Secolarizzazione ed "Exclusive humanism" in Charles Taylor

2009 ◽  
pp. 53-70
Author(s):  
Leonardo Allodi

- The aim of this essay is to examine the theory of secularisation process developed by Charles Taylor in his work, "A Secular Age". With this work an ambitious project is pursued: to offer a new point of view by which to construct a different image of secularisation. Taylor wants to understand the new socio-cultural conditions in which the moral and spiritual search of believers and non-believers develops. The process of modernisation of Western societies, in fact, has not only produced conceptions that are hostile to religion (jacobinism, marxism, anarchism) and conditions which have often made many of the old religious practices impossible, but have also led to creative adaptations of religious experience to the changed sociological conditions. The history of secularisation therefore demonstrates the "improbability" that autonomous religious aspiration has disappeared. Even in the framework of a secular society, religion represents an "anthropological universal". Taylor's theory of secularisation presents a notable affinity with all those theories which refute any form of sociological or biological reductionism, assuming the original nature of the religious phenomenon.Keywords: exclusive humanism, secularization, neutralization, religion, modernity

Pneuma ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 17-36
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Vondey

Abstract Pentecostals do not fit the dominant narrative of a secular age constructed by Charles Taylor. Instead, Pentecostalism is a religion at play that engages with the secular without accepting its authority. A critical dialogue with Taylor’s foundational proposal of the central conditions of premodern life that have made room for our modern secular world demonstrates how and why these conditions are not met in Pentecostalism. The article then identifies the alternative mechanisms in place in Pentecostalism as a form of religion at play manifested in an enchanted worldview, sociospiritual attachment, the festival of Pentecost, the transformation of secular time, and a porous cosmos. A close examination of the notion of play in Taylor’s narrative illuminates in more detail the ill fit of Pentecostalism in the history of a secular age and reveals that Pentecostalism represents a condition of religion that resolves the tension between sacred and secular and that challenges the dominance of “secular” and “religious” as uncontested ideas of our modern world.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-528
Author(s):  
Olga V. Albrekht

This paper deals with using the Rabelaisian cultural code, which the author of the article suggests to be applied to the reading and interpreting of some novels by E. Zola. From the authors point of view, such an experiment allows us to look at French naturalism from a new point of view, as a variant of a typologically recurring phenomenon in the history of literature. For the French naturalistic novel Rabelaisianism is considered as a kind of meaning-generating model, as appropriated communication or as an element of traditional literary discourse. The latter is actualized in a period when the cultural conditions and the nature of the main ideological and aesthetic conflicts became similar to the time of the French Renaissance. The author attempts to apply the theory of the carnival chronotope, which is developed by M.M. Bakhtin, to the interpretation of some of E. Zolas texts. Meanwhile, the concept of the chronotope is considered more widely than that of M.M. Bakhtin: it is proposed to understand the chronotope as a universal model of space-time relations in the novel. The author also views the poetics of the real in the naturalistic novel through the prism of the carnival (i. e. extremely detailed material world); as examples, the motives of food and wine, as well as the motive of rebellion and war as a variant of the war for food and the carnival battle of Shrovetide (pancake week) and Lent are analyzed in the article. The main material used for the analysis is taken from the novels Le Ventre de Paris , 1873 ( The Belly of Paris ), LAssommoir , 1877 ( The Trap ), and Germinal , 1885, by E. Zola.


2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Blakely

Abstract Charles Taylor’s latest collection of essays, Dilemmas and Connections, is the most recent installment in his development of a grand history of the rise of a modern, secular age. In this review, I show how the historical narrative that defines Taylor’s late work is in continuity with his earlier hermeneutic commitments, while also allowing him to advance new inquiries into areas as diverse as secularism, religion, nationalism, and human rights discourse. I do this by not only providing a succinct summary of Taylor’s master narrative, but also by arguing that it resolves a number of philosophical dilemmas.


Turkology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (104) ◽  
pp. 106-119
Author(s):  
D. Kenzhetayev ◽  

Recognition of the heritage of Abai from the point of view of Islamic theology and philosophy, the Muslim and civilizational nature of the Kazakh people is a very urgent issue. It is important to reveal the place and role of Abai's heritage in order to give a scientific and historical assessment of the traces of modern Kazakh religious knowledge and religious experience. Therefore, a holistic consideration of the concepts and categorical complex in the works of Abai and its differentiation with systemic historical and philosophical forms make it possible to recognize his existential and religious and civilizational appearance. The article examines the opinion of mankind against those who want to explain the general views of Abai with the templates of existentialist philosophy, referring to well-known representatives of an important layer about being in the history of thought. In his review of the history of philosophy, as well as in the question of what essence is, Abai stressed the importance of the truth underlying the definition of love as a single meaning.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 468
Author(s):  
Camil Ungureanu

Ian McEwan’s The Children Act focuses on a real-life conflict between religion and children’s rights in a pluralist society. By drawing on Charles Taylor’s work on religion in the “secular age”, I argue that McEwan’s narrative is ultimately built on secularist assumptions that devalue religious experience. McEwan’s approach aims to build a bridge between literary imagination and scientific rationality: religion is, from this perspective, reducible to a “fable” and an authority structure incongruous with legal rationality and the quest for meaning in the modern-secular society. In The Children Act, art substitutes religion and its aspiration to transcendence: music in particular is a universal idiom that can overcome barriers of communication and provides “ecstatic” experiences in a godless world.


2020 ◽  

This series aims at advancing knowledge and the understanding of official and unofficial religious practices and their relationship with culture, society, and the construction of identity, from the Classical period through the Early modern times, with particular emphasis on beliefs, rites, institutions, emotions, cultural and social fractures, especially those revolving around the domains of magic, witchcraft, and religion. The series concentrates on Europe, although it welcomes a long-term global perspective and a comparative point of view.


2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnold M. Meiring

In a secular society, obsessed with materialism and consumerism, the 13th-century mystical teacher and poet, Jalaluddin Rumi (1207–1273), has found a surprisingly widespread following. While his work is often misunderstood and diluted, this research proposed the opposite: that Rumi may broaden his modern admirers’ worldview and bring about an encounter with God. This study thus applied the insights of an 800-year-old mystic to the questions of today. The research comprised of a qualitative literature research method that first explored the life and writings of Rumi, and then investigated the issues and yearnings of a secular society as proposed by philosopher Charles Taylor. The study showed that Rumi may indeed open up the enclosed secular worldview by adding significance to our living, God to our loving and hope to our dying.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article was a study in religion – applying the work of a medieval Sufi mystic to the philosophical questions of today. It also considered Anatolian history and Persian literature and offered philosophical options. It further related to missiology, as well as systematic and practical theology.


2006 ◽  
pp. 112-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Nazarov

The attempts to reconstruct the instruments of interbudget relations take place in all federations. In Russia such attempts are especially popular due to the short history of intergovernmental relations. Thus the review of the ¬international experience of managing interbudget relations to provide economic and social welfare can be useful for present-day Russia. The author develops models of intergovernmental relations from the point of view of making decisions about budget authorities’ distribution. The models that can be better applied in the Russian case are demonstrated.


2008 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-770
Author(s):  
Csaba Pléh

Danziger, Kurt: Marking the mind. A history of memory . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008Farkas, Katalin: The subject’s point of view. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008MosoninéFriedJudités TolnaiMárton(szerk.): Tudomány és politika. Typotex, Budapest, 2008Iacobini, Marco: Mirroring people. The new science of how we connect with others. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2008Changeux, Jean-Pierre. Du vrai, du beau, du bien.Une nouvelle approche neuronale. Odile Jacob, PárizsGazzaniga_n


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