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Editorial Review:
What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age? Almost everyone would agree that we--in the West, at least--largely do. And clearly the place of religion in our societies has changed profoundly in the last few centuries. In what will be a defining book for our time, Charles Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean--of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is only one human possibility among others.
Taylor, long one of our most insightful thinkers on such questions, offers a historical perspective. He examines the development in "Western Christendom" of those aspects of modernity which we call secular. What he describes is in fact not a single, continuous transformation, but a series of new departures, in which earlier forms of religious life have been dissolved or destabilized and new ones have been created. As we see here, today's secular world is characterized not by an absence of religion--although in some societies religious belief and practice have markedly declined--but rather by the continuing multiplication of new options, religious, spiritual, and anti-religious, which individuals and groups seize on in order to make sense of their lives and give shape to their spiritual aspirations.
What this means for the world--including the new forms of collective religious life it encourages, with their tendency to a mass mobilization that breeds violence--is what Charles Taylor grapples with, in a book as timely as it is timeless.
(20070909)
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
A Tribute to Redundancy and Arcane Exposition:
I found this book one of the most convuluted ill written works I have ever read. The basic premise of the author could have been stated in 30 pages, but for reasons unknown the author leads the reader on another 600 pages of pedagogic rambling that reiterates his initial premises over and over to the point of exhaustion. I think William James did a much better job of articulating the nature of spiritual experience in contemporary society, and made it an enjoyable and enlightening process. Taylor's... more info
A Secular Quagmire:
I am struggling with how best to articulate my complete disappointment and utter frustration with this text. It is quite obvious that there are some readers who are very much in favor of this text's assertions, presuppositions, and somewhat bizarre method of rationale. Clearly, I am not one of them.more info Landmark portrait of modernity:
An exhaustive, very learned string of reviews on Taylor's study can be found at "The Immanent Frame" ([...]), a blog maintained by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC).more info For more...:
If you'd like to see more of where Taylor is coming from in this book, check out his interview over at The Other Journal. It's a great read and is specifically relating to this book. Similar Products:
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