A Secular Age

Charles Taylor is a Canadian philosopher who has written extensively on the interplay between the religious and secular attitudes towards life. His recent book, "A Secular Age" explores this relationship in great and thoughtful detail from both a historical and a deeply personal perspective. The book is based in part on the Gifford Lectures that Taylor delivered in Edinburgh in 1997. (William James, a philosopher Taylor admires, also delivered a set of Gifford Lectures which became "The Varieties of Religious Experience".) But the book was expanded greatly from Taylor's Gifford lectures, and he aptly advises the reader "not to think of it as a continuous story-and-argument, but rather as a series of interlocking essays, which shed light on each other,, and offer a context of relevance for each other." (Preface) Taylor's book received the 2007 Templeton Prize. The Templeton Prize is awarded "for progress toward research or discovery about spiritual realities." It carries with it the largest cash award of any major prize or honor. A good deal of Taylor's book is devoted to understanding the nature of secularism and the different contexts in which the word "secularism" is used. For the larger part of the book, Taylor describes a "secular age" as an age in which unbelief in God or in Transcendent reality has become a live option to many people. He describes our age as such a "secular age" especially among academics and other intellectuals. He wants to give an account of how secularism developed, of its strengths and weaknesses, and of its current significance. Taylor's book is written on a personal, historical, and contemporary level. Taylor is a believing contemporary Catholic, and much of his treatment of religious belief reflects his own Catholic/Christian commitments. At times, I thought that Taylor's description of the religious life (necessary to his consideration of secularism) was focused too much in the nature of specifically Christian beliefs, such as the Incarnation and the Atonement, which would be of little significance to non-Christian practitioners of religion, such as Jews, Buddhists, or Zoroastrians. Taylor is, in fact, fully aware of the diversity among religious traditions, but his discussion of the religious outlook still at times tilts greatly towards Christianity. The advantage of Taylor's approach (in emphasizing his own religious commitment)is that it gives the book a sense of immediacy and lived experience. The key difference between secularism and religion for Taylor is that the former tends to see human good and human flourishing as focused solely in this world, in, for example, a happy family, a rewarding career, and service to others, while the religious outlook insists that these goods, while precious are not enough. The religious outlook is Transcendent and sees the primary good in life as beyond all individualized, this-worldly human goods. From a historical perspective, Taylor tries to reject what he calls the "subtraction story". This story sees secularism as resulting purely from the discoveries of science -- such as Darwin's evolution -- taking away assumptions basic to religion leaving a secular, nonreligious world view by default. He offers learned discussions of the medieval period, the reformation and the Enlightenment, of Romanticism and Victorianism as leading to the development of secularism but to new forms of religious awareness as well. The "subtraction story" for Taylor is a gross oversimplification. Secularism, and the religious responses to it, has a complex, convoluted history with many twists and turns. The impetus for both views, Taylor argues is predominantly ethical -- developing views on what is important for human life -- rather than merely epistemological. Taylor's approach seems to me greatly influenced by Hegel. He offers a type of dialectic in which one type of religious belief leads to a resulting series of secularist or religious responses which in turn result in other further variants and responses. In spite of his own religious commitments, he acknoledges, and celebrates, the diversity of options people have today towards both secularism and religion. The book is also deeply influenced by Heidegger (and Wittgenstein) in its emphasis on the unstated and unexamined views towards being in the world that, Taylor finds, underlie both religion and secularism. I found the best portions of the book were those that specifically adressed modern life, as Taylor asseses the importance of an "expressivist" culture, which emphasizes personal fulfillment especially as it involves sexuality, of gender issues and feminism, of this-worldy service to others, and of fanaticism and violence upon issues of secularism and religion. Taylor emphasizes that people today tend to be fluid in their beliefs and to move more frequently than did people in other times between religions, between alternative spiritualities, and, indeed between secularism and religion. He attributes this to the plethora of options in a fragmented age and to a search for meaning among many people that did not seem as pressing in earlier times. Peggy Lee's song "Is that all there is?" is a theme that runs through a great deal of Taylor's book. Taylor has written a difficult, challenging work that is unlikely to change many people's opinions about their own secularism or religion but that may lead to an increased understanding of individuals for their own views and for those of others. This book is not for the casual reader. It will appeal to those who have wrestled for themeselves with questions of spirituality and secularism. Robin Friedman

This book is a wonderful course on the development of the idea of the autonomous individual and the rise of our present day secular world. It’s like sitting in on a graduate level seminar with Taylor. His grasp of Western philosophy is encyclopedic. I have found it quite readable and easy to follow. Absolutely recommend with six stars!

