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Beyond Weber’s disenchantment: artificial intelligence and the emergence of technological re-enchantment
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DOI：10.1007/s00146-025-02824-7.png)
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Abstract
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The aim of this paper is to present a theoretical reassessment of Weber’s concept of ‘disenchantment through rationalisation’, as primarily laid out in Science as a Vocation (1917) and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1946), to propose that recent technological advances in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) are repositioning humans into a state of technological re-enchantment. This process of re-enchantment acknowledges both the fundamentally dialectical nature of Weber’s disenchantment and recognises that contemporary AI development has created systems whose operational logic exceeds human comprehension while remaining indispensable for achieving complex objectives. This paper therefore makes two theoretical contributions: first, it demonstrates that Weber’s concept of rationalisation contains structural possibilities for re-enchantment that emerge through, rather than despite, formal rational processes; second, it argues that artificial intelligence represents the first empirical instantiation of this theoretical possibility, requiring us to reconceptualise the relationship between rationalisation and epistemic authority. Technological re-enchantment here refers not to the return of pre-modern consciousness but to the emergence of structural epistemic dependence that operates through rational processes. Unlike traditional forms of authority based on tradition, charisma, or bureaucratic position, AI-mediated authority rests on demonstrated performance in contexts where explanatory understanding is structurally impossible. The concept will therefore be explored through three stages: first, examining the dialectical structure of Weber’s disenchantment theory; second, analysing how AI’s architecture creates unprecedented epistemic dependence; and finally, demonstrating how this represents re-enchantment through, rather than despite, rational processes.
Keywords:
Max Weber
Disenchantment
Artificial intelligence
Technological re-enchantment
Rationalisation
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