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.     

WHAT IS IMMANENT IN JUDAISM? Transcending A Secular Age

This essay takes on the implicit claim in Taylor's A Secular Age, forecast in some of his earlier writings, that the desire for a meaningful life can never be satisfied in this life. As a result, A Secular Age is suffused with a tragic view of existence; its love of narratives of religious longing makes no sense otherwise. Yet there are other models of religion that lend meaning to existence, and in the majority of this essay, I take up one model that Taylor ignores in A Secular Age, namely that of a God who is immanent in social life throughout religious law. Turning to Maimonides's account of divine law in the Guide of the Perplexed, I argue that a vision of the divine law that is divine because of its effects in society, namely the promotion of human welfare, can mend the relations between varying kinds of believers and unbelievers in a way that Taylor thinks is impossible. A God who commands laws is a God who inaugurates an “anthropocentric shift” long before current understandings of secularization see it beginning.     

The secular and the sacred: reflections on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age

Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age represents a remarkable achievement. Taylor insists in a reasoned way that the sacred continues to have an important and legitimate role, and challenges assumptions, whether based on Weberian or Durkheimian understandings of religion in society, that faith no longer has a place. In doing this, he distinguishes among different aspects of the secularisation thesis. In this article I assert that there is a coherence to Taylor’s body of work, including A Secular Age, and I trace certain themes, such as a concern with notions of the self, that run through his work. I also identify in Taylor’s argument links to the thought of thinkers like Blondel, Gilson, Maritain and Marcel, and to the notion of an apologetics of hope.     

HOW MUCH CAN A PHILOSOPHER DO?

Some philosophers (Stephen Mulhall, Peter Winch, and D.Z. Phillips) complained that in Sources of the Self Charles Taylor allowed his Christian allegiance to “peep through”, whereas, as a philosopher, he should have done justice to other views than his own, without taking sides. They would no doubt have protested even more about A Secular Age. Reading these two books in the context of his previous work it becomes hard to accuse Taylor of failing to expound fairly views he opposes, especially regarding British empiricism. Moreover, how disinterested can critical genealogy of religion in the West ever be?     

A Secular Age: Reflections on Charles Taylor′s Recent Book

Charles Taylor in A Secular Age describes the modern secular age as one in which ‘the eclipse of all goals beyond human flourishing … falls within the range of an imaginable life for masses of people’. This article reflects on his historico-analytic investigation of the emergence of modern secularity and his account of how it shapes the current conditions of belief. Taylor challenges the widespread presumption against belief mainly on ethical considerations, especially what counts as human fulfilment. The article argues that he fails to deal adequately with epistemic considerations bearing on belief and unbelief. Furthermore, his argument is weakened by a surprising absence of attention to the primary account of human fulfilment in Greek philosophy as a central element in the Christian tradition.     

NATURALIZING CHRISTIAN ETHICS: A Critique of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age

This essay critically engages the concept of transcendence in Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. I explore his definition of transcendence, its role in holding a modernity‐inspired nihilism at bay, and how it is crucial to the Christian antihumanist argument that he makes. In the process, I show how the critical power of this analysis depends heavily and paradoxically on the Nietzschean antihumanism that he otherwise rejects. Through an account of what I describe as naturalistic Christianity, I argue that transcendence need not be construed as supernatural, that all of the resources necessary for a meaningful life are immanent in the natural process, which includes the semiotic capacities of Homo sapiens. Finally, I triangulate Taylor's supernatural account of transcendence, naturalistic Christianity, and Dreyfus and Kelly's physis‐based account of “going beyond” our normal normality in All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics for Meaning in a Secular Age.     

“LONG LIVE THE WEEDS AND THE WILDERNESS YET”: REFLECTIONS ON A SECULAR AGE

While we are deeply appreciative of Taylor's A Secular Age, we nonetheless worry that his use of the immanent/transcendent duality may introduce a certain kind of Christian Constantinianism that he wants to disavow. In particular, we worry that the immanent/transcendent duality is far too formal in its character. In order to develop this concern, we draw on Talal Asad's account of the secular to suggest how liturgy may provide an alternative way of understanding as well as challenging Taylor's worries about “the immanent frame.”     

How Separable Are Spirituality and Theology in Psychotherapy?

The authors respond to D. A. Helminiak's (2001) article “Treating Spiritual Issues in Secular Psychotherapy.” They focus particularly on Helminiak's argument for secular spirituality (whether spirituality can be independent of theology/religion) and his inherent biases in discussing the nature and existence of spirituality. The authors argue that all spiritual conceptions have theological implications—and thus a theology, broadly defined—and that theology, in this sense, pervades the theory and practice of all psychotherapists, whether or not they are religious.     

