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Xan Shadowflutter wrote: "Thanks, Ali."My pleasure, really.
How's the reading coming along?
Think anybody's going to join?
I may join in if I get the book but it seems unlikely at this time. I would at least read the comments.
Jimmy wrote: "I may join in if I get the book but it seems unlikely at this time. I would at least read the comments."I have an electronic copy, Jimmy. Happy to share that with you if you'd like.
Using 40 pages as a guide, here are the first few weeks to look at and try out. We can always change.Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Chapter 1 -- The Bulwarks of Belief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Chapter 2 -- The Rise of the Disciplinary Society . . .90
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April 6: Introduction -- Chapter 1, Section 3 (41 pages)
April 13: Chapter 1, Section 4 -- Chapter 1, Section 7 (44 pages)
April 20: Chapter 1, Section 8 -- Chapter 2, Section 3 (45 Pages)
April 21: Chapter 2, Section 4 -- Chapter 3, Section 2 (41 Pages)
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Ali wrote: "Jimmy wrote: "I may join in if I get the book but it seems unlikely at this time. I would at least read the comments."I have an electronic copy, Jimmy. Happy to share that with you if you'd like."
Yeah, that sounds good. I will give it a try. Thanks.
Hi everyone,Great idea to read this book. I'll be joining in next Friday and hopefully those Fridays after.
To give all of you a bit of background about myself : I'm currently studying Public Administration in The Netherlands, I am specifically interested in the relationship between philosophy and public administration/government and topics that touch both studies (like secularism).
I'm looking forward to discuss the first chapter next Friday!
Glad to have you all. Looking for ward to it.
Jimmy wrote: "Ali wrote: "Jimmy wrote: "I may join in if I get the book but it seems unlikely at this time. I would at least read the comments."https://mega.nz/#F!sFY0mAYB!tLzjGlSxb...
I've posted my copy in this storage space, Jimmy. You and anyone else who wants to access it are welcome to do so.
Xan Shadowflutter wrote: "Using 40 pages as a guide, here are the first few weeks to look at and try out. We can always change.Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Chapter 1 --..."
April the 6th will be Monday, Xan.
Would you like to move our discussions to Mondays?
I'm okay with that
Ali wrote: "Jimmy wrote: "Ali wrote: "Jimmy wrote: "I may join in if I get the book but it seems unlikely at this time. I would at least read the comments."https://mega.nz/#F!sFY0mAYB!tLzjGlSxb... ..."
Thank you, Ali.
I'll start A Secular Age thread tomorrow. The first post will contain the schedule. I hope everyone knows we are discussing the intro thru Chapter 1, Section 3 the week of April 6.
Here is the latest ToC and Reading Schedule. I made some changes to end on chapters. It's a monster. Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Part 1 The Work of Reform
Chapter 1 -- The Bulwarks of Belief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Chapter 2 -- The Rise of the Disciplinary Society . . . 90
Chapter 3 -- The Great Disembedding . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Chapter 4 -- Modern Social Imaginaries . . . . . . . . . . 159
Chapter 5 -- The Spectre of Idealism . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Part 2 The Turning Point
Chapter 6 -- Providential Deism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Chapter 7 The Impersonal Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Part 3 The Nova Effect
Chapter 8 The Malaises of Modernity . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Chapter 9 The Dark Abyss of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
Chapter 10 The Expanding Universe of Unbelief . . 352
Chapter 11 Nineteenth-Century Trajectories . . . . . 377
Part 4 Narratives of Secularization
Chapter 12 The Age of MMobilization . . . . . . . . . . 423
Chapter 13 The Age of Authenticity . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
Chapter 14 Religion Today . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . 505
Part 5 Conditions of Belief
Chapter 15 The Immanent Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
Chapter 16 Cross Pressures . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . 594
Chapter 17 Dilemmas 1 . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . 618
Chapter 18 Dilemmas 2 . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . 676
Chapter 19 Unquiet Frontiers of Modernity . . . . . . 711
Chapter 20 Conversions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 728
Epilogue: The Many Stories . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . 773
Reading Schedule
April 6: Introduction -- Chapter 1, Section 3 (41 pages)
April 13: Chapter 1, Section 4 -- Chapter 1, Section 9 (48 pages)
April 20: Chapter 2, (56 Pages)
April 27: Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4, Section 3 (39 Pages)
May 4: Chapter 4, Section 4 -- Chapter 5 (33 pages)
END PART 1
May 11: Chapter 6 (49 pages)
May 18: Chapter 7 (26 Pages)
END PART 2
May 25: Chapter 8, 9 (53 Pages)
June 1: Chapter 10, 11 (67 Pages)
END PART 3
June 8: Chapter 12 (50 Pages)
June 15: Chapter 13, 14 (62 Pages)
END PART 4
June 22: Chapter 15 (55 Pages)
June 29: Chapter 16 (24 Pages)
July 6: Chapter 17 (58 Pages)
July 13: Chapter 18, 19 (52 Pages)
July 20: Chapter 20, Epilogue (51 Pages)
THE END
Xan Shadowflutter wrote: "Here is the latest ToC and Reading Schedule. I made some changes to end on chapters. It's a monster. Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..."