If stunning beauty can be defined by a work that somehow captures the ideas and forms of expression that precede it, puts them together with new insight into their deeper meaning and power, and then adds an entire new perspective that startles, amazes and brings a deep sense of joy (think of a Mozart symphony or a Monet painting), then "A Secular Age" by Charles Taylor is one of the most intensely beautiful works I've ever read. The work describes what our secular age, and its contrast with the religious age it evolved from really means for us the people who occupy it. I've studied philosophy from many perspectives, and I've never thought of spirituality and religion, or secularity for that matter, in all of these ways. You will feel both uplifted, and wiser as you read it. Taylor has integrated into a construct of religion and philosophy in the modern age the concepts of "lived experiences" of all members of society as they have evolved over recorded history, as opposed to merely the theoretical underpinnings of religion and spirituality as documented by educated elites. He explores the interplay of the lived experiences of the people of a culture or time with the philosophical expressions of thought that initially develop in the educated elites and then interact with the entire population to create a new "social imaginary" - the way people in a given time and culture instinctively and implicitly make sense of things. He weaves this conceptual fabric as a background for which he tells the story of how religious, social and scientific thought have evolved from the "enchanted" time before 1500 to the present, "disenchanted" or secular age. What I think he does so beautifully is to incorporate all aspects of the human "lived experience" into his thesis, from prehistorical tribal rites, to ancient carnival traditions, through forms of artistic expression and to the modern technological and scientific enterprise. It's just amazing to see how well he can blend all of the disparate shards of thought embedded in the landscapes of philosophy, history, anthropology, arts and literature, psychology, economics, politics, sociology and science together into a coherent and compelling story of what it means to be a human today, and how that relates to what it was like to be a human 500, or even 2000 years ago and beyond. As I read I became interested by how many of the evolutionary elements of thought and behavior that he has described still wash through our culture, as if "ontogeny is recapitulating phylogeny". He really describes what I see as networks of change, and I'm still trying to get my thoughts around it, but I can sense something absolutely fascinating in this line of exploration. I think it's the dynamic sense of human culture that he creates that is so exciting to explore with him. He does not so much give answers as he highlights the questions that such a dynamic nature of our existence begs. "A Secular Age" is a masterwork for any true seeker.

Otiose, verbose, orotund, and lengthy, this book is salvaged by the creative analysis and depth of knowledge of the author. Or perhaps it is the unique slice of life that he is analyzing, this secular age. One central insight, that secularism did not develop through a process of subtraction, is a great starting point. The loss of God did not result in science as the natural, inevitable, reasonable next step, in rationality and secularism as the remainder after the dross was sifted out. Instead, in every instance, the change in the way religious communities defined themselves opened the door to a secular age. There are many examples in this book, but one might be the rejection of an autonomous human nature (page 97, hard cover). This is a religious argument (nominalism v realism) that leads to a secular world through a change in religious outlook.... when religion redefined itself in the medieval and later ages, it opened the door to secular views as a development from religious change. Why does it matter how secularism developed? Taylor explains that the secular world, rather than a remainder, is a development out of the disenchantment of religion. And this is crucial, because secularism is itself then a belief system that grew from religion, rather than a remainder after religion boils away; all that is secular is based in religious views, as progenitor. Taylor is a hugely bad writer and a muddled explainer and his book is grossly overlong, and this results in a difficult read. But he is original and profound. Oh, for a disciplined writer on these topics! A tiny example: At theend of Chapter Two, the Rise of The Disciplinary Society, Taylor tells us he is about to sum up his argument to this point. He starts to do this, and then wanders into a strange little commentary on art history, showing how artistic choices have tracked with the attempt to bring religious feeling and belief into the world through the depiction of religious figures in directly representational styles. Very interesting, maybe even original, but we have already had 100 such side tracking disquisitions! Any reader can be forgiven at this point in laying the book down. As a follow-up -- some have suggested that the arguments made by Taylor are important, and they are. Also creative. But not vital, I would submit. Because, if understanding a book this poorly crafted is vital for the human race, then we are doomed. Compare this to Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, which makes different arguments but within the same broad critique -- it is hard, but readable, and therefore useful. I had a Professor who used to argue that Max Weber's "Economy and Society" are best read as bouillon cubes of wisdom, to be mined for other less verbose studies. Maybe that is Taylor's fate.

