Enchantment, Weak Ontologies, and Administrative Ethics

In: Administration & society, Band 38, Heft 4, S. 422-446

Abstract

The article contributes to an enlivening of ethical discourse by employing the notion of weak ontology. Weak ontologies insist that fundamental sources of inspiration, or "ontostories, " are indispensable to a vital ethics, even as it admits that every onto-story is contestable. The article considers powerful perspectives that militate against implementing weak ontology: liberalism's conception of the neutral framework and Max Weber's characterization of the modern world as disenchanted. The article argues that these two perspectives contribute to a nay-saying ethic and a negative form of governance because the disenchanted world they describe is too hard to love. The article ends with an examination of an ethical perspective that seeks to overturn the disenchantment story by cultivating a nontheistic experience of enchantment.