This is brilliant, Xan!
Thanks a heap
It really helps to visualize our reading horizon from here on, and it's encouraging to see a telos/end-point/land up ahead if we stay on course and don't get sacked by pirates on the way.
I hope we continue to sail, even if it ain't entirely smooth.
So April and May are Mondays. June and July are Tuesdays. Correct? Just making sure there was no typo.
Jimmy wrote: "So April and May are Mondays. June and July are Tuesdays. Correct? Just making sure there was no typo."
No, the problem is I can't count. Each new week starts on a Monday. I've edited the schedule. Thank you, Jimmy, for pointing that out.
Also, on the 6th I'll open a new thread to start the discussion. The first post will be the schedule. I'll copy it over.
It might be better to hang onto this thread, Xan, since we've generated some traction here. There's always the possibility of losing someone in the transfer.Unless you feel that it's really necessary
It's April 6, and Let us begin.Taylor identifies three types of Secularism:
1. Public spaces are ruled by reason, and not religion. Churches no longer control these spaces, but religion may flourish in private spaces.
2. People turning away from religion, no longer going to Church.
3. A society in which belief in God once went unchallenged transitioned into one in which belief in God is one of many options.
* Taylor will explore #3 in this book. He doesn't believe secularism arose by science crowding out religion alone. There are other important factors involved, and he intends to identify them.
* Paraphrasing: 'There is too much religious belief between fundamentalism and Atheism for the logic and lucidness of Darwin's Theory to be responsible for the depth and breadth of secularism alone. (I agree. The Enlightenment preceded Darwin. Isn't that proof?)
* Taylor suggests Humanism -- the apex of human flourishing -- is at the heart of modern secularism.
** My Comment: Okay, Let's see him justify this.
* A questions Taylor attempts to answer in book: Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in the year 1500, while in the year 2000 many of us find this easy and inescapable?
** My Comment: I think this is the set-up question for all that follows.
* Taylor talks about a transition from enchantment (supernatural) to rational thought, from a world filled with external agency (demons, spirits, etc having intentionality) to one of internal agency (only humans having intentionality.)
** My Comment: That's a profound change, don't you think? Looking forward to him walking us through that change.
**My Comment: I see a lot of Mircea Eliade (e.g. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion) and Keith Thomas (Religion and the Decline of Magic) in Taylor's thinking about our religious past.
Wonderful! I'm glad I'm reading Taylor in this company.In choosing the third type that you've mentioned, Taylor says that "the shift to secularity in this sense consists, among other things, of a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed unproblematic to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace" (3)
I found this to be a very telling and succinct paragraph, for herein we see that the anti of religion has become the predominant mode of being in the modern world, within which now religion operates. So, instead of addressing the totality of collective human experience like it once did, it has been allotted a room, as it were, within the hall of human existence.
Going further from there, now that we have seen the rise of the anti of religion, Taylor defines religion broadly as the pursuit of the transcendent. This definition allows him to show how believers and non-believers (his distinction) carry out that pursuit in their own ways.