My order arrived in excellent condition. There are no markings anywhere within an 870 pp. volume. This hardbound copy of Charles Taylor' A Secular Age was in even better shape than the description posted on the Amazon website. I spent $3.00 more than for a new paperback copy; It was well worth it! The volume arrived one day early. I do not know what more I could ask for in the way of service. Thank you!

Some scholars get more concise as they grow older; some seem to feel the obsessive need to summarize once more everything they believe and have studied. Taylor clearly belongs to the second group. On 776 pages he makes the reader drink from a fire hose. What makes this experience so frustrating and often outright painful is that his writing is so atrocious, obtuse, endlessly repetitious, and often outright ungrammatical. Other reviewers have provided the evidence I need not repeat here. Why didn't he find a good editor? What a pity because in this flood of words he has some interesting things to say. In the first two chapters--which I, in contrast to some other reviewers, found particularly fascinating--he traces the seeds of secularism to reform movements in the church, starting as early as the 13th century. In the third chapter, he goes even one step further and believes that Christianity from its very beginning has had the potential to lead to secularism, for the Catholic Taylor clearly an unfortunate and unintended consequence. (Even the parable of the Good Samaritan is cited as a potential seed for a future secularism!!) After this surprising opening, Taylor follows a more traditional trajectory, though he emphasizes repeatedly that his analyses break new ground: From the Reformation (Max Weber already saw its crucial importance in this context), to the Enlightenment, Deism, the Romantic revolt and its various forms of individualism etc. He then returns to religion and its future in a secular world "because in a way this whole book is an attempt to study the fate in the modern West of religious faith" (p. 510). Here he wants to show that this secular age might not be as irreligious as many believe, and he ends with the assurance that "we are just at the beginning of a new age of religious searching whose outcome no one can foresee" (535). Well, an appropriate conclusion for an already long book. But, oh no! There follow another 240 pages (was this to be another book?) of renewed analyses of the secular age, unavoidably repeating many of the arguments and some of the evidence already displayed as he told the story of the rise of secularism. Taylor finally ends with religious conversion experiences in an our secular age, a chapter that could have fit will with his earlier section on religion in the secular age. Let me emphasize that I am not unsympathetic to the general direction of Taylor's research and findings. The problem is that he simply attempts too much and rushes through his many, many analyses of past and present at a breathtaking, bewildering speed. The impression quickly arises that he mostly talks to himself in a sort of intellectual telegram style, and one hopes that at least he would know all the intermediate links that he had to leave out in his permanent rush to new insights. Repeating these rushed, truncated arguments does not make them more persuasive. In the end one is left with the uncomfortable impression that this comprehensive study forces the reader to take on trust an overwhelming, rarely adequately explained set of premises, evidences, and conclusions. Less could have been more.

