The Many Faces of Panentheism

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The Many Faces of Panentheism

with Harald Atmanspacher and Hartmut von Sass, “The Many Faces of Panentheism: An
Editorial Introduction”; Philip Clayton, “How Radically Can God Be Reconceived before
Ceasing to Be God? The Four Faces of Panentheism”; Willem B. Drees, “Panentheism and
Natural Science: A Good Match?”; Jan-Olav Henriksen, “The Experience of God and the
World: Christianity’s Reasons for Considering Panentheism a Viable Option”; Roderick
Main, “Panentheism and the Undoing of Disenchantment”; and Michael Silberstein,
“Panentheism, Neutral Monism, and Advaita Vedanta.”

PANENTHEISM AND THE UNDOING


OF DISENCHANTMENT

by Roderick Main

Abstract. In this article, I draw on historical and conceptual


arguments to show, first, that disenchantment and the influential
view of the relationship between science and religion to which dis-
enchantment gives rise are rooted in the metaphysics of theism. I
then introduce the alternative metaphysical position of panenthe-
ism and identify Jungian psychology as an important, if implicit,
mid-twentieth-century instance of panentheistic thought. Using the
example of Jungian psychology, I demonstrate how the viewpoint
of panentheism undoes the implications of disenchantment for the
relationship between science and religion, promoting greater oppor-
tunities for dialogue and reconciliation between science and religion. I
note, however, that these closer relations may depend on understand-
ing science and religion differently from how they are understood
under disenchantment. While the original tension between science
and religion is eased, another tension—between panentheistic and
disenchanted understandings of science and religion—is exposed. I
conclude by reflecting on some implications of this discussion for
sociology.

Keywords: disenchantment; Carl Gustav Jung; Jungian psychol-


ogy; metaphysics; panentheism; religion; science; sociology; theism;
Max Weber

That both science and religion have a pervasive influence on modern life is
beyond serious dispute. However, the nature of each influence and, more
particularly, the interplay between the two kinds of influence remain highly

Roderick Main is Professor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic


Studies, University of Essex, Colchester, UK; e-mail: rmain@essex.ac.uk.
www.zygonjournal.org
[Zygon, vol. 52, no. 4 (December 2017)]

C 
R
2017 The Authors. Zygon published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Institute on Religion in an Age of Science ISSN 0591-2385 1098
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Roderick Main 1099

contentious. One issue that has continued to tax reflective individuals is


how to understand the relationship itself between science and religion.
Voluminous works address the issue from a variety of theoretical and
methodological perspectives (see indicatively Brooke 1991; Barbour 1998;
Clayton and Simpson 2008). In this article, I shall explore one recently
promoted framework for understanding the relationship—panentheism—
vis-à-vis another perspective—disenchantment—that historically has been
highly influential. I shall argue that panentheism establishes different, more
reconciliatory relations between science and religion than those implied
by the perspective of disenchantment, but that these more reconciliatory
relations may also entail revising how science and religion themselves are
understood.
In developing this argument I shall first draw on recent work in the
history of religions to set out the epistemological implications of disen-
chantment, including for the relationship between science and religion. I
shall also note some of the undesirable social and cultural effects that have
been attributed to disenchantment and have driven the search for alter-
natives. In the next section, I shall highlight that disenchantment has its
roots in the metaphysics of theism, a view of the relationship between God
and the world that has dominated Western religions and also implicitly
influenced the development of science. I shall then provide a brief his-
torical and conceptual account of the alternative metaphysical perspective
of panentheism. From this account I shall adopt a generic definition of
panentheism for orientation through the subsequent discussion.
The central sections of the article will use the explicated understandings
of disenchantment and panentheism to demonstrate conceptually how
panentheism undoes, that is, renders untenable, disenchantment and its
epistemological implications. I shall elaborate these core sections of the ar-
gument using the example of Jungian psychology as an instance of modern
panentheistic thought, an identification that has not previously been made
in such detail. With particular reference to Jung’s simultaneously pub-
lished scientific essay “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle”
([1952b]1969) and religious essay “Answer to Job” ([1952a]1969), I shall
demonstrate closely how Jung’s psychological model, first, fits the generic
definition of panentheism; second, counters each of the epistemological
implications of disenchantment, thereby easing tensions in the relationship
between science and religion; but, third, seemingly generates an alternative
tension between panentheistic and disenchanted understandings of science
and religion.
In conclusion, I shall return to the discipline from which the concept of
disenchantment arose, sociology, to suggest that the exposure of this ten-
sion between panentheistic and disenchanted perspectives may be helpful
for understanding some of that discipline’s recent theoretical debates and
potential interdisciplinary engagements.
1100 Zygon

DISENCHANTMENT AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCIENCE


AND RELIGION

An influential statement of how relations between science and religion are


to be understood in modern times was provided in Max Weber’s (1864–
1920) lecture “Science as a Vocation” ([1918]1946), specifically in relation
to his notion of “the disenchantment of the world” (155). According to
Weber, the rationalization and intellectualization that characterize modern
culture has resulted in an epistemological situation very different from
that of earlier ages. In former times it was believed that in order to obtain
full knowledge of and mastery over nature it would be necessary to have
“recourse to magical means” and “to implore the spirits” (139). In the mod-
ern, disenchanted world, by contrast, “there are no mysterious, incalculable
forces that come into play, but rather . . . one can, in principle, master all
things by calculation” (139). As Egil Asprem elucidates, this amounts to
a form of “epistemological optimism,” the affirmation that “nature can in
principle be understood by empiricism and reason” (2014, 36).
However, the scope of such optimism was limited for Weber. While
knowledge of empirical reality could be endlessly pursued in this modern
vision, knowledge of any realities deemed to be beyond the empirical—
for example, knowledge of God or spirits (Weber [1918]1946, 142), or
of Platonic Forms (Weber [1918]1946, 140), or of Kantian “things-in-
themselves”—was unobtainable. Asprem dubs this limitation “metaphys-
ical scepticism”: the view that “science can know nothing beyond the
empirically given” and therefore that “metaphysics is impossible” (2014,
36).
Also unobtainable to disenchanted modern science, in Weber’s view, was
any knowledge of values or meaning. “Who,” Weber asked rhetorically,
“still believes that the findings of astronomy, biology, physics, or chemistry
could teach us anything about the meaning of the world?” ([1918]1946,
142). The sciences have their presuppositions about the value of obtaining
knowledge of the natural world, but these presuppositions cannot be proved
correct (143–44); “still less,” Weber emphasized, “can it be proved that the
existence of the world which these sciences describe is worthwhile, that it
has any ‘meaning,’ or that it makes sense to live in such a world” (144). Any
attempt to make such valuations would interfere with the proper activity
of science: as Weber put it, “whenever the man of science introduces his
personal value judgment, a full understanding of the facts ceases” (146).
Asprem refers to this insistence on the “separation of facts and values”
and the consequent view that “science can know nothing of meaning” as
“axiological scepticism” (2014, 36).
For Weber, the combination of epistemological optimism with meta-
physical and axiological skepticism had clear implications for the relations
between science and religion. Since none of the deliverances of empiricism
Roderick Main 1101