For believers, fullness or power is extrinsically directed. The source of power, i.e. God, is outside of the human self. For non-believers, on the other hand, power comes from within.
So, we have:
extrinsically directed fullness Vs. Intrinsic power (like the self-sufficient power of reason and the dismissal of authority).
Now, this notion of self-sufficient reason that stands in place of the believer's call to the heavens for help is largely a product of the enlightenment. And it is attacked by three subsequent movements:
The Romantics
The Existentialists, and
The Postmodernists
I mention this because I personally find this fascinating, not because it has to bear heavily on our discussion.
Going back to our earlier thoughts: "We cannot help looking over our shoulder from time to time, looking sideways, living our faith also in a condition of doubt and uncertainty" (11).
I understand that this has become more common in our secular age, but this is not to say that believers in previous centuries, millennia even, were impervious to doubt and uncertainty. Even though they might not have been living in a disenchanted world. The spirits and the demons that inhabited that world so freely would have surely contributed to doubt and uneasiness. Just like there are many in this disenchanted world who, by virtue of knowing that there are so many people who have abandoned faith, would hanker down and double their conviction. The secular world "out there" would then provide a strong antagonistic force against which the faith of many would become stronger. Even to the point of being insular, I'm afraid.
So this is one aspect where I have some disagreement thus far. Perhaps Taylor will address this dichotomy in full later.
I don't really feel like I live in a secular world. I have a sense of supernatural beliefs everywhere. So many people I know will say things like, "I'm not religious" but then they talk about a "higher power" or "there has to be something more" as if the universe owed us something. When I refer to myself as an atheist, I find that it disturbs many of the people I know. So I had trouble agreeing with Taylor as I read.
Jimmy wrote: "I don't really feel like I live in a secular world. I have a sense of supernatural beliefs everywhere. So many people I know will say things like, "I'm not religious" but then they talk about a "hi..."I think Taylor is saying two things: (1) Belief in spirits, demons, and charms that once dominated people's way of thinking 500 years ago has been eliminated from public (and private?) discourse in Western society, replaced by rational thought. (2) Belief in God remains one of many belief options, but no longer controls thinking and reasoning in public space.
Those two statements are in conflict with one another, I think. How has Western society -- sorry, not familiar enough with Eastern societies to comment -- eliminated external beings from its belief system in favor of rational thought, yet retained the most powerful and important external being as an option? How does that work?
Just trying to get this right in my mind.Taylor is saying belief in God (and evil) still exists as one of several belief systems, but it no longer dominates or controls the discussion in public space like it did 500 years ago. God can still be discussed in public space, though, and even dominate and control certain private spaces, like Church. Therefore, hearing people discuss God or committing to God in public space wouldn't violate Taylor's definition of "secular."
That's fine, Xan. I was probably bringing in too much personal baggage. Virtually everything has changed since the times he refers to. He also seems to be singling out "Western" societies. I would say that there is a constant battle to maintain "secular" control. Right now I feel like we are beginning a swing in the other direction.
Yeah, Jimmy, he is talking West all the way, I think. There was a whole world out there that never experienced the middle ages. Of course we're early in a huge book. As to secular public space, I worry about how ideological and nasty it is getting.
I am looking forward to discussing Taylor's view on time next week.
I think it's worth noting that even the categories of 'religious' and 'non-religious' would have been unthinkable in the age against which Taylor is developing his reading of 'a secular age'.Questions like "are you religious?" would have made no sense in the 'enchanted world', even less so the question, "which idea of god do you prescribe to?"
Societies were so deeply immersed in religion (and he discusses this in the set of pages we're reading now and will be discussing on Monday) that they often, if at all did not have that level of detachment which would allow them to look at their worldview as being directed by religion, far from it being 'a religion' amongst many.
That's one of his distinctions between the three senses of secularity that he draws out, and from which he focuses on the third one mentioned by Xan above.
