After nearly five hundred pages, A Secular Age readers are presented with the ethical dilemma of the modern social imaginary and, surprise, the dilemma of modernity is sexual. The reader...
A Catholic Modernity?
by Hans JoasSince the publication of his magisterial book Sources of the Self in 1989 at the latest, Charles Taylor’s work has become well known and highly respected in philosophy and the...
The other shore
by Elizabeth Shakman HurdDeveloped and elaborated by Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and others, the Great Separation dictated that for the purposes of political philosophy and political argument all appeals to higher revelation would be...
Varieties of Religion Today
by Hans JoasIn my first post, I discussed Charles Taylor’s book, A Catholic Modernity. I would now like to discuss a second book, which consists of lectures Taylor gave at the Vienna...
The Godless Delusion
by Jonathan VanAntwerpen“For Taylor,” writes John Patrick Diggins in The New York Times Book Review, “belief is not what science finds but what religion hopes for. Yet, in the larger perspective of...
Sex & aggression
by Jimmy Casas KlausenAlongside Taylor’s exploration of the conditions secularism—and therefore also of belief—in Euroatlantic late modernity, there is a surprisingly unreconstructed Christian faith that comes out when he attempts to deal intellectually...
Is a global civil religion possible?
by Robert N. BellahIn my essay “Civil Religion in America,” first published in Daedalus in 1967, exactly forty years ago—which, unfortunately, quite a few people think is the only thing I ever wrote—I...
Religions and the postnational constellation
by Robert N. BellahGranted that there is a global economy, global culture, global law, global civil society, even global festivals, why are global institutions both so promising and so weak? I want to...
The fragility of global solidarity
by Robert N. BellahIn my last post, I suggested that the religious communities of the world may have something to contribute to the strengthening of global civil society. If not for the commitments...
A review in three parts
by Gil AnidjarPart One: Of Bows and Arrows “The world of today is torn asunder by a great dispute; and not only a dispute, but a ruthless battle for world domination. Many...