Saturday, 09 April 2011 18:58

A SECULAR AGE by CHARLES TAYLOR

 A recommendation from Fr John Rate MSC

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In this long book Charles Taylor, emeritus professor at McGill University, Canada, tries to trace a fundamental change in Western society, ‘from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others’ (p.3).

He is a cultural historian, interested in the ‘history of mentalities’ (as the French call it). His main interest is how we situate ourselves in the world and how we interpret our purpose in life. His detailed analysis, therefore, covers not just the growth and impact of scientific rationalism and Enlightenment ideals, nor the extraordinary changes in social and public life since the Middle Ages where individualism and urban life have replaced the simpler community of our forebears. He spends more time narrating the story of our changing sense of self and the unspoken assumptions which frame our life, right up until we reach the ‘disembodied’ self in this ‘age of authenticity’ in which we live.

I love the book because it tackles the rise of unbelief from the inside, and in the process we learn how deficient the modern self really is. As well as offering the most thorough story of what really shapes our picture of the truly human life in each epoch, it gives us an incisive critique of the limitations of modernity and our ‘post-modern’ age.

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CHARLES TAYLOR :  A SECULAR AGE (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007)