And I found your question very interesting, Xan, about how even though an investment in reason eliminated the presence of external beings like demons and spirits, the most important 'external' Being has survived. And I believe that's partly because that Being is no longer overtly 'external' in Western societies, although many Eastern societies could still be seen as inhabiting an enchanted world.
The pursuit of god became more of an internal and private activity [the film Silence by Martin Scorsese, which tells the story of Jesuit priests in 17th-Century Edo-era Japan, deals with this theme in some ways]. The separation of the church and state in the west is one proof of that. And of course, even though many in the modern west might take solace in the idea that their belief in the self-sufficient power of reason has expelled a plethora of demons and spirits from the public sphere, they have inhabited the human imagination for so long that they will not be so easily evicted. Countless works of literature and art deal with their presence, and are part of a mythology that the modern west has perhaps become more aware of through their study of the Classics and the great books.
And this is a fascinating subject because it has such profound ramifications for how one reads and interprets scriptures when they don't have the same reference points as believers in previous eras.
Ali,I think you are right that belief in God transitioned from public and external to a private and internal in the public space.
But I also think belief in God remains external in certain private spaces, like Houses of Worship, some centers of education — an interesting blend of the religious and the secular — and certain homes? (By external here I mean shared by those who inhabit the private space.)
If so, belief in God has the interesting quality of being both external and internal depending on the space it inhabits. That would not be tolerated in the Middle Ages because the private space was the public space.
So there must have been powerful forces pressuring society to change its use of public space, and I think Taylor explores those forces in next week’s (tomorrow really) readings.
One thing that struck me about public space: variety of thought preceded modernity (rational thought). Variety of thought implies conflicts and disagreements. As long as opposing ideas could be suppressed by silencing those who espoused them, no changes to the public space were needed, but as soon as neither side could silence the other, coexistence became necessary. Public space, where ideas can be discussed freely, satisfies that need. But to discuss those ideas between opponents without resorting to silencing, a certain distance —objectivity — was required.
That sounds about right, Xan. And there are certainly dynamics that I have not quite understood yet. Perhaps the text will clarify those in time.I can, however, see the shift from an ethnocentric worldview to a more relativist perspective. Even David Miller, author of the short introduction to political philosophy, alludes to the Reformation (which Taylor starts discussing in the pages we have read for this week) as having been the spark/start of that shift in Europe. And the variety of thought you are referring to gets its momentum from there, and then the shifts in power and privilege in society that economics brings add to that increasingly heterogenous society (but still predominantly white European).
We see how the Reformation, apart from taking issue with the sale of indulgences, contributes to the 'secularization/profanation' of the public space and the Church by directing the intentions and passions of Christians into a less 'pagan-like' orientation. Relics and saints become less important.
There's a very telling paragraph on page 77 that I would like to mention here:
"The Reformation as Reform is central to the story I want to tell - that of the abolition of the enchanted cosmos, and the eventual creation of a humanist alternative to faith. The first consequence seems evident enough; the Reformation is known as an engine of disenchantment...[Calvin] was an inspired religious visionary. Like many great reformers...his vision proposes a radical simplification, in which the essentials of the faith stand out from behind the clutter of secondary concerns"
I found this to be very helpful because I see similar movements/shifts happening in reform movements in other religions. Ironically, and I don't mean this slanderously in any way, white Christians and non-Christians who have inherited a disenchanted worldview often seem to be calling for other religions to reform and, effectively, accept a disenchanted cosmos. I wonder if they're aware of that. A cosmos that has been divorced from its link with sacred time, and one in which, at least according to Max Weber, the spirit of Capitalism abides.
Looking forward to see Charles Taylor discussing that.
Ali wrote: "Even David Miller, author of the short introduction to political philosophy, alludes to the Reformation (which Taylor starts discussing in the pages we have read for this week) as having been the spark/start of that shift in Europe."This is exactly what I think. It starts with the Reformation. Without the Reformation (or Reformation delayed), we have a different Western Europe. Keith Thomas, in his book Religion and the Decline of Magic, portrays the Reformation as an "engine of disenchantment," although he does not use that term.
