Sense in Competing Narratives of Secularization: Charles Taylor and Jean-Luc Nancy

In this article, using the recent work by Charles Taylor in A Secular Age as my point of departure, I will argue that Jean-Luc Nancy enables us to think past the competing binary of atheistic and religious experience and allows us to surpass the present narratives of secularism. In A Secular Age, Taylor himself seeks a middle ground between atheism and religion, arguing that it is possible to open ourselves to the cross-pressures of modern existence that find us caught between scientific atheism and a need for spiritual and religious guidance. Here, Taylor finds a way of picturing ourselves within a secular age, remaining faithful to scientific rationalism, but still open to religion and a sense of a higher good. However, as I shall demonstrate, in his thesis Taylor misrepresents the Continental philosophical tradition (particularly Nietzsche and post-structuralism) that has itself sought to understand these cross-pressures of existence. Taking this misrepresentation, and specifically his reductive and colloquial analysis of Nietzsche, Camus, and Derrida, as my point of departure, I provide an alternative manner of thinking through the work of these writers, one that leads to a detailed analysis of Jean-Luc Nancy and his project the deconstruction of Christianity. In this analysis I argue that Nancy provides a manner of thinking that remains open and allows an experience of freedom, without seeking to close that sense of openness with explanation, nor maintaining that sense of openness with a conception of the divine.     

An Interview with David Alderson

<正>Wang Jie:Here are some questions that I think are very important to China's research on Marxism,so I'd like to know your opinions.I'd like to start with the research on Terry Eagleton.As far as I know,you are the first to have written a book on Terry.In China,there are also many scholars who are researching Terry and a group of articles are recently coming out in China's most important core journal,Theory and Criticism of Literature and Art.When I talked with Terry at the University of Manchester,he specially mentioned that he was a Marxist,instead of a Post-marxist.Later,he wrote me a letter to add that it was a matter of principle.For the relationship between Marxism and Postmarxism, there are still confusions among scholars in China,so can you make further clarifications in combination with Terry's situation? David:I would say that Terry is without doubt a Marxist,not a Post-Marxist. That is very clear to me.At a recent conference about Terry's career at Manchester University,there was discussion about the extent to which his thought had changed over years,and one of the comments that he made was that he believes roughly the same things as he used to believe in the 1960s.From having read and studied his work,I would say that there's overwhelmingly a sense of continuity through the work.     

亚科·欣蒂卡访谈录

1)新的生物遗传研究 ,比如克隆 ,再次提出了“科学与伦理学”之间的关系这一棘手问题。您对此的观点是什么 ?您认为 ,“哲学”在这场论争中扮演什么角色 ?对于伦理学和哲学之间的关系问题我想我能说的不多。但对于伦理学我倒是可以泛泛地谈一些看法 :它是如何被研究的 ,以及它应该如何被研究。在此我想谈两点。第一 ,伦理学发轫于古希腊时 ,它研究的是道德层面上和社会层面上的优秀品行。不同的美德是优秀品行的不同形式 :从字面意思上讲 ,一个有美德的人是一个社会生活舞台上的优秀表演者。但在维多利亚时代道德规范莅临之时 ,社会上却出现…