and reason provided any evidence for the putative transcendent realities
and values of religion, one could only make the step into religion by aban-
doning science and reason, making an “intellectual sacrifice” ([1918]1946,
155; Asprem 2014, 36). Weber considered this course of action morally
weak, something to be recommended only to “the person who cannot bear
the fate of the times [i.e., disenchantment] like a man” ([1918]1946, 155).
Nevertheless, he judged the intellectual sacrifice preferable to indecisiveness
or lack of clarity in matters of religion: “an intellectual sacrifice in favor of
an unconditional religious devotion,” he wrote, “is ethically quite a differ-
ent matter than the evasion of the plain duty of intellectual integrity, which
sets in if one lacks the courage to clarify one’s own ultimate standpoint and
rather facilitates this duty by feeble relative judgments” (155).
In terms of Ian Barbour’s (1998) framework of possible relationships
between science and religion—conflict, independence, dialogue, and inte-
gration (77–105)—Weber clearly held out no hope for their integration
and similarly saw little point in pursuing dialogue between them. Weber’s
formal position was that science and religion were independent. As he con-
fidently asserted, “the tension between the value-spheres of ‘science’ and
the sphere of ‘the Holy’ is unbridgeable” (154). Indeed, in the dim regard
Weber had for the intellectual sacrifice, it is probably fair also to detect an
informal view of science and religion as being in conflict, with science the
prevailing antagonist.
Asprem notes that Weber’s account of disenchantment is, in Weber’s
own terms, “ideal-typical,” that is, it represents the position that a disen-
chanted person or culture ideally would hold if they were disenchanted in
a fully rational way (2014, 39–40). A large part of Asprem’s own study,
The Problem of Disenchantment: Scientific Naturalism and Esoteric Discourse
1900–1939 (2014), is occupied with showing that, even in the mainstream
sciences of physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology in the early twen-
tieth century, where one might expect fully rational disenchantment, in
reality many different and partial positions were adopted (93–286); and
the diversity is greater again if one takes account of non-mainstream disci-
plines and knowledge cultures such as psychical research, parapsychology,
and occultism (289–553). Many other historians of science, religion, and
culture reinforce this picture of complex and varied engagements (e.g.,
Brooke 1991; Brooke and Cantor 1997; Harrington 1996). Nevertheless,
Weber’s account of the disenchantment of the modern world presents
what probably has been the predominant view of relations between science
and religion, at least among academic and cultural élites, from the early
twentieth century through to the present.
Although Weber considered that disenchantment, with its implied sep-
aration between science and religion, had become “the fate of our times”
([1918]1946, 155), he was far from optimistic about its social and cul-
tural consequences. Bound up as it was with increasing rationalization
1102 Zygon

and intellectualization (155), disenchantment, he believed, while freeing


people from illusion and promoting extraordinary scientific and economic
advance, would at the same time lead to an ever more thoroughly bureau-
cratized society ([1922]1946). He depicted the nature of such a society in
a variety of bleak metaphors: it would encase individuals in its “iron cage”
([1904–05]2001, 123), turn each into “a single cog in an ever-moving
mechanism” ([1922]1946, 228), and lead them relentlessly towards “a
polar night of icy darkness and hardness” ([1919]1946, 128).
Weber’s view tallied with that of a range of contemporary thinkers who,
as Anne Harrington notes, had already identified this vision of the world
transforming into a “causal mechanism” (Weber [1915]1946, 350) as “a
chief culprit in a variety of failed or crisis-ridden cultural and political
experiments” (Harrington 1996, xv). Writes Harrington: “It was said that
the spread of mechanistic, instrumentalist thinking into all areas of pro-
fessional and cultural life had given rise to a cynical, this-worldly attitude
and a decline in morality and idealism. Traditional ideals of learning and
culture were in crisis, the young people were alienated, and the arts had
degenerated into exercises in absurdity and self-absorption” (Harrington
1996, xv). The Weberian scholar Lawrence Scaff similarly summarizes that
the disenchanted perspective on modernity has resulted in “the disrup-
tive sense of disengagement, abstraction, alienation, homelessness, and the
‘problem of meaning’ that [has begun] to gnaw at the vital core of modern
experience and social philosophy” (2000, 105).
In view of these problematic social and cultural consequences of disen-
chantment, there have been many attempts to critique, reverse, or “undo”
disenchantment, both contemporaneously with Weber (Harrington 1996;
Lundy and Saler 2009; Asprem 2014) and in the later twentieth- and
early twenty-first centuries (Berman 1981; Griffin 1988; Partridge 2004).
An important element within some of these critiques has been to expose,
question, and propose alternatives to the metaphysical presuppositions that
have historically informed disenchantment (Berman 1981). While such a
strategy needs to guard against the risk of relying on oversimplified histo-
riographical accounts (Asprem 2014, 54–61), if it can avoid this danger it
has the potential to yield some productive insights and perspectives.

THE THEISTIC ROOTS OF DISENCHANTMENT


Though apparently a modern and anti-religious phenomenon, disenchant-
ment is actually, Weber argued, the outcome of a “great historical process
in the development of religions, the elimination of magic from the world”
([1904–05]2001, 61, 178; cf. [1918]1946, 138). Beginning with the He-
brew prophets and furthered by “Hellenistic scientific thought,” the process
reached its “logical conclusion” in Puritanism, which was in turn, in We-
ber’s analysis, one of the main factors contributing to the rise of capitalism
Roderick Main 1103