Adding my own thoughts to yours and Taylor’s, the long arm of the Church, which could reach anywhere in Western Europe to silence "heretics," lost much of that reach when Protestants left the Church. This was too large a group to easily silence, and they lived in or escaped to lands friendly to their cause. Free from the Church’s reach, they developed their own religious doctrines and worshipped in churches built upon a very different model than the Catholic Church’s.
Secular leaders (princes, kings, etc) seizing the opportunity, strengthened their power and influence at the expense of the Church’s by supporting one side over the other. A long war fought to silence one another ended when both sides realized they could no longer silence the other.
Each side was forced to tolerate the other's ideas in the Public Space, and slowly the autocracy of ideas crumbles. Each argument has a counterargument. We are on our way to a marketplace of ideas.
The Reformation caused something else important to happen. When Protestants rejected the Priesthood and Church Hierarchy, they replaced them with assembly or congregation rule, a kind of people’s democracy in the midst of their private space. Democracy replaced autocracy, and when Puritans, Quakers, Presbyterians, Lutherans, etc. came to North America, they based their civil government on the same model. Tocquerville notes this and includes it in his explanation of the origins of American democracy. So Protestants were already susceptible to the concept of a Public Space that is a marketplace of ideas.
Taylor talks about secular (profane) time and sacred time. Secular time is linear. It's the time we all live in, the time science uses for all measurements. The smaller and smaller the unit of time, the exact we can be in what we measure and what we produce. At the same time and we can get more done in a day if we can measure the day in ever smaller units of time.We've gotten to the point where we have synchronized time to the pulsations of a single atom. It is our smallest unit of time. A second is an enormous amount of time compare to that pulse. Yet the pulse is sufficient only for the time being. In an ever technologically faster and faster world, there will come a time when we will have to search for an even shorter pulse. Time is never fast enough. It is our lot to always want to produce more widgets per unit of time, or the same number of widgets in smaller and smaller units of time. We are never satisfied.
Secular time is man made; sacred time is cosmos made.
Sacred time is not linear time. It defies descriptions of time. Taylor called it vertical, or he at least says it's vertical in relation to linear time. I don't know about that. I don't think sacred time can be measured or oriented. Sacred time is the time of mythology (and religion). We ca say the earth was created 4 1/2 billion years ago; it makes no sense to say Zeus or Isis were created 7,000 years ago. Sacred time is outside linear time.
I guess sacred time is always and everywhere at once. Taylor (and Eliade) make a good point when he says believers in God or gods want to be as close to the Creation as they can, because that brings them closest to their gods.
In another sense sacred time is circular. It keeps repeating itself. Thus as the seasons turn and return to the next new year, everything starts over again. Every new year is a rebirth, a great celebration because it means we can be reborn too, The new year is a year for improving your self over the self of the year before. In this way, every year is an opportunity to make yourself more perfect and bring yourself closer to God.
Lastly, there is Augustine's view of time, which is neither sacred or secular time, but no less fascinating. Time is teleological. Every past event, in total, determines the present, and every past event plus the present, in total, determines the future. Time is deterministic in that the future is determined by the past.
In some ways Augustinian time is like Secular time, it moves in one direction. But in other ways Augustinian time is one long unit of time that cannot be broken down into smaller units. No smaller unit of time exists independent of the whole. It only exists in the whole.
Just free thinking about what Taylor said about time in the hopes it will generate discussion.
I think what he means by sacred time being vertical is that that shows its quality of ascension towards eternity, and not horizontal and concerned with material reality. It seems to be a fascinating step in what we encounter in this week's reading, and what we begin to see in last week's.
If time is measured and commodified, then people can make the distinction between when they are performing a particular "religious" act - such as reading the scripture and/or meditating - and a more profane/secular act such as dealing with business affairs in the marketplace. By opening up time this way, we can see space for a newly developing form of piety, that of work. Which is why there is an increased suspicion and abhorrence of the poor post-Reformation, whereas before giving to the poor was tantamount to giving to Christ himself, who too was poor.
It's as if lifting the burden of eternity off the backs of humans, they feel a freedom and a new sense of possibility about how this "secular" space-time could be rationalised and re-ordered.
