Re-Enchanting the World: Dualism, Naturalism, and the Environment in Contemporary Jewish Thought

Ours is a disenchanted world. The scientific and technological revolutions have made it common to view the world of nature as a great yet ultimately morally indifferent and purposeless machine that can be wholly explained, mastered, and potentially manipulated by science according to human needs. Whereas for the psalmist, “the heaven declares the glory of God,” our skies are mostly silent. If anything, our scientistic view declares the physical cosmos to be alien to value, therefore recognizing the source of value not in nature itself but in our all too human desires and utilities. It is not surprising, then, that since the early modern era, religious thinkers have attempted to redeem the premodern status of value, contrasting it to mechanistic nature by embracing various forms of dualisms. However, while surely elevating and promoting the spiritual aspect of existence, such radical dualisms run the danger of further alienating humans from nature. By calling attention to non-dualistic approaches to metaphysics and theology in modern Jewish thought, this paper seeks to repudiate the dualistic claim, according to which we are bound to view the spiritual dimension in terms that set it apart from nature. Instead, it suggests that the spiritual dimension, including our understanding of both value and God, can be conceived as an integral part of a non-reductionist, indeed re-enchanted conception of nature. Finally, the paper argues that a re-enchanted concept of nature can promote an ethical attitude toward the environment and a sense of responsibility for the future of human and nonhuman life. It concludes that the cultivation of an “eye for wonder” and the restoration of the category of the sacred are major tasks for contemporary Jewish thought and theology, as they can help us become more attuned to those aspects of reality ignored by the scientific gaze and move beyond anthropocentric perspectives on value.