The re-enchantment of time

Abstract

Rationalization of time is generally taken as part of the human effort to break free from the vicissitudes of nature and to actualize greater stability in social life through structured routines predicated on temporal measurements. As a result, abstract notions of time allow the conceptualization of the future to be framed as calculable alternative possibilities related to decisions and actions made in the here and now. However, the problem of reflexivity in modernity as well as the question of fragmentation in postmodernism introduced deep scepticism to the idea of calculable and predictable futures. Variable risks and yawning uncertainties accompany the endeavour to see and plan the future. Rationalization has ironically increased the inexactitude of the means to perceive the future. Here, a parallel can be drawn with the fear of death as the delimitation of the life space where the means to perceive the future are not conceived as applicable beyond the point of death. In the modern world of hard-nosed empiricism and hard-driving technology, death is reckoned as the final frontier in which the future is simply unknowable, and so it comes to present a source of consternation for any individual inquiring into the possibility of existence beyond the life space. Yet re-enchantment of this life space is providing new means for perceiving alternative time and reviving ideas about the afterlife. In a sense, the uncertainty of what the future holds for individuals living in late modernity is compensated by alternative beliefs in transcendental futures.