At first I took the impression that this was an act of something akin to vanity on the part of the newly developing class of elites amongst the laity. But one must be reminded of the incessantly brutal and bloody history of Europe from well before and leading up to the Reformation. You've got the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages, the Black Plague, changing climate leading to poor harvest and famine along with diseases, and other events like the Interregnum, in which for a period of several years two popes existed at the same time and challenged the authority of each other. This did a lot to damage the authority of the Catholic Church, and I get the feeling that many would have been disgruntled and wanted a way out of this. It is no wonder whatsoever that the author refers to this as an age of anxiety.
(A really fascinating discussion would be about how the figure of Satan becomes prominent as he takes on the diminishing powers of demons and becomes God's sole enemy, in turn heightening the anxiety of people)
That's perhaps at least partly why we see this drive towards 'civility' and punishment of the lax individuals who avoided work. And this process of civilizing continues for several centuries: "Something like this process continues over four centuries, until by 1800, a normal 'civilized' country is one which can ensure continuing domestic peace, and in which commerce has largely replaced war as the paramount activity with which political society concerns itself" (101). In effect, the market becomes the locus of human activity and the site of competition and judgment rather than the Church. It's interesting that while domestic peace is ensured, the violence is exported to the colonies where Europeans continue their mission to "civilize" the barbaric races and bring them out of enchantment/confusion into an ordered, timed, and measured universe.
At the beginning of Chapter 2, there is an interesting discussion about the ordered cosmos that I would like to understand better. Might return to that another time. If you were able to take something from it, would be great to get an insight into that.
Interestingly enough, like the figure of Satan, the figure of Christ becomes more potent and visible too. Speaking about how there was an increased attention given to democratizing the figure of Christ and making him accessible to the lay population, who had earlier been kept out of that access, CT says: "Though it couldn't be clear at the time, we with hindsight can recognize this as a major turning point in the history of Western civilization, an important step towards that primacy of the individual which defines our culture...It was primarily a revolution in devotion, in the focus of prayer and love: the paradigm human individual, the God-Man, in relation to whom alone the humanity of all others can be truly shown, begins to emerge more into the light" (94).
There is so much happening in these pages, but I must stop here for now and would like to pick up what I've missed via discussion.
On a personal note: thank you for continuing to read and discuss this. It is a privilege for me to be able to do so. And while I might be getting ahead of myself, especially given the fact that there's a lot of the book left, but I'm thinking of reading The Sources of the Self after this, if you're up for it. Just a thought at this point.
Chapter 2I don't have a lot to say about chapter 2. What was interesting to me was how the push for Church reform (religious) along with the push for social reform/civility (secular) served as positive feedback loops for one another. It's as if lower-level forces, which are neither religious nor secular, aligned in such a way as to force higher-level changes to both. Are the secular and religious two sides of the same coin?
I agree sacred time is not horizontal, but it can be vertical or circular. The vertical reaches to the heavens and therefore brings us closer to God, while the circular brings us back to creation and closer to perfection with each rebirth.
I particularly like this about one's personal journey towards civility: It takes form in programs and methods of "self-fashioning . . ." We treat your own baser nature as raw matter to be controlled, reshaped, and in certain cases eliminated, in order to impose a higher form on our lives."This is the same process that can occur in one's spiritual life, and I'm thinking Taylor worded it in this particular way to emphasize that. Word for word this can be used to describe one's spiritual maturation. This shows why each serves as a positive feedback loop to the other.
I’ve bought the book - will try and catch up as soon as I can - am I right in thinking this is a chapter a week and we are up to chapter 2?
Yes, Jack, chapter 2. The schedule is in message 18 (TOC followed by schedule). Glad to see you joining the discussion.
Great - thanks I will chip in once I am up to speed!
