Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment BY Charles Taylor

We once lived in an “enchanted” universe of agreed-upon meaning and common purpose, the Canadian philosopher writes, where we looked at the night sky and felt that each object was shaped with significance by a God-given order. Now we live in the world that Enlightenment liberalism produced: one of fragmented belief and atomized selves. But Taylor thinks that the Romantics can tell us how this splintered realm can be mended. In his view, the arts can help us renchant the world, restoring those resonant feelings of wholeness and of harmony—not just with “Nature” but with existence itself.