and the modern rationalization and bureaucratization of society ([1904–


05]2001, 61; [1915]1946, 350).
In relation to the role of the Hebrew prophets, Weber wrote: “The
peculiar position of the old Hebrew ethic, as compared with the closely
related ethics of Egypt and Babylon, and its development after the time of
the prophets, rested . . . entirely on this fundamental fact, the rejection of
sacramental magic as a road to salvation” ([1904–05]2001, 178 note 19).
The contrast here between the Hebrew and Egyptian/Babylonian systems
of ethics anticipates a distinction made by the Egyptologist Jan Assmann
(2008) between “biblical monotheism” and “evolutionary monotheism,”
which has been important for some recent commentators on panentheism
(Hanegraaff 2012, 371, 375–76; Asprem 2014, 281–83). Evolutionary
monotheism, as it developed in Egyptian religion for instance, is based on
the idea of “the world as the embodiment of a soul-like god and of god as
a soul animating the world” (Assmann 2008, 273, cited in Asprem 2014,
282). Such monotheism “evolves” from polytheism through the realization
that ultimately “all gods are one”; as Asprem notes, it “continues to stress
the co-dependence of god and the world” (2014, 282). By contrast, bibli-
cal monotheism, as it emerged in the Hebrew tradition and subsequently
developed into what Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke refer to as “clas-
sical philosophical theism” (2004, xviii, 73), results from the idea that God
and the world are radically separate. As Assmann summarizes: “The Bible
does not say ‘All Gods are One’ but rather that God is One and ‘Thou
shalt have no other gods.’ It does not establish a connection but rather
draws a distinction between God and gods. Ultimately this distinction is
one between God and world” (Assmann 2008, 74, cited in Asprem 2014,
282).
The subsequent story of disenchantment or the progressive elimination
of magic from the world has been elaborated from different perspectives by
various scholars—for example, in relation to the development of secularity
(Taylor 2007) and the historiography of Western esotericism (Hanegraaff
2012; Asprem 2014). In a nutshell: From the establishment of the exclu-
sivist monotheism of the Bible, to the anti-pagan and anti-magical polemics
of both Catholicism and Protestantism, to the deism and rationalism of
the Enlightenment, to the atheism and agnosticism of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, there has been overall an increasing separation of God
from the world, an ever-purer sense of God’s transcendence, to the point
where God has been so far removed from the world of experience as to have
become for many, as famously for Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), an
irrelevant hypothesis (Barbour 1998, 34–35).
From the perspective of this narrative, disenchantment, the relations
between science and religion that disenchantment implies, and modern
knowledge practices embedding the epistemological presuppositions of
disenchantment, can be considered to be constituted, albeit negatively,
1104 Zygon

by the metaphysics of theism. However, alongside the development of


disenchantment from theism and largely occluded by it there has been
an alternative tradition of thinking about relations between God and the
world, an alternative metaphysics, in which divine immanence, including
even the possibility of “enchanted” (magical and mystical) engagements
with nature, has been more emphasized. This alternative tradition has
come to be known over the past two hundred years as panentheism.

PANENTHEISM
Panentheism is a particular view, or family of views, of the relationship
between God (the divine) and the world (nature, the cosmos, the universe).
Composed of the Greek words “pan” = all, “en” = in, and “theos” = God,
the term “panentheism” means literally “a doctrine [-ism] that everything
exists in God.” The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (2002, 2080) defines
it as “the belief or doctrine that God includes and interpenetrates the
universe while being more than it.”
Panentheism was first used as a term by the German philosopher Karl
Krause (1781–1832) in the nineteenth century, shortly afterwards receiving
classic, though different, formulations in the thought of Friedrich Wilhelm
Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
(1770–1831), partly in the context of debates about Baruch Spinoza’s
(1632–1677) pantheism (Cooper 2006, 67; Culp 2016). The American
philosophers Charles Hartshorne and William Reese ([1953]2000), espe-
cially the former, revived the term in the mid-twentieth century, draw-
ing on the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947).
Since then the notion has quietly but steadily gained in influence to the
point where, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, it has become
the focus of considerable interest among Christian theologians (Clayton
and Peacocke 2004; Cooper 2006; Brierley 2008), process philosophers
(Griffin 2014), historians of Western esotericism (Hanegraaff 2012; As-
prem 2014), scholars of non-Christian religious traditions (Biernacki and
Clayton 2014), and researchers attempting to find adequate ways of the-
orizing the well-testified “rogue phenomena” of psi and mysticism (Kelly,
Crabtree, and Marshall 2015).
Even before the term existed, however, the idea to which it referred had
long informed religious and philosophical thought not just in the West
(Cooper 2006) but also across the globe (Hartshorne and Reese [1953]
2000; Culp 2016; Biernacki and Clayton 2014). Most influentially, though
not exclusively, it is associated with currents of thought stemming from
Platonism and Neoplatonism (Cooper 2006, 18–19). In theological terms,
it relates to the evolutionary monotheism described by Assmann (2008),
which stresses the connection and even coinherence and co-dependence of
God and the world.
Roderick Main 1105

Just as with other views of the relationship between God and the world,
panentheism is not a single, clearly defined position but rather a set of
related positions. There are therefore a number of varieties of panenthe-
ism (see, for example, the discussions in Clayton 2004; Gregersen 2004;
Cooper 2006; Brierley 2008; and more critically in Thomas 2008). Nev-
ertheless, attempts have been made to arrive at a generic definition of the
term (Clayton 2004, 250–52; Brierley 2008, 636–41). Most helpfully for
present purposes, Michael Brierley (2008) considers a range of character-
istics and varieties and concludes that “panentheism’s distinctiveness . . .
can be expressed in terms of three premises: first, that God is not separate
from the cosmos . . . ; second, that God is affected by the cosmos . . . ; and
third, that God is more than the cosmos” (2008, 639–40).
In the light of Brierley’s generic definition, panentheism can be concisely
differentiated from other possible positions on the relationship between the
divine and the world as follows. Unlike atheism and agnosticism, panen-
theism affirms the existence of the divine. Unlike theism and deism, panen-
theism considers the divine to be not separate from the world and even to
be affected by the world (immanent and passible as well as transcendent).
And unlike pantheism, panentheism considers the divine to be more than
the world (transcendent as well as immanent). Formulations of panenthe-
ism often stress its intermediary status between theism and pantheism, as
in the following statement by Asprem: “Panentheism can be described as
a position that attempts to balance the transcendence of theism with the
immanence of pantheism, while avoiding both the strict separation of god
and nature characteristic of the former, and the identification of nature and
god in the latter” (2014, 281).
For the present discussion what is important to note is the difference
between theism and panentheism. Theism separates God and the world in
a way that leads to disenchantment. Panentheism stresses the connection
between God and the world in a way that, I shall argue, undoes disen-
chantment and its epistemological implications as articulated by Weber
and clarified by Asprem. In order to illustrate how panentheism undoes
disenchantment and arguably opens up alternative ways of framing and
addressing the problems that disenchantment entails, I shall focus atten-
tion on a particular instance of modern panentheistic thought: Jungian
psychology.

JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY AS AN INSTANCE OF MODERN


PANENTHEISTIC THOUGHT
Carl Gustav Jung’s (1875–1961) analytical or, as he later preferred to call
it, complex psychology (Shamdasani 2003, 13–14) provides a particularly
interesting site for exploring the relationship of science and religion under
the contrasting perspectives of disenchantment and panentheism, for at
1106 Zygon

least three reasons. First, the problem of the relationship between science
and religion was one that occupied Jung throughout his long life (Homans
[1979]1995; Main 2004, 91–114). He had backgrounds and continuing
personal and professional involvements in the worlds of both science and
religion, and seems always to have striven to respect scientific and religious
perspectives equally, not allowing one perspective to eclipse the other (Main
2013c). The concepts that underpin the distinctiveness of his psychological
model—such as the collective unconscious, archetypes, individuation, the
self, and synchronicity—all bear witness to his dual commitment to science
and religion (Main 2013c, 376–77). For example, Jung’s signature concept
of the archetype was influenced by biology and physics, on the one hand,
and Platonic philosophy and Augustinian theology, on the other, and it was
explicitly characterized in Jung’s later writings as having both an instinctual
and a spiritual pole ([1947/1954]1969, paras. 397–420). In a sense, Jung’s
psychological model was the product of a sustained dialogue and attempted
reconciliation of science and religion.
Second, Jung experienced disenchantment or, as he referred to it,
“the historical process of world despiritualization” ([1938/1940]1969,
para.141) as an acute problem of his time, which much of his work can
be understood as an attempt to address (Main 2011; 2013a, 280–84;
2013b; 2014). At various points in his writings he acknowledges that
his psychological model, with its emphasis on the need to withdraw
psychological projections, actively contributes to disenchantment (Main
2013b, 131–32, 135). He offers, with his concept of synchronicity,
resources for “re-enchanting” the physical world as well as the psy-
chological world (Main 2013b, 135–36). And he recognizes the limits
even of this form of re-enchantment beyond projection (Main 2011,
154–56). Overall, though, the trajectory of his thought was to overcome
disenchantment: “The modern world is desacralized,” he told Mircea
Eliade in 1952, “that is why it is in a crisis. Modern man must rediscover
a deeper source of his own spiritual life” (McGuire and Hull 1978,
230).
Third, while the studies of Jung’s psychology of religion are numerous—
a bibliographic essay published in 1973 already included 442 items (Heisig
1973)—there does not yet appear to have been a detailed consideration
of his psychology in relation to panentheism. A few previous commenta-
tors have mentioned in passing that Jung’s psychology might be viewed as
panentheistic, some seeing promise in this characterization (Griffin 1989,
56, 66, 245; Tacey 2001, 186; 2013, 117), others seeing confusion (Dour-
ley 2014, 21–22), and others again simply noting the possibility (Asprem
2014, 284). But no detailed case has been made for this view, and its im-
portance for understanding not only Jung’s conception of the relationship
between science and religion but the filiation and reception of his work has
not hitherto been recognized.
Roderick Main 1107

A first indication that Jungian psychology merits consideration as a form


of panentheistic thought can be found in the wider and longer history of
panentheism. John Cooper, in his book Panentheism: The Other God of
the Philosophers—From Plato to the Present (2006), has traced this history
through Western religious and philosophical thought. Throughout his
narrative we continually encounter thinkers and currents of thought on
which Jung either explicitly drew or which can be shown to have directly
or indirectly influenced him. These thinkers and currents include Plato,
Neoplatonism, Pseudo-Dionysius, John Scotus Eriugena, Meister Eckhart,
Nicholas of Cusa, Jakob Boehme, Renaissance esotericism, early German
romanticism, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Schelling, Hegel, Gustav Fechner,
William James, and Henri Bergson (Cooper 2006, 7; Jung 1979).
In addition to thinkers who may have influenced Jung, Cooper discusses
as panentheists other, contemporaneous thinkers to whom Jung does not
refer but with whom scholars have subsequently considered it fruitful
to compare him. These include, for example, Alfred North Whitehead
(1861–1947), Paul Tillich (1886–1965), Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948),
and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) (Cooper 2006, 8; Griffin
1989; Dourley 2008; Nicolaus 2010; Gustafson 2015).
Although panentheism as a term emerged and has mostly been used
in the context of recent Western thought, panentheistic dimensions and
currents have also been identified within non-Western traditions, both an-
cient and living. In their recent edited book Panentheism across the World’s
Traditions (2014), Loriliai Biernacki and Philip Clayton have assembled
a set of essays that find panentheistic discourses not only within Chris-
tianity, Judaism, and Islam but also within Tibetan Buddhism, Jainism,
Hinduism, and Confucianism. Jung’s own cross-cultural sorties into non-
Western traditions, including some of those discussed in Biernacki and
Clayton’s book, likewise focus on variants of them—for example, in Ti-
betan Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, yoga, and Taoism (1958)—that have
panentheistic characteristics.
Jung’s panentheistic sources and affinities can be seen especially clearly
in relation to his essay “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle”
([1952b]1969). In this essay Jung proposed that a principle of acausal con-
nection through meaning be introduced into philosophy of science as a
complementary explanatory principle to that of causality. The main areas
of inspiration and support on which Jung drew for the essay were precisely
ones that have recently attracted intense interest in relation to panenthe-
ism. Specifically, Jung’s essay drew on Western esoteric thought, including
magic, divination/astrology, and alchemy (paras. 859–60, 863–69, 924–
36, 962; cf. Hanegraaff 2012; Asprem 2014); on psychical research, para-
psychology, and mind-matter research (paras. 830–40, 846–57, 872–915,
949–54; cf. Asprem 2014, 287–412; Kelly et al. 2015); on Eastern thought
(paras. 863–66, 916–24; cf. Biernacki and Clayton 2014); and implicitly
1108 Zygon

