A Secular Age

A Secular Age is a work of stupendous breadth and erudition. -- John Patrick Diggins * New York Times Book Review * A Secular Age represents a singular achievement Taylor is somehow uniquely able to combine chutzpah and good manners, making bold and imaginative claims, yet always attending respectfully to the whole range of disciplines that touch on the philosophical trajectory being drawn, whether that be history, sociology, theology, art theory, cultural studies, anthropology or social theory A Secular Age succeeds in the same way as his previous work: in illuminating through complicating. At the same time, this book seems to step up the ambition somewhat: by attempting to provide a final definitive account of all the narratives and complications that make up our contemporary age, as they implode on themselves and interact with one another Hegel knew, of course, that the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk; or, in other words, that philosophy can only fathom the truth about an age in hindsight, when the day has passed. But then again, that didnt stop Hegel having a go; and we should be glad that it hasnt stopped Charles Taylor, either. -- Christopher J. Insole * Times Literary Supplement * Charles Taylors remarkable book A Secular Age achieves something quite different from what other writers on secularization have accomplished. Most have focused on decline as the essence of secularismeither the removal of religion from sphere after sphere of public life, or the decrease of religious belief and practice. But Taylor focuses on what kind of religion makes sense in a secular age Taylor is asking not only how secularism became a significant option in a civilization that not so long ago was explicitly Christian, but what that change means for the spiritual quest, both of those who are still religious and those who consider themselves secular. I doubt many people have even perceived that aspect of secularism, and Taylors book should be as much of a revelation to them as it was to me. -- Robert N. Bellah * Commonweal * Taylors book is a major and highly original contribution to the debates on secularization that have been ongoing for the past century. There is no book remotely like it. -- Alasdair MacIntyre One finds big nuggets of insight, useful to almost anybody with an interest in the progress of human society A vast ideological anatomy of possible ways of thinking about the gradual onset of secularism as experienced in fields ranging from art to poetry to psychoanalysis Taylor also lays bare the inconsistencies of some secular critiques of religion. * The Economist * [A] thumping great volume. -- Stuart Jeffries * The Guardian * In A Secular Age, philosopher Charles Taylor takes on the broad phenomenon of secularization in its full complexity [A] voluminous, impressively researched and often fascinating social and intellectual historyTaylors account encompasses art, literature, science, fashion, private lifeall those human activities that have been sometimes more, sometimes less affected by religion over the last five centuries. -- Jack Miles * Los Angeles Times * A rich, complex book, but what I most appreciate is [Taylors] vision of a secular future that is both open and also contains at least pockets of spiritual rigor, and that is propelled by religious motivation, a strong and enduring piece of our nature. -- David Brooks * New York Times * Taylor is arguably the most interesting and important philosopher writing in English today What makes Taylor so important? Over more than 40 years, four large books, four or five slimmer essays and several volumes of articles, he has worked out a distinctive network of arguments and an exceptionally rich analysis of the modern self and its valuesan analysis that reveals us to be altogether deeper and more interesting, but also less self-aware, than we tend to suppose A Secular Age set

Charles Taylor is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at McGill University. Author of The Language Animal, Sources of the Self, The Ethics of Authenticity, and A Secular Age, he has received many honors, including the Templeton Prize, the Berggruen Prize, and membership in the Order of Canada.

Preface Introduction Part I: The Work of Reform 1. The Bulwarks of Belief 2. The Rise of the Disciplinary Society 3. The Great Disembedding 4. Modern Social Imaginaries 5. The Spectre of Idealism Part II: The Turning Point 6. Providential Deism 7. The Impersonal Order Part III: The Nova Effect 8. The Malaises of Modernity 9. The Dark Abyss of Time 10. The Expanding Universe of Unbelief 11. Nineteenth-Century Trajectories Part IV: Narratives of Secularization 12. The Age of Mobilization 13. The Age of Authenticity 14. Religion Today Part V: Conditions of Belief 15. The Immanent Frame 16. Cross Pressures 17. Dilemmas 1 18. Dilemmas 2 19. Unquiet Frontiers of Modernity 20. Conversions Epilogue: The Many Stories Notes Index