Xan Shadowflutter wrote: "I particularly like this about one's personal journey towards civility: It takes form in programs and methods of "self-fashioning . . ." We treat your own baser nature as raw matter to be controlle..."Interesting indeed. I also think that if I've got this right, CT is showing the formation of the disenchanted world through this rise of the disciplinary society. So, your "baser nature" would have to be remoulded to fit the new standard of civility. Your passions would have to be controlled, as we are reading this week, through an enlargement of reason.
More on this on Monday, I hope.
Even though it's proving to be somewhat gnarly and challenging.
Jack wrote: "Great - thanks I will chip in once I am up to speed!"Welcome, Jack!
Feel free to chip in even as you're reading; you needn't wait until you're caught up, as they say. I'm sure we can challenge the mythology of progress this way, which, you'll see in your reading, is one of the products and perpetuators of the disenchanted world, the secular age we inhabit today.
And we're reading about 40 pages a week, as Xan has noted earlier, and you have the schedule to refer to.
So, do share thoughts on your reading as you're going through.
I've always felt a close link between history and philosophy. This book is that, except the history is, I think, teleological. CT is interpreting history with a particular outcome in mind, and that outcome supports his philosophical ideas about how the West transitioned from an enchanted to a disenchanted civilization. I haven't noticed CT discuss or explain the East.I should add that I believe teleological explanations of history are a big No-No with historians, but CT isn't a historian; he's a philosopher.
Xan Shadowflutter wrote: "I've always felt a close link between history and philosophy. This book is that, except the history is, I think, teleological. CT is interpreting history with a particular outcome in mind, and that..."Point!
Okay, so, Chapter 3 is probably my favourite thus far. Partly because it's short and much more sweet than sour. I've also put in more time in it, so that also might be why.Before I get into that, I'm just going to point out a few things from the latter portion of Chapter 2, The Rise of the Disciplinary Society, wherein CT points to a burgeoning elite that is developing its ethics of civility (not defecating in public spaces and not using the table-cloth to blow your nose) and exporting them in masse to society at large, which accepts these ideas by the 16th Century.
And unlike before in the mediaeval world, where we had "different speeds" in Christianity, within which believers live out their commitments to the divine in different degrees according to their status/position, the hierarchies become significantly flattened. "Since the High Middle Ages, there have been repeated attempts in Western Christendom to integrate faith more fully in ordinary life" (144). This is what CT refers to as the affirmation of ordinary life. This is built up on the notion of a private faith (a concept which he enlarges in the following chapter) and which further perpetuates exclusive humanism.
In Chapter 3, The Great Disembedding, CT starts off by pointing to how all aspects of life had been made into a coherent and uniform whole which wouldn't allow for ruptures like in the past, with festivals like Carnival. Think of the idea of a theory of everything, which is predicated on the desire to have everything under control. "Disenchantment, Reform, and personal religion went together".
From hereon in he talks of the increasing primacy of the individual, which has come to be accepted as natural for us, out of the locus of society. A "disembedding", because in earlier societies and pre-Axial ("Pagan") religions, we have the human agent embedded into the social life. In early religions, we see rituals that are performed collectively; people have turned as a society to relate to the divine.
"The point I am trying to make here is that in earlier societies," writes CT on page 149, "this inability to imagine the self outside of a particular context extended to membership of our society in its essential order. This is no longer so with us, that many of these 'what would it be like if I were..?' questions are not only conceivable but arise as burning practical issues (should I emigrate? should I convert to another religion/no religion?) is the measure of our disembedding"
The fact that we can change societies, our religious affiliations, and our ideals in general points to that disembedding which was a process for Europe at a certain point in their history. And it is worth noting that there are many societies today which are experiencing this process, particularly in the post-colonial context.
There are other striking differences/ruptures brought about by the Axial religions (Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, ...) such as the placing of the Divine outside of the relam of humans, in the seat of the Creator/Designer. Whereas before, God was existing within the human realm/cosmos and was not necessarily beneficent towards human flourishing.
I found this to be particularly fascinating, this idea that God was placed outside, as it were, and was then understood as Good. Earlier, God would have employed trickster figures because he had certain human-like tendencies such as jealousy and hatred. But the later God becomes transcendent, devoid of these corruptions, which are then tagged onto the figure of the Devil who begins to feature more prominently as a nemesis of sorts.