on the project of improving dialogue between science and religion (Main


2004, 91–114; cf. Clayton and Peacocke 2004).
It is also notable that arguably the three most significant philosophical
frameworks that have been invoked in recent years to illuminate Jung’s con-
cept of synchronicity and indeed Jung’s psychological model generally—
namely, emergence (Cambray 2009), Whiteheadian process philosophy
(Haule 2011, 173–78), and dual-aspect monism (Atmanspacher 2012)—
have roots in or close association with panentheistic thought (Asprem 2014,
245; Griffin 2014; Kelly 2015, 535). As Asprem remarks, Samuel Alexan-
der (1859–1938) and Conway Lloyd Morgan (1852–1936), the originative
emergentist thinkers, as well as Whitehead, the originative process thinker,
“all seem to share a tendency towards panentheism, which stems from tak-
ing considerations of evolution, emergence, and organicism as the basis for
metaphysical speculation” (Asprem 2014, 245). And Spinoza, the proto-
typical dual-aspect monist thinker, was also, as noted above, the source of
the pantheism in differentiation from which Schelling’s “true pantheism,”
that is, his panentheism, was later elaborated (Cooper 2006, 94–105).
Most decisive, though, for confirming the panentheistic character of
Jungian psychology is its fit with the three characteristics of Brierley’s
generic definition of panentheism: God’s being not separate from the
cosmos, God’s being affected by the cosmos, and God’s being more than
the cosmos (2008, 639–40). This fit can be demonstrated especially from
Jung’s “Answer to Job” ([1952a]1969), though also from other works.
To understand the intellectual moves Jung makes and the language he
uses, it is important to appreciate that, despite his frequent disavowal of any
metaphysical intentions (of which more later), he effectively equated the
unconscious with God: “Recognizing that [numinous experiences] do not
spring from his conscious personality, [man] calls them mana, daimon, or
God,” he wrote, adding: “Science employs the term ‘unconscious’” ([1963]
1995, 368). Jung’s apparent ontological ambiguity here is deliberate: if
his statement seems to psychologize a religious concept (God), it equally
sacralizes a psychological one (the unconscious) (cf. Hanegraaff 1998, 224–
29). With this equation and ambiguity in mind, I note in the following
how Jung’s thought fits with panentheism first in terms of his psychological
concepts and then in statements where he used the term “God” directly.
First, in Jung’s thought as in generic panentheism, God is not separate
from the world. In terms of his psychological model, insofar as Jung treated
the unconscious as a synonym of God and, by implication, consciousness
as a synonym of the world, it is clear that for him God was not essentially
separate from the world, any more than the unconscious was essentially
separate from consciousness ([1947/1954]1969, paras. 381–87). Similarly,
the unknowable archetype, including the God archetype, was not essen-
tially separate from the known archetypal images, including archetypal
images of God ([1952a]1969, paras. 557–58).
Roderick Main 1109

When Jung talked directly of God, he was explicit about God’s non-
separation from the world, specifically from humanity: “It is . . . psycho-
logically quite unthinkable for God to be simply the ‘wholly other’,” he
wrote in Psychology and Alchemy with implicit reference to Rudolf Otto’s
([1917]1950) concept of the numinous, “for a ‘wholly other’ could never
be one of the soul’s deepest and closest intimacies—which is precisely what
God is” ([1944]1968, para.11 note 6). The non-separation was expressed
most vividly, though, in “Answer to Job,” where Jung asserted: “It was only
quite late that we realized (or rather, are beginning to realize) that God
is Reality itself and therefore—last but not least—man” ([1952a]1969,
para. 631).
Second, in Jung’s thought as in generic panentheism, God is affected
by the world. In terms of Jung’s psychology, this too follows from his
synonymizing God and the unconscious. Such a relationship is suggested,
for instance, by the fact that what the unconscious expresses in the form
of dreams is conditioned to some extent by the attitude consciously taken
towards prior dreams ([1944]1968, paras. 44–331). Similarly in the pro-
cess Jung termed “active imagination,” consciously dialoguing with figures
symbolizing aspects of the unconscious sometimes results in those figures
being affected by what the conscious mind has to say on its side of the
dialogue (Jung 2009). More deeply, Jung considered that the constellation
of archetypes in the unconscious could change ([1958]1964, para. 589;
[1951]1959), and he suggested that human efforts to become conscious
could play a decisive role in such changes. As he stated at the end of his
life, “just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness
affects the unconscious” ([1963]1995, 358).
Using the term “God” directly, Jung stated explicitly and repeatedly in
“Answer to Job” that God could be affected by the creation: “Job,” he
argued, “by his insistence on bringing his case before God, even with-
out hope of a hearing, had stood his ground and thus created the very
obstacle that forced God to reveal his true nature” ([1952a]1969, para.
584). Further: “Whoever knows God has an effect on Him” (para. 617),
for “The encounter with the creature changes the creator” (para. 686).
In Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung suggested that through the devel-
opment of human consciousness “the Creator may become conscious of
His creation,” such that the emergence of human consciousness could be
considered “the second cosmogony” ([1963]1995, 371). Even more clearly,
in a letter (14 March 1953) to a correspondent who had written an essay
about “Answer to Job,” Jung asked rhetorically: “what in the world would
be the motive of the Incarnation if man’s state didn’t affect God?” (1976,
110)
Third, in Jung’s thought as in generic panentheism, God is more than
the world. In terms of Jung’s psychological model, the unconscious is more
than consciousness, and the archetype is not exhausted by any number
1110 Zygon

of archetypal images ([1947/1954]1969, paras. 356–64, 397–420). Using


the term “God” directly in “Answer to Job,” Jung was emphatic about
this “more”: “the image and the statement [i.e. the God-image and any
statement about God] are psychic processes which are different from their
transcendental object” ([1952a]1969, para. 538), he wrote. Later in the
same essay he asserted: “There is no doubt that there is something beyond
these images that transcends consciousness” (para. 555). And he concluded
“Answer to Job” with the observation that “even the enlightened person
remains what he is, and is never more than his own limited ego before the
One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries,
who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms of the earth
and vast as the sky” (para. 758).
There are several other features of panentheistic thought, though not
among those identified as generic by Brierley, which could provide points of
comparison with Jungian psychology. For example, Jung’s formulation of a
distinction between the archetype-in-itself and the archetypal image, as well
as his notion of the archetype as having both a spiritual and an instinctual
pole ([1947/1954]1969, paras. 397–420), could be compared with the
dipolarity of process panentheism, which presents God as having both a
primordial (eternal, unchanging) and a consequent (temporal, evolving)
nature (Hartshorne and Reese [1953]2000, 1–25). Again, Jung’s reflections
on the transformation of the God image ([1951]1959; [1952a] 1969) could
be considered in relation to the evolutionary thinking that entered modern
conceptions of panentheism with Schelling and Hegel (Murphy 2014).
And the way in which Jung models consciousness as having emerged from
and still being in some sense within the unconscious ([1951]1959, para.
57) has affinities with ways in which the “in” of panentheism—in what
sense everything is in God—have been discussed (Clayton 2004, 252–53;
Brierley 2008, 636–39).
Hartshorne and Reese ([1953]2000) revived the concept of panenthe-
ism within theological discourse at almost exactly the same time as Jung
published “Answer to Job” ([1952a]1969) and “Synchronicity: An Acausal
Connecting Principle” ([1952b]1969). Whether Jung would have used or
engaged with the concept within these works, had he been aware of it,
is uncertain. He may still not have wanted to identify his implicit meta-
physics (McGrath 2014). He may have felt that too strong an endorsement
of even a congenial theological position would compromise the careful
balance he attempted to maintain between secular and religious perspec-
tives (Main 2013a; 2013c). Or the same reasons that caused him to pay
scant attention to some of the most important thinkers within the history
of panentheism—Spinoza, Schelling, and Hegel (Cambray 2014, 42–49;
McGrath 2014)—may have caused him also not to attend to panentheism
itself. However, for the purposes of the present argument, the panenthe-
istic character of Jungian psychology has been sufficiently established to
Roderick Main 1111