Quite a number of books have been written in recent years repudiating the classical secularization thesis of social science, which claims that as societies modernize, they become less religious. Peter Berger's THE DESCULARIZATION OF THE WORLD is a good example because forty years ago Berger was himself a proponent of the secularization thesis. So it was with some surprise that I eyed the title of Charles Taylor's A SECULAR AGE. Can this perspicacious Canadian philosopher actually be reaffirming the thesis? No. Taylor and Berger are quite similar when it comes to recognizing the futility of the modern attempt to liquidate the transcendent in the name of a progressive, exclusive humanism. The abuses of religion-- crusades, indulgences, inquisitions-- understandably motivated some to construct a world without religion, but the result-- our secular age-- is both liberating and suffocating. Exclusive humanists are committed to the proposition that whatever was beautiful in religion can be translated into humanism without loss. And that which was not beautiful will be well lost. Yes, that sunset is beautiful-- but it is just as beautiful (if not more so) when it is seen as a testament not to the glory of God but to the human spirit. But Taylor judges that this attempt to fit the transcendent into the Procrustean bed of "the immanent frame" has produced the "unquiet frontiers of modernity." "Our age is very far from settling in to a comfortable unbelief" (p. 727). But the critical distinction for Taylor is not between belief and unbelief but between transcendence and immanence. Like many religious thinkers, he recognizes that religiosity is not always accurately reflected in self-reports. Unbelievers can be more open to God than believers. His goal is the articulation of a religious sensibility which simultaneously leaves humans vulnerable to "external transcendence" (God)-- a vulnerability against which the autonomous modern self is "buffered"-- and acknowledges the goodness of ordinary human life (including sexuality)-- which religion has too often suppressed in the name of ideological purity. If we are to "get real," we can neither deny our humanity nor God. But that is not his goal in this book, in which he tries-- in the best Hegelian fashion-- to illuminate the cunning of history (i.e., explain how we wound up in a secular age). The reader who is able to follow Taylor's long (but accessible) history will be in a position to participate in the articulation of the needed sensibility.

A Secular Age is one of the few books published in the early twenty-first century that will still be read in the twenty-second. The only appropriate comparisons are to works like Gibbons, Carlyle or Toynbee. Though I last fully read the book some years ago the central narrative is still embedded in me. It’s become part of the way I look at and understand the modern world. That is because A Secular Age is not so much about secularism as it is the changing nature of what is considered religion in the West. One follows Taylor as he recounts the step by step dismantling of each and every support of religious civilization from the Renaissance on. One sees how a thoroughly secular culture was built, piece by piece, by the collective intellectual energies of the Enlightenment, the changing moral sense of the Romantics and the popularization in the 1960s of the kind of life Western elites had been living for generations. It’s worth noting that Taylor emphasizes that the secularized society has good and bad aspects for religion. No longer enmeshed with the state, religious adherence is now a choice and hence can be more passionate. However, there is the loss of that sense of an enchanted world, a world where the truths of faith are as real as the laws of physics. Instead faith has tended to draw inward, regulating the mind and life of the believer yet having little consequence for larger society. All of this merely scratches the surface. It is not only a book to display on your bookshelf but a work to return to year after year; a book that should be read by all those wanting to have a voice in the part religion should play in Western society; a book that helps the believer and the unbeliever understand the changing nature of faith and its new role in modernity.

When 'A Secular Age' arrived I was surprised at the vastness of the book. At the moment I'm only halfway through the work but have found it full of insights that before I hadn't given much thought to; and a clever history encapsulating its foundational causes. However what rivets me is the, almost poetic language that Charles Taylor uses to convey his ruminations . Excellent.

Um dos melhores livros das últimas décadas. Fundamental para se estudar nossa visão de mundo hoje: basante secular (e pouco ou nada espiritual/religiosa).

Una obra imprescindible para analizar el proceso de la secularización en las sociedades contemporáneas. La presentación del libro con pasta dura es excelente. Lástima que aún no haya edición castellana, como contrapartida es una buena ocasión para leer inglés, el lenguaje de Taylor es muy asequible.

essential reading for my masters in philosophy of religion, but the leisurely erudition of this book makes it accessible to the general reader

It took me three months to finish this book and it was worth the effort! I was raised in a devote Catholic environment and over the years of my early adulthood drifted into unbelief. I remain there today at 68. For many years, I have read in depth about religion and Christianity, in particular, in an effort to make sense of my experience. Taylor's book was the final piece of what I needed to understand that experience and to feel at piece with it as well to feel more open about the world of belief. This book is very academic but, very well written and organized. There were places where I struggled to understand the concept he was elaborating on but, not to the extent that I couldn't continue to move through the work. There is some repetitiveness in the work where he seems to need to reiterate some ideas more than once but, that is not really a major flaw. I would highly recommend this book if one is interested in working through this challenging but very enlightening book.