning native ecosystems containing the full range of species at all trophic levels while reducing human control and pressures. Rewilded ecosystems should—where possible—be self-sustaining. That is, they require no or minimal management (i.e., natura naturans [nature doing what nature does]), and it is recognized that ecosystems are dynamic.”
2.2. Conceptual Connections
“I will not try to disguise my reasons for wanting to see missing animals reintroduced. (…) My reasons arise from my delight in the marvels of nature, its richness and its limitless capacity to surprise; from the sense of freedom, of the thrill that comes from roaming in a landscape or seascape without knowing what I might see next (…). It is the sense that without these animals the ecosystem is lopsided, abridged, dysfunctional. I can produce reasons scientific, economic, historic and hygienic, but none of those describe my motivation.”
2.3. Critiques
3. The Disenchantment of the World
3.1. Disenchantment as a Process
“Hence, it means that principally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation. This means that the world is disenchanted. One need no longer have recourse to magical means in order to master or implore the spirits, as did the savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed. Technical means and calculations perform the service.”
“The fate of our times is characterised by rationalisation and intellectualisation and, above all, by the “disenchantment of the world.” Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations”.
3.2. Disenchantment as a Programme
3.3. The Disenchantment of Nature
3.4. Disenchantment as Everyday Experience
“they lived in a world of spirits, both good and bad. The bad ones include Satan, of course, but beside him, the world was full of a host of demons, threatening from all sides: demons and spirits of the forest, and wilderness, but also those which can threaten us in our everyday lives.”(ibid., p. 32)
4. Rewilding as Re-Enchantment: Critical Connections
4.1. Conceptualising (Re-)Enchantment
4.2. Enchantment as a “Mood”
4.3. Enchantment as a View of Nature
“Nature worship among primal Indo-Europeans evidences a traditional theme of sacred natural places, free from desecration by humans and their technology. Such sacred natural places were wilderness in the deepest sense; they were imbued with will-force,—willed, willful, uncontrollable—and with spirit. Thus, they held about them a sacred mystery—a numinous presence. It is from this tradition that the “will-of-the-land”—wilderness—concept emerges.”(ibid., p. 325)
4.4. Enchantment as Relational
5. Conclusions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
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De Vroey, L. Rewilding as Re-Enchantment. Religions 2024, 15, 1014. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15081014
De Vroey L. Rewilding as Re-Enchantment. Religions. 2024; 15(8):1014. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15081014
Chicago/Turabian StyleDe Vroey, Linde. 2024. "Rewilding as Re-Enchantment" Religions 15, no. 8: 1014. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15081014