warrant a consideration, next, of how such psychology, by virtue of being


panentheistic, undoes disenchantment.

THE UNDOING OF DISENCHANTMENT


Referring back to the characteristics of disenchantment identified by
Asprem—epistemological optimism, metaphysical skepticism, axiological
skepticism, and the consequent need for an intellectual sacrifice in order
to possess religion—we can see that each of these is rendered untenable by
features of Jungian psychology underpinned by an implicit panentheistic
metaphysics.
In general terms, panentheism undoes the epistemological optimism
of disenchantment because the coinherence of the divine and the world,
together with the divine’s being more than the world, ensures that there
will always remain aspects of the world that are not fully comprehensible
to empiricism and reason. In the case of Jungian psychology, concepts
such as those of an inexhaustible unconscious and ultimately unknowable
archetypes that are continually operative on the world of experience ensure
that even in principle reality as a whole is not fully knowable by empiricism
and reason but remains replete with “mysterious, incalculable forces.” Jung
often signaled this irreducible mystery and incalculability by referring to the
numinosity of the archetypes ([1947/1954]1969, para. 405). But he also
expressed the idea more plainly and directly. As he wrote at the end of his
life: “A man . . . must sense that he lives in a world which in some respects
is mysterious; that things happen and can be experienced which remain
inexplicable; that not everything which happens can be anticipated. The
unexpected and the incredible belong to this world. Only then is life whole.
For me the world has from the beginning been infinite and ungraspable”
([1963]1995, 390).
In general terms, panentheism undoes the metaphysical skepticism of
disenchantment because the coinherence of the divine and the world allows
for the possibility of knowing the divine through the empirically given—
albeit not exhaustively, because of the divine’s also being more than the
world. In the case of Jungian psychology, it might seem at first that Jung
shared the attitude of metaphysical skepticism. His writings, after all, are
peppered with disclaimers that he was not doing metaphysics and was not a
philosopher or a theologian; he was, he asserted, a scientist, an empiricist,
a phenomenologist (e.g., [1938/1940]1969, para. 2; [1939/1954]1969,
paras. 759–60; 1976, 249). However, these disclaimers need to be seen in
context. Jung was working at a time when psychology was still trying to
differentiate itself from philosophy and theology, the traditional disciplines
for discussing the mind and soul (Shamdasani 2003, 4). He also seems to
have held an unnecessarily cynical view of metaphysics as being just baseless
speculation, whereas it can, as Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) for
1112 Zygon

example had argued, more fruitfully be viewed in terms of abduction, that


is, as a form of reasoning that infers (or intuits) on the basis of observation
of phenomena the best explanation for those phenomena (Crabtree 2015,
424–47; Segal 2014, 95–96; see also McGrath 2014).
In practice, and despite his disclaimers, Jung did not treat metaphysics
as impossible (Chapman 1988; Main 2013c; McGrath 2014), and he
found several ways by which his science could indeed “know things be-
yond the empirically given” (Asprem 2014, 36). For one, he did not
disregard phenomena whose nature and behavior were not easily reducible
to established categories of empirical knowledge—phenomena variously
designated as “paranormal,” “anomalous,” “psi,” or—reflecting their grow-
ing recognition—“exceptional experiences” (Fach et al. 2013). He allowed
that such anomalousness—particularly where it seemed to involve tran-
scendence of time, space, and causality—could be indicative of a transcen-
dent aspect of reality ([1952b]1969, paras. 912, 931, 948; [1963]1995,
335–42). Throughout his life Jung remained uncommonly open to ex-
traordinary and mystical experiences (Main 1997; 2012).
Again, even where there was no such radical anomalousness, Jung was
willing to allow that the transcendent could be known hermeneutically
through its expression in the immanent. This was implicit in Jung’s un-
derstanding of the symbol as an expression of something partly known or
conscious (immanent) and partly unknown or unconscious (transcendent)
([1921]1971, paras. 814–29), and of the archetypal image as a phenom-
enal (immanent) expression of the unknowable (transcendent) archetype
([1947/1954]1969, paras. 417–20). But it was most clearly expressed in
some of his statements about myth. Myth for Jung was the consciously elab-
orated expression of the collective unconscious mind and its archetypes
(Segal 1998, 40–41). Through the images and narratives of myth the
unconscious could reveal archetypal truths that could not otherwise be
grasped: “it is not that ‘God’ is a myth,” wrote Jung, “but that myth is
the revelation of a divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth, rather
it speaks to us as a Word of God” ([1963]1995, 373). Unlike explicit
metaphysical speculation, which Jung claimed to repudiate on Kantian
epistemological grounds (1976, 249), mythic speculation was for him em-
pirically legitimate because it “expressed a view which springs from our
psychic wholeness, from the co-operation between conscious and uncon-
scious” ([1963]1995, 373); not from “biased speculation” but from, as
he put it, “the unfathomable law of nature herself ” (1976, 448). In the
guise of myth he was therefore able to address numerous problems that
might ordinarily be deemed metaphysical: the nature of reality ([1963]
1995, 207–08), the problem of evil ([1963]1995, 359–66), the origin of
consciousness ([1963]1995, 284–85), the meaning of life ([1963]1995,
371–72; cf. 1976, 494–95), and the possibility of surviving death ([1963]
1995, 330–58).
Roderick Main 1113