So, unlike before where evil was just a given part of the order of things, it later becomes a corruption, a defilement of the all-good God, and this evil has to be battled.
I'll conclude by quoting this telling paragraph on page 157: "On the contrary, we propose here is the idea that our first self-understanding was deeply embedded in society. Our essential identity was as father, son, etc.,... and member of this tribe. Only later did we come to conceive ourselves as free individuals first. This was not just a revolution in our neutral view of ourselves, but involved a profound change in our moral world, as is always the case with identity shifts." CT will be drawing out the implications of that in the following chapter, which I look forward to.
This is the first I have seen of the Philosophy page or of the project to read Taylor's "A Secular Age". It is a wonderful book which I read when it came out. My review is posted here on Goodreads someplace. I wish I could join in the reading. Hope it goes well. I will try to get involved in a later project.
Thank you for looking this up and posting it here. And thank you for the friend invitation. I was interested to learn that you live in New Hampshire and are a poet. I have read some books by Hobblebush Press of New Hampshire poets published in their Granite State Poetry series. I think it is an excellent idea. Regards.
In Chapter 4, Modern Social Imaginaries, Charles Taylor, as always, is attempting a multitude of things. He defines 'social imaginary' as being distinct from 'social theory' in that it speaks more commonly to and of the experiences of the people, while theory is often limited to a select few and thus not as widely accessible. 'Imaginary' then deals with how people understand their social surroundings and interact with it. It's the background assumptions of a society.Now these background and commonplace assumptions go through a massive perspectival shift. From an apriori (I'm using this word, not CT) belief in the merit of hierarchy to a contingent social order that is justified instrumentally -- according to the purpose it is supposed to serve. Its justification will come via reason, not some pre-given system. And this reason will serve the new understanding that humans exist in society to mutually benefit each other. Previously, from what I have understood, the belief was that each sector of society (worshippers, warriors, and labourers) endeavoured to serve the ideal Platonic form of a just society. They were serving an idea that was distant from them. But that gets reworked into a society of beneficial mutual exchange, i.e., the rich and the poor serve each other while remaining in their respective positions. And the two main ends of an organized society are security and prosperity.
We've seen in earlier chapters how a levelling tendency was one of the propellers in this march towards individualism and secularity. This tendency did away with the multiple speeds of Christian/believing life where different divisions/branches of society committed themselves in varying degrees to a life of faith - laity, clergy (with internal divisions and ranks), monks, political authority. The Reformed society/church is much more homogenous. And we have a subsequent sanctification of ordinary life where it is promoted as more hallowed. The meek (and the miserable, perhaps) shall finally inherit the earth. It is finally virtuous and sanctified to be involved in the operations of industry and economy (Weber's link between the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism). Furthermore, what I found fascinating is that this logic of the valorization of the ordinary finds its manifestation also in our modern-day investment in relationships and family. It is as if to participate in these 'norms' of society is to be noble and virtuous. Brilliant! Bring on the romantic-comedies, people.
There is of course a lot more going on, like his discussion of the sovereign people who, reportedly, gain immediate and direct access to the state while previously their identity was bound up within local bodies - parishes, guilds - through which they would plead for justice. But I'll stop here and see about what comes after this. If anyone's reading this, and I don't know why you would, I might or might not be able to respond to any question you may have.
Philosophy
Books mentioned in this topic
The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (other topics)Religion and the Decline of Magic (other topics)
The plan is to go over 40 pages each week - it's not an easy read and we want to take our time, even, dare I say it, enjoy it - and discuss that on Fridays.
We're starting from now onwards. So, our first meeting will be on the 3rd of April, right here in this lovely box. And we'll be sharing thoughts on the first 40 pages of Chapter 1, The Bulwarks of Belief.
We've read the introduction and I encourage you to do the same, as any reader should/would I imagine.
If by Friday you've read only a part of the first 40 pages of chapter 1, you are of course still welcome to discuss what you have read.
Please feel free to drop in, say 'hello', and tell us a wee bit about yourself.