How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor

by James K.A. Smith

So again, the question is how we inhabit the immanent frame. And here Taylor works with another important distinction: we can either inhabit the immanent frame as a “Jamesian open space”3 where we recognize the contestability of our take on things, and even feel the pull and tug and cross-pressure of the alternative; or we’ll fail to recognize that ours is a “take” and instead settle for “spin” — an overconfident “picture” within which we can’t imagine it being otherwise, and thus smugly dismiss those who disagree. If we settle for “spin,” we’ll think it’s just “obvious” that the frame is open or closed. Thus “what I am calling ‘spin,’ ” Taylor summarizes, “is a way of avoiding entering this [Jamesian] space, a way of convincing oneself that one’s reading is obvious, compelling, allowing of no cavil or demurral” (p. 551).4