Jung even seemed to entertain the possibility of knowing things beyond


the empirically given through a form of mystical or gnostic cognition in-
volving participative identification between knower and known. This is
suggested by his visionary experiences following his near-fatal heart at-
tack in 1944, as described in Memories, Dreams, Reflections ([1963]1995,
320–29). In these experiences, Jung, the physical environment of his
hospital room, and the content of his numinous visions seemed to be
“interwoven into an indescribable whole” which he was yet able to
observe “with complete objectivity” (327). He described the state of
unity accessed through this “objective cognition” (328) as a manifesta-
tion of the “mysterium coniunctionis [the mystery of the conjunction],”
the “consummation” of which, he later wrote (seemingly with these ex-
periences in mind), could “be expected only when the unity of spirit,
soul, and body is made one with the original unus mundus [one world]”
([1955–56]1970, para. 664) or, in psychological terms, when there was
“a synthesis of the conscious with the unconscious” ([1955–56]1970,
para. 770).
If Jung was not in the end constrained by the metaphysical skepticism of
the disenchanted perspective, neither was he constrained by its axiological
skepticism. In general terms, panentheism undoes axiological skepticism
because part of what can be known through the empirically given (as
a result of the co-inherence of the divine and the world) are the values
and meanings underpinned by divine immanence. In the case of Jungian
psychology facts and values, far from being irreconcilably separate, are both
integral to the kind of “whole judgment” that Jung’s psychological model
fosters ([1952b]1969, para. 961; cf. [1921]1971, para. 85; [1944]1968,
para. 20). This was prefigured in Jung’s thinking about typology and
became integral to his concept of synchronicity.
Part of Jung’s typological model is its recognition of four basic functions
of consciousness, which can be variously pronounced in different individ-
uals. Briefly, sensation perceives that a thing exists, thinking judges what it
is, intuition perceives what its possibilities are, and feeling judges its value
([1923]1971, para. 900). “For complete orientation,” Jung stated, conced-
ing that this would be an ideal case, “all four functions should contribute
equally” ([1923]1971, para. 900). A whole judgment of a thing or situation
thus involves not just thinking and sensation, which establish the thing
or situation as a fact, but also feeling and intuition, which assess its value
and wider meaning. That these facts, values, and meanings were for Jung
not just subjective constructions became clearer when he formulated his
concept of synchronicity. According to synchronicity, physical events and
psychic events can be connected acausally through archetypally based pat-
terns of meaning that they jointly express (Jung [1952b]1969). For Jung,
psychic properties of meaning and value can thus be as inherent in a thing
or situation as the physical properties that establish it as an empirical fact.
1114 Zygon

Facts and values here are complementary, ultimately inseparable aspects of


the same unitary reality.
Finally, as an implication of the undoing of epistemological optimism
and metaphysical and axiological skepticism, panentheism also undoes the
need, according to the disenchanted view, for intellectual sacrifice in order
to possess religion. In general terms this means that the empirical world of
science is not in principle sealed off from the metaphysical world of religion:
religious insights can have implications for science, and scientific insights
for religion; and exploring such implications does not necessarily involve
any diminution of intellectual integrity. Clearly this is a situation conducive
to dialogue and fuller reconciliation between science and religion.
In the case of Jungian psychology, such dialogue and reconciliation
are exactly what we find. Insights that Jung obtained through visionary
experiences, as related throughout his Red Book (2009), later provided
concepts and frameworks for his scientific works (Jung [1963]1995, 225;
Shamdasani 2009). For instance, he related that various fantasy figures
with whom he conducted visionary dialogues brought home to him “the
crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce,
but which produce themselves and have their own life” ([1963]1995,
207)—an insight formalized in his concepts of the reality and autonomy
of the psyche ([1938/1940]1969, paras. 16–18; [1952a]1969, para. 555).
Conversely, data gathered in the course of his empirical work—such as
the parallelisms between images in the dreams and fantasies of modern
individuals and in the myths, religions, and literatures of cultures from
widely differing times and places ([1944]1968)—led him to formulate
concepts such as those of the collective unconscious, archetype-in-itself,
and individuation to which he was willing to accord religious significance
([1938/1940]1969; [1944]1968).
As has been demonstrated in detail elsewhere in relation to particular
concepts, such as synchronicity, the overall tenor of Jung’s work was towards
increasing possibilities of dialogue and reconciliation between science and
religion (Main 2004, 91–114). With that aim, Jung engaged in extended
dialogues with both scientists, such as the Nobel prize-winning physicist
Wolfgang Pauli (Meier 2001), and theologians, such as the Dominican
Father Victor White (Lammers and Cunningham 2007). Jung even stated
that he pressed for his scientific essay “Synchronicity: An Acausal Con-
necting Principle” ([1952b]1969) and his religious essay “Answer to Job”
([1952a] 1969) to be published at the same time, recognizing the signifi-
cant overlap or even complementary relationship between the issues with
which they were engaging (Meier 2001, 98).
In sum, in Jung’s implicitly panentheistic view, far from it being necessary
to sacrifice the intellect in order to possess religion, it would be one-
sided not to attend to the domain of religion, at least as translated into
psychological terms such as those of Jung’s model, because one would
Roderick Main 1115

thereby be denying an essential dimension of one’s human wholeness.


Conversely, it would be one-sided for those involved in religion not to
attend to the domain of science.

PANENTHEISTIC V I S - À- V I S DISENCHANTED SCIENCE AND


RELIGION
While the metaphysics of panentheism may be more conducive than the
metaphysics of theism to dialogue and reconciliation between science and
religion, it is important to note that panentheism achieves this greater
dialogue and reconciliation largely by operating with heterodox under-
standings of science and religion. In relation to understandings of religion,
the heterodoxy is implied by the very exercise of shifting from a theistic
to a panentheistic theological perspective. For example, the coinherence
of the divine and the world in panentheistic religious orientations implies
that humans, as part of the world, have the potential for “gnosis,” that is,
direct, experiential access to, and even realization of unity with, the divine
in a way that has typically been considered heterodox if not heretical to
adherents of theistic religions (Hanegraaff 2012, 372–73; 2016). In rela-
tion to understandings of science, the co-inherence of the divine and the
world in panentheism affirms both the reality and the empirical relevance
of the divine and thereby makes untenable the physicalism that is almost
ubiquitously presupposed within disenchanted science (Kelly et al. 2015).
It is no accident that the two works of Jung’s in which evidence of implic-
itly panentheistic thinking can most readily be discerned, “Synchronicity:
An Acausal Connecting Principle” and “Answer to Job,” are both con-
spicuously heterodox in their principal fields. Jung’s proposal, with his
concept of synchronicity, that philosophy of science needs to be broadened
to include a principle of acausal connection through meaning runs directly
counter to the emphasis on causality and the avoidance of questions of
meaning within modern science. His notion was not well received even
by scientists and philosophers sympathetic to the study of anomalous phe-
nomena (Price 1953; Beloff 1977). Similarly, the proposal in “Answer to
Job” that the image of God in Christianity be revised to include factors
that would bring it closer to the realm of human experience and make
it more psychologically pertinent (factors variously identified as evil, the
feminine, nature, or matter) alienated even theologians, such as White,
who had been ready to collaborate with Jung (Lammers and Cunningham
2007).
It seems that, while the tension between science and religion can be
considerably eased within a panentheistic framework, this may come at
the cost of introducing an alternative tension: between panentheistically
informed science and religion, on the one hand, and mainstream forms of
science and religion informed by the perspective of disenchantment on the
1116 Zygon