Recovering enchantment: addiction,spirituality, and Charles Taylor’s malaise of modernity

This article illuminates the nature of ‘spirituality’ as it relates to addiction in modernity. It does so by using philosopher Charles Taylor’s conception of the malaise of modernity and the meta-narrative he presents in A Secular Age as theoretical starting points. It then draws from qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews and ongoing ethnographic fieldwork conducted with Canadian millennials who self-identify as ‘spiritual but not religious’. The young people’s experiences of addiction provide insight into the trappings of free-market capitalist modernity and its inability to provide an overarching source of meaning to their lives. Addiction becomes the means by which these individuals experience the malaise of modernity, which in turn leads them to seek an alternative understanding of the good life—a process they equate with ‘spirituality’. Therefore, an interest in ‘spirituality’ ought to be understood as a personalized attempt to re-enchant what is experienced as a disenchanted world.     

RELIGION AND FRANCIS BACON'S SCIENTIFIC UTOPIANISM

Francis Bacon often is depicted as a patriarch of modernity who promotes human rational action over faith in divine Providence and as a secular humanitarian who realized that improvement of the human condition depended on human action and not on God's saving acts in history. Bacon's New Atlantis is usually described as a “scientific utopia” because its ideal order, harmony, and prosperity are the result of the investigations of nature conducted by the members of Solomon's House. I challenge these characterizations by showing that Bacon's so‐called scientific utopianism is grounded in his religious convictions that his age was one of Providential intervention and that he was God's agent for an apocalyptic transformation of the human condition. I examine the centrality of these religious themes in two of his philosophical works, The Advancement of Learning and The Great Instauration, which are well known for setting out Bacon's critique of the state of learning and for presenting the principles of his epistemology. Analysis of The Advancement of Learning demonstrates Bacon's conviction that his reform of natural philosophy was part of a Providentially guided, twofold restoration of the knowledge of nature and the knowledge of God. Examination of The Great Instauration reveals that Bacon sees his age as one of apocalyptic transformation of the human condition that restores humanity to a prelapsarian state. Analysis of the New Atlantis shows that utopian perfection can be achieved only through a combination of right religion and the proper study of nature. Moreover, when the “scientific” work of Solomon's House is recontextualized within the religious themes of salvation and deliverance that permeate the New Atlantis, the full scope of Bacon's “scientific utopianism” can be seen, and this project is not the one usually portrayed in scholarly treatments. Bacon's program for rehabilitating humanity and its relation to nature is not a secular, scientific advance through which humanity gains dominion over nature and mastery of its own destiny but rather one guided by divine Providence and achieved through pious human effort.     

SPECTERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: Charles Taylor and the Problem of Historicism

This paper identifies and analyzes the problem of historicism in Charles Taylor's work overall, but with particular emphasis on his most recent publication, A Secular Age. I circumscribe the problem of historicism through reference to the nineteenth‐century German philosophical tradition in which it developed, in particular in the thought of Wilhelm Dilthey. I then trace the structural similarities between the notions of history to be found in the thought of Taylor and Dilthey and how these structural similarities raise worries associated with the problem of historicism. I argue that the structural aporia of historicism evident in Taylor's work brings to light a live philosophical problem that is basic to theoretical debates in the study religion.     

The Wretchedness of Belief

In Culture and Value Wittgenstein remarks that the truly “religious man” thinks himself to be, not merely “imperfect” or “ill,” but wholly “wretched.” While such sentiments are of obvious biographical interest, in this paper I show why they are also worthy of serious philosophical attention. Although the influence of Wittgenstein's thinking on the philosophy of religion is often judged negatively (as, for example, leading to quietist and/or fideist‐relativist conclusions) I argue that the distinctly ethical conception of religion (specifically Christianity) that Wittgenstein presents should lead us to a quite different assessment. In particular, his preoccupation with the categorical nature of religion suggests a conception of “genuine” religious belief which disrupts both the economics of eschatological‐salvationist hope, and the traditional ethical precept that “ought implies can.” In short, what Wittgenstein presents is a sketch of a religion without recompense.     

Habermas,Religion, and Public Life

Abstract

Although many scholars view Jürgen Habermas as the most important philosopher and social theorist since Weber, his account of religion has been relatively neglected. This may be a reflection of the fact that he appears to offer quite distinct views of religion, but it may also reflect the strong secularist assumptions of his early work. In this paper, Habermas’s early and later views of religion are outlined and the change in his understanding of religion is mapped—from being one of the sources of modernity’s inner problems to being a principal source of the passions and motivations underpinning cultural life today. I argue that the relative neglect of Habermas’s work on religion is unfortunate, as it offers a creative and important attempt to move beyond the secular assumptions that have characterised much modern study of religion, providing it with a central role in the mediation of the costs and benefits of modernity.     

