In his 1917 lecture turned essay “Science as a Vocation,” Max Weber declares that “our age is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization, and above all, by the disenchantment of the world.” (Weber, 1917) In the modern age, he continues, “we are not ruled by mysterious, unpredictable forces, but… on the contrary, we can in principle control everything [for] technology and calculation achieve our ends.” Albeit a point that may, in our day, seem trite, Weber’s diagnosis of the modern condition remains true; but not in the way one might think. In the contemporary study of religion Weber’s well-known proclamations are frequently cited. Often overlooked, however, is the context in which he spoke, not as a “prophet,” “demagogue,” or “leader” of the modern era, but as a “teacher” and “fellow student.” That is, in following Thomas Carlson’s novel explication of Weber’s essay, this text can be read as fundamentally concerning “teaching and learning” in a technological, rational, and disenchanted age. (Carlson, 2019)
Weber, called to speak in front of students at Munich University on the question of academic vocation, perceived in these students a yearning for the “’personality’ and ‘experience’” they have been denied in their day and that a sort of intellectual champion might bring them. (Weber, 1917) Students, in other words, were looking for “a leader and not a teacher.” To clarify, the youth of his day, ostensibly stymied by the rationalization and technologization demanded of them by increasingly mechanized institutions and vocations, sought a prophet who could provide them with answers to the questions “What should we do? How shall we live?” Such questions are, as Weber carefully notes, unanswerable by an educator, for the goal of education is not to minister “value judgements,” but to make known “facts” that can often be “inconvenient.” What Weber means by this is that the task of education is not to indoctrinate, but to provide “clarity” regarding “the necessity of choice” and, via factual analysis, “compel a person… to render an account of the ultimate meaning of his own actions.” Succinctly put, education is meant to ready the student for engaging in “the challenges of the day.” This makes education an “ethical” task and, what is more, the ethical challenges brought about by the institutional mechanization of life, Weber claims, are apparent “above all in the United States” with its “bureaucratic system” of education.”
The inconvenient fact of the matter, for us in our day, a day further dominated by techno-rationalization within and without the classroom, is that these challenges have become all the more demanding as contemporary educational institutions become progressively mechanized (Nietzsche, 1872; Taylor 2009, 2010), corporatized (Readings, 1996; Cote and Allahar, 2011; Berg and Seeber, 2016), industrialized (Picciano and Spring, 2013), and, in a sense, disenchanted. Yet, what does any of this have to do with video games in the classroom?
In the summer quarter of 2024, myself and two professors in the Religious Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, ventured to teach a course with the aid of video game technologies. The course, “Religion and Technology,” was taught almost entirely in virtual reality via the Meta Quest 3 virtual reality headset, required students to attend virtual lectures, go on virtual field trips, and to implement course themes in the creation of their own virtual worlds as a final project. Yet this course brought with it several hardships. At the practical level, we had to find a way to obtain the funds required to purchase 20 headsets for ourselves and the enrolled students, which, while an arduous task, was accomplished through the Arnhold Innovative Teaching and Learning Initiative. Once acquired, many hours were spent familiarizing ourselves with the headsets; the hardware, interface, and the potential applications that could be used to our courses’ benefit. Then, this information had to be quickly translated and provided to the students, as summer courses are truncated. Yet the students, all digital natives, had little trouble acquiring the requisite skills to engage in class activities. However, at the communal level, we had some trouble impressing upon students the fact that this was indeed a credited course, and not merely a game. Otherwise stated, we had to communally cultivate, in following Friedrich Nietzsche, a “serious [attitude] towards play.” (Nietzsche, 1886) Nevertheless, we were surprised to learn that, for several students who commuted to campus, the headsets allowed them ease of access to the course, allowing us to develop a holistic environment where all students could playfully participate. While successful, as far as the present work is concerned in relation to the Weberian diagnosis above, existential considerations were also raised.
In an age dominated by rationalization and techno-mechanization, where all life, including university life, is seemingly governed by virtual screens and digital interactions beyond our individual control, were we, as instructional staff, providing clarity and preparing students to meet the demands of the day, or were we further entangling students within an academic industrial complex by subjecting them to video game technologies in the classroom? Is the “gamification” of university courses beneficial to student learning outcomes (Bogost, 2014; Khaldi et al. 2023) and how these outcomes might “imply a growing understanding of the conditions under which we live?” (Weber, 1917) Were we able to, via factual analysis regarding relevant scholarship on the technologies we were studying and performing, make “recognizable meaning that goes beyond the technical” (Weber, 1917), or were we inadvertently subjecting students to a form of “precarious playbour” at the behest of Silicon Valley tech moguls and “big business?” (Kücklich, 2005)
Weber provides no answers to these proposed questions; neither will I. The point of this work is not to provide solutions to such questions, although I will intimate several, but “to ask the right questions” and to engender the necessary conversation about our vocation and how we might “meet ‘the challenges of the day [by looking the techno-virtual] fate of the age full in the face.” (Weber, 1917) Ultimately, can we, with and through virtual reality technologies, reenchant education?
In the contemporary study of religion Max Weber’s well-known proclamations concerning technology, rationalization, and the disenchantment of the world are frequently cited. Often overlooked, however, is the context in which he spoke, not as a prophet, demagogue, or leader of the modern era, but as a teacher and fellow student. Ultimately, education, as Weber understands it, is an existential task that seeks to prepare the student, and the educator, to engage the challenges of the day full in the face. The inconvenient fact of the matter, for us in our day, a day further dominated by techno-rationalization within and without the classroom, is that these challenges have become all the more demanding. Employing a Weberian analysis to the educational challenges of our day, the present work seeks to question how and in which ways video game technologies might help us reenchant student learning experiences and outcomes in a university setting.