other. This is not to say that attempts to promote dialogue between science
and religion based on panentheistic metaphysics necessarily always involve
models of science and religion that are as radically innovative as Jung’s. As
Edward Kelly notes, most of the contributors to Clayton and Peacocke’s In
Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being (2004) explore possibilities
for dialogue between “antecedently held theological views” and “conven-
tional physicalist science, or something very close to it” (2015, 532).
However, as Kelly has argued on the basis of his own and his colleagues’ re-
search (Kelly et al. 2015), fuller reconciliation between science and religion
might be achieved if one were to adopt “an expanded vision of science it-
self ” together with “a full-fledged evolutionary panentheism” (Kelly 2015,
532).

CONCLUSION
The concept of disenchantment was introduced by Weber and has been
particularly influential within sociology, the discipline that Weber helped
to establish. Indeed, sociology, being self-consciously founded on secular
principles to study the increasingly secularized world of which it was itself a
product (Lassman and Velody, 1989, 160), has arguably been the paradig-
matic disenchanted discipline. As an indication of the wider significance
of the preceding argument, I should therefore like to conclude by briefly
noting two indicative areas where the kind of undoing of disenchantment
by panentheism and the exposure of the tension between panentheistic and
disenchanted perspectives that have been discussed in this article may have
implications within contemporary sociology.
First, within sociological theory itself there are areas of ongoing debate
in which the tension between panentheistic and disenchanted perspectives
figures directly. One such area concerns the so-called “spiritual turn” in
critical realism. This refers to a development initiated by the originative
critical realist philosopher Roy Bhaskar. He and other critical realists had
formerly deployed a form of immanent critique to reveal problematic
“absences in the philosophical discourse of modernity”—“the absence of
ontology, of a concept of absence, of an adequate account of internal
relationality, and of intentionality or transformative praxis” (Hartwig and
Morgan 2012, 3). From the mid 1990s, Bhaskar expanded his critique to
address also the absence of spirituality and religion (Hartwig and Morgan
2012, 3). As Mervyn Hartwig and Jamie Morgan summarize, Bhaskar’s
spiritual turn “issued first in a work that attempts to synthesize West and
East, science and religion, materialism and idealism, atheism and theism
(From East to West [2000]), and then in 2002 in the philosophy of meta-
reality, which seeks to transcend or move beyond such dichotomies by
articulating a spirituality that can appeal both to the secularly minded
and to the religious” (2012, 3). Bhaskar’s spirituality in his “philosophy
Roderick Main 1117

of meta-reality” is essentially panentheistic, as several commentators have


noted (Wright 2012, 23; Job 2012).
These radical developments in Bhaskar’s thought alienated not only
many of the more staunchly disenchanted thinkers who had previously
been sympathetic to critical realism (McLennan 2009) but also, ultimately,
some who were generally enthusiastic about the spiritual turn. For example,
Margaret Archer, Andrew Collier, and Douglas Porpora published in 2004 a
book, Transcendence: Critical Realism and God (Archer, Collier, and Porpora
2004), of which Bhaskar was originally to have been a co-author. However,
Archer, Collier, and Porpora, all of whom have identified themselves as
Christians of one form or another, drew back from endorsing Bhaskar’s
full-fledged spiritual views precisely at the point where he “moved toward
a more immanent conception of transcendence” (Archer et al. 2004, ix)—
that is, “in classical theological terms . . . an account of God [that] appears
to constitute a form of panentheism” (Wright 2012, 23). As Andrew
Wright remarks, the planned book between the four of them foundered,
by all accounts, over the issue of “God’s immanence in the world, and
in particular Bhaskar’s panentheistic conceptualisation of the immanence
of God within, yet teleologically transcendent of, the world’s categorical
structure” (Wright 2012, 40). Fuller awareness of the relationship between
panentheism, disenchantment, and theism, as elaborated in this article,
could be helpful for understanding positions within this continuing debate
(Hartwig and Morgan 2012; Job 2012).
Second, the tension between disenchanted and panentheistic per-
spectives may help to explain the relationship, or conspicuous lack of
relationship, between sociology and Jungian psychology. The lack of at-
tention to Jung’s thought among sociologists, in contrast to the extensive
attention sociologists have given to the thought of other depth psycholo-
gists such as Sigmund Freud, has struck even sociological commentators as
curious (Scott and Marshall 2005, 329). Jung, after all, theorized explicitly
about the relationship between the individual and society (Shamdasani
2003, 271–352), and also commented extensively on a wide range of
topics of interest to sociologists—health, sexuality, gender, families, ed-
ucation, politics, race, religion, national and cultural identities, and the
overall nature of modernity (Jung 1979), including its being disenchanted
or “desacralized” (McGuire and Hull 1978, 230). It has previously been
argued that one of the principal reasons for this disregard by sociologists is
Jung’s seeming tendency to credit, and be informed by, religious and non-
rational perspectives (Main 2013a). In light of the preceding discussion
it is now possible to be more specific and to identify the prime cause of
Jung’s disregard by sociologists as his implicitly panentheistic metaphysics,
with its assumptions that so fundamentally contradict those of the disen-
chanted worldview that paradigmatically informs sociology. Any attempts
to improve engagements between sociology and Jungian psychology or to
1118 Zygon

develop a distinctive form of Jungian psychosocial studies could benefit


from awareness of the deep metaphysical tension to which this article has
drawn attention. More widely, the same may apply to possible engagements
between sociology and other forms of explicitly or implicitly panentheistic
thought.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This article is based on a presentation at the International Conference
on “The Many Faces of Panentheism: Reinforcing the Dialogue between
Science and Religion,” held at the Collegium Helveticum, Zurich, 3–4 June
2016. I should like to thank Dr. Harald Atmanspacher and Dr. Hartmut
von Sass for the invitation to present at that event.
Work on the article was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research
Council [AH/N003853/1].

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