Re-Enchanting Humanity: A Defense of the Human Spirit Against Antihumanism, Misanthropy, Mysticism, and Primitivism (Cassell Global Issues Series) [Hardcover]

Murray Bookchin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1996 | ISBN-10: 030432843X | ISBN-13: 978-0304328437

This work represents Murray Bookchin's riposte to the antihumanism, mysticism and antirationalism which are influencing many people's attitudes to environmental problems. Bookchin offers a critique of, among others, social Darwinists, deep ecologists, new agers, technophobes, Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard. This intellectual tour-de-force offers a positive alternative approach to politics based on a refreshing confidence and belief in human potential.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Cassell (March 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030432843X
• ISBN-13: 978-0304328437
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,646,557 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life enhancing, July 24, 2006

By 

Monster Mash - See all my reviews

This review is from: Re-Enchanting Humanity: A Defense of the Human Spirit Against Antihumanism, Misanthropy, Mysticism and Primitivism (Cassell Global Issues Series) (Paperback)

This book changed my life. What better review can I give it than that?

Anarcho-socialist, Murray Bookchin, looks into the intellectual roots of environmentalism and finds misanthropy and madness. I was still able to call myself an environmentalist after reading this but, at long last, I understood what it was about other environmentalists I hated:- their self-loathing of humanity and contempt for human progress.

I think this great book was ignored is because Bookchin was a lefty, but there are other valid criticisms that can be made against environmental fundamentalists which Bookchin does not go near. He doesn't touch on the way environmentalists use the precautionary principle as a crutch to avoid a proper debate using cost-benefit risk analysis. Still, an excellent book for environmentalists, anti-environmentalists and progressives to read.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The de-enchantment of deep ecology, August 14, 2010

By 

Ashtar Command "Seeker" (Stockholm, Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Re-Enchanting Humanity: A Defense of the Human Spirit Against Antihumanism, Misanthropy, Mysticism and Primitivism (Cassell Global Issues Series) (Paperback)

"Re-Echanting Humanity" is a book by the social ecologist Murray Bookchin. The book attacks various anti-humanist philosophies and worldviews, some of them downright irrational.

Deep ecology, primitivism, technophobia and various forms of New Age thinking are in for a good trashing, but so is sociobiology and Malthusianism. His criticism of deep ecology merits particular attention. A veritable de-enchantment!

Bookchin's own alternative is a kind of neo-Hegelian, teleological evolutionism in which human beings are seen as natural, while at the same time being more advanced than animals or "first nature". This is the re-enchanting of humanity mentioned in the book's title (to some extent, the title parodizes those of New Age books).

Personally, I think that Bookchin scores many good points against his opponents, but his own alternative nevertheless leaves much to be asked for, since Bookchin himself was Green and believed in a decentralized society, albeit in some way based on high technology. Nor was Bookchin aware of the fact that solar and wind power simply isn't feasible. Or perhaps he was too dogmatic to notice? There is a constant tension in "Re-enchanting humanity" between ideas of human-centred progress and various Green notions. Ironically, the best ideas in the book might actually be pilfered from the Marxist tradition, which (at least on paper) stands for human emancipation through high technology. On the downside, the book often resembles a polemical Marxist tract at its worst. Bookchin was an ex-Communist, ex-Trotskyist and quite notorious for his hefty attacks against ideological opponents.

For a criticism of Bookchin, see "Beyond Bookchin" by David Watson, a primitivist with a keen eye to the contradictions in Bookchin's position, although Watson solved them all in the wrong direction!

I'm not sure how to rate this book, but eventually I decided on the OK rating (three stars).