Joseph Agassi and the various guises of magic

Abstract

The paper discusses the various conceptions of magic, with a focus on Joseph Agassi's view that magic is a type of pre-scientific or pre-rational belief that, while it may be true, is still not knowledge. I argue in the paper that magic can also be a post-knowledge type of cognition, based on bodily and intuitive processes, whose truthfulness, usefulness and relevance do not fall behind scientific knowledge, especially in fields such as psychotherapy and religion.