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THE DEEP CONDITIONS OF SECULARITY
Author(s) -
De VRIES HENT
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
modern theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.144
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1468-0025
pISSN - 0266-7177
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0025.2010.01614.x
Subject(s) - secularity , immediacy , modernity , religious belief , epistemology , philosophy , sociology , secularism , aesthetics , religious studies , islam , theology
In modern societies and cultures today, religion is widely perceived as basically even if not merely trivially “optional.” This is a contention strongly advocated by Charles Taylor, most notably in his monumental A Secular Age . Throughout his career, Taylor has made the question of religion in modernity the core of his interests. In his most recent work, A Secular Age , Taylor addresses challenging issues of what he calls the “contemporary spiritual experience” and speaks to “the spiritual hungers and tensions of secular modernity.” I critically consider three aspects of this immensely suggestive if not uncontroversial work: (1) I examine whether there is in fact a possible reversibility or revisability to the so‐called ‘optional’ nature of belief that Taylor thinks is characteristic of the secular age; (2) I scrutinize Taylor's notion of “immediacy” of belief in the same milieu; (3) I interrogate his use of the term “fullness” in delineating the temper of the secular age.