when God dies, so too does the world

Hillman argues that medicine for the last four hundred years has continuously rendered the body ever more dead. It is now imagined to be a machine with parts--a further criticism of the Cartesian paradigm of self that some feminists exposed as resulting in the anaesthetizing of the physical world and the human body. As a result of the mechanization of the body, in tandem with the other Cartesian proclamation that rational consciousness is all, we have created a world in which individuals must necessarily exist in isolation while being embedded in inanimate physical surroundings. All things in the world, not just the human body, have been made dead to us, thus we have no real sense of connection to the world any longer. Our objectifying consciousness and our objectifying perspectives make the world and all its components objects. Hence, states Hillman, it is necessary to reanimate, to re-sacralize the world and the things in it so that we can enter into conversation, enter into connection with the world which surrounds us.

from Marc Fonda: Archetypal Theory and the Construction of Self [my emphasis]

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