








































© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2009, Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies Street, London SW11 2JW

[Expo. 3.1 (2009) 1–4] Expositions (print) ISSN 1747-5368  
doi:10.1558/expo.v3i1.1 Expositions (online) ISSN 1747-5376 

Editor’s Preface

PEtEr BUSch

Villanova University 
peter.busch@villanova.edu

Perhaps no portrait of modernity is so dark yet so funny as charlie 
chaplin’s masterpiece, Modern Times.  In the opening scenes, chap-
lin is a hapless factory worker who turns an endless series of identical 
screws on a conveyor belt with no discernable purpose.  One day he 
is chosen to be the test subject for an invention that will eliminate 
inefficient lunch breaks by feeding the workers automatically.  After 
that experiment ends in a messy failure, an increasingly erratic chaplin 
tussles with his foreman and lies down on the belt, entering the gaping 
mouth of an enormous machine and winding around its mighty gears 
like a half-digested sandwich.  Like Shakespeare’s Polonius, he goes not 
where he eats, but where he is eaten.  

Rediscovering Enchantment

But if modernity first appears as a machine that devours the human 
beings it was meant to serve, its portrait in the rest of the movie may 
be more promising. chaplin falls in love with an orphan girl whom he 
has saved from the police, and together they bravely join in the modern 
pursuit of happiness. returning to work as a night watchman in a de-
partment store, he dances backwards and blindfolded on roller skates, 
unaware that every turn brings him within inches of falling into a prec-
ipice that he somehow, miraculously, avoids. Later, he goes to work in a 
mill, and this time a worker who gets stuck inside the machine does get 
to eat his lunch—as he is fed by chaplin himself.  The movie enters the 
new age of “talkie” technology when chaplin sings a nonsensical but 
definitely naughty song. In these moments, the soulless mechanism of 
modernity is transformed, if only briefly, by the beauty of romantic 
love, dance, compassion, song, comedy, and wonder. While it is a com-
monplace to describe our world as “disenchanted,” we are thus led to 

mailto:peter.busch@villanova.edu


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© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2009

consider whether some enchantment does not remain in our lives.  
What is it that we glimpse in chaplin’s story? can enchantment 

find a home in modern times? What exactly is the power of poetry,  
music, and beauty in our souls? can enchantment be understood 
philosophically?  Is it rather (or also) a variety of religious experience?  
What must be true if enchantment is to bring the happiness that it 
promises?  These are some of the questions that we will be investigating 
in our themed issue this spring.

 Articles in this Issue

Our first article, by James Wetzel, argues that modernity is in fact  
defined by its resistance to enchantment, and specifically to what mod-
ern philosophers regard as the hocus-pocus of religion. “The mark of 
the modern in philosophy,” Wetzel maintains, “is a skeptical disposi-
tion, directed especially towards alleged revelations of what is good or 
right.”  For Wetzel, this skepticism has resulted in our ongoing quar-
rels over whether to side with reason or imagination, will or vision, 
altruism or self-interest. Wetzel proposes that these divisions are not so 
necessary as they might seem; they are avoided in advance, he argues, 
by an Augustinian-Platonic understanding that draws no stark distinc-
tion between philosophy and religion because it understands the Good 
as the one, true God.  

Is it possible to revive Platonic notions of beauty without embracing 
the pre-modern theism of Augustine?  We can examine this alternative 
in the nineteenth-century classicist and historian of culture, Walter 
Pater. Our second article, by Gerald Monsman, presents Pater’s under-
standing of beauty as an aesthetic experience that links the sensuous 
with the spiritual and exerts its power at the turning points of history 
and culture. Monsman illustrates his reading with “tibalt the Albi-
gense,” a fragment by Pater that is published here for the first time.

Our third article turns to an account of enchantment more in keep-
ing with Wetzel’s call for renewed seriousness about religion. Instead 
of reuniting theism with philosophy, however, Stephen Little reunites 
theism with poetry.  Little interprets canto 26 of Paradiso as ascribing 
to Dante the poet a prophetic vision of God that recalls the revelations 
of Isaiah, Paul, and John in the Bible.  



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© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2009

Perhaps, however, artistic expression offers an enchantment all its 
own, apart from all claims to prophecy?  In our fourth article, “What 
has Mozart to Do with coltrane?” cynthia r. Nielsen explores the 
wonders of innovation and improvisation to be found in the world of 
music.

Other Features

This spring marks the return of “Notes, Insights, and Flashes.”  
Bernard G. Prusak examines the famous argument in Confessions that 
evil, strictly speaking, does not exist, and he finds Augustine’s argu-
ment to be something less than persuasive. This philosophic (not to 
say skeptical) reading was so provocative as to inspire a much longer 
critical response from an Augustine scholar, Jonathan P. Yates. Such 
conversations are exactly what we hope to accomplish with this feature, 
and so we are publishing the entire exchange, including Prusak’s reply 
to his critic. 

If modernity is defined by its skepticism concerning religion, as 
Wetzel maintains, how should this remarkable process of disenchant-
ment be understood? What are its causes and implications, beyond 
the academic discipline of philosophy? Distinguished political theorist 
charles taylor has taken up this question in A Secular Age. Micah J. 
Watson and Bruce Ledewitz discuss taylor’s book in our Academic 
roundtable.

Our book reviews include two review essays. In the first, Nicholas 
Popper discusses Quentin Skinner’s Hobbes and Republican Liberty as 
well as his longstanding and influential practice of studying authors by 
situating them within their social and historical context.  In the second 
essay, David Schalkwyk reviews two recent books in which Shakespeare 
is read as a philosophic thinker.  to what extent does such an approach 
reveal what is most profound in the plays?

Dawn

If we turn to the end of chaplin’s movie hoping to learn the fate of en-
chantment in modern times, what we find is deeply ambiguous.  hav-
ing escaped from yet another disaster, apparently by running all night, 



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chaplin and the girl now sit on the side of the road, exhausted.  She 
has been wrapping a loaf of bread in a kerchief to carry on his cane, but 
now she breaks down, sobbing, “What’s the use of trying?”  chaplin’s 
earnest response, “Buck up—never say die. We’ll get along!” restores 
her spirits, and the two of them set off towards the rising sun.  Their 
path is a modern road, but they are headed for the hills, to the coun-
tryside rather than the city. It is unclear, therefore, whether happiness 
is to be found in modernity as they have known it, or whether it would  
require them to be unmodern, or at least differently modern. One way 
or the other, the two of them believe they see their happiness ahead, and 
only the most intransigent skeptic would insist that they are wrong.


