The Work of Enchantment suggests that it is a lack of "enchantment" in rich, developed countries that causes soul-starved Westerners to experience mental (and sometimes physical) illness. Del Nevo argues that this "enchantment" is most often experienced in childhood, but can also be found in adulthood, particularly through art. However, adults must cultivate within themselves the ability to appreciate art by reading, listening, and gazing--activities often misconceived in advanced industrial societies.

Del Nevo describes the framework of enchantment and its philosophical and...

Listening to music is not merely something one does, but something central to a way of living. Listening has the power to transport one into another way of being. It is a mode of feeling and forms the bedrock of deep emotion. Written from the viewpoint of a philosophy of sensibility, Matthew Del Nevo notes that this perspective may not be in fashion, but it follows a long tradition.

Del Nevo emphasizes the aesthetic experience of listening to art music as it has developed and disintegrated in Western civilization. He recognizes a deep psychological element to what he calls "soul"--or...

The Metaphysics of Night acknowledges a post-secular philosophy, one that puts philosophy into serious dialogue with religion, rather than considering religion a thing of the past. Matthew Del Nevo deals with the cultural unconscious, inseparable from religious consciousness, and draws on psychoanalysis and literature as well as philosophy. The metaphysics of the night is Del Nevo's metaphor for the deep and mysterious expanse of the soul.

Philosophically, the book is critical of Enlightenment presumptions about knowledge and truth and overly spiritualizing tendencies in...