RELIGION,SCIENCE, AND DISENCHANTMENT IN LATE MODERNITY

Late modernity has witnessed a growing semantic shift from “religion” to “spirituality.” In this article, I argue what underlies this shift is a cultural structure I call the religion of the heart. I begin with an explication of what I mean by the “religion of the heart,” and draw on the work of Ernst Troeltsch and Colin Campbell to identify what I take to be its historical antecedents. Second, I analyze the ambiguous relationships fostered between the religion of the heart and the discourses of science and religion, respectively, in late modernity. I illuminate how the social conditions of late modernity undermine or challenge what we conventionally think of as scientific and religious authorities, while at the same time creating existential needs that the religion of the heart is well adapted to meet. I conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of this process, especially as it relates to the sustainability of science and religion, as independent enterprises, in the twenty‐first century.     

ATHENS,JERUSALEM, AND THE ARRIVAL OF TECHNO‐SECULARISM

Abstract. Western civilization historically has tried to balance secular knowledge with revealed religion. Science is the modern world's version of secular knowledge and resists the kind of integration achieved by Augustine and Aquinas. Managing the conflict between religion and evolution by containing them in separate “frames,” as Stephen J. Gould suggested, does not resolve the issue. Science may have displaced religion from the public square, but the traditional science‐religion conflict has become threadbare in intellectual terms. Scientific theories have become increasingly abstract, and science has been attacked from the left as a source of objective knowledge. However, technology, not science, has displaced religious belief, a phenomenon I call techno‐secularism. Robert Coles's suggestion that secularism is a form of doubt inevitably attached to religious belief, and William James's reduction of religious experiences to psychological states, evaluating them according to their “cash value,” are unhelpful. Technology enables us to remake our environment according to our wishes and has become a kind of magic that replaces not just revealed religion but also theoretical science. Techno‐secularism has an ethical vision that focuses on healthful living, self‐fulfillment, and avoiding the struggles of human life and the inevitability of death.     

A DEFENSE OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION: REFLECTIONS ON PETER HARRISON'S “AFTER SCIENCE AND RELIGION” PROJECT

Recent scholars have called into question the categories “science” and “religion” because they bring metaphysical and theological assumptions that theologians should find problematic. The critique of the categories “science” and “religion” has above all been associated with Peter Harrison and his influential argument in The Territories of Science and Religion (2015). This article evaluates the philosophical conclusions that Harrison draws from his antiessentialist philosophy in the two volumes associated with his “After Science and Religion Project.” I argue that Harrison's project is too skeptical toward the categories “science” and “religion” and places too much emphasis on naturalism being incompatible with Christian theology. One can accept the lessons of antiessentialism—above all, how meanings of terms shift over time—and still use the terms “science” and “religion” in responsible ways. This article defends the basic impulse of most scholars in science and religion who promote dialogue and argues for a more moderate reading of the lesson of Territories.     

SCIENCE AS SALVATION: GEORGE LAKOFF AND STEVEN PINKER AS SECULAR POLITICAL THEOLOGIANS

This article critically analyzes two leading cognitive scientists, George Lakoff and Steven Pinker, as competing secular political “theologians”. The idea of Science as savior is at the heart of the set of stories modernity tells about itself. The modern world, it is assumed, has left the age of religion and reached the age of Science. Lakoff and Pinker, who advocate opposing moral and political worldviews, make their claims on the basis of their scientific work, but it is implicit narratives and ontologies that give force to their broader views about morality and politics.     

Is analytical psychology a religion? Rationalist and romantic approaches to religion and modernity

The relationship between analytical psychology and religion is part of the larger issue of the relationship between modernity and religion. There are three main views on the issue. The fundamentalist position sets religion against modernity and opts for religion over modernity. What I call the 'rationalist' position likewise sets religion against modernity but opts for modernity over religion. By contrast to both views, what I call the 'romantic' position reconciles religion with modernity. Rationalists maintain that religion can exist only in so far as it serves as an explanation of the physical world, which the rise of science now precludes. Romantics maintain that religion, while serving as an explanation of the physical world till dislodge by science, is at heart anything but an explanation. The toppling of the religions explanation by the scientific one, far from dooming religion, prods religion into making explicit what it has in fact been all along. By this categorization, Jung is overwhelmingly a romantic. For him, the function of religion has always been more psychological than explanatory, and the rise of science does not preclude the continuing existence of religious myths as a psychological rather than an explanatory phenomenon. For those for whom science does spell the demise of religion, secular myths can replace religious ones, and those secular myths are more secular versions of religions myths than secular alternatives to religions myths. Yet even if for Jung religion can still exist today because religion is in fact psychology, it does not follow that psychology is therefore a religion.