A Secular Age (Hardcover)

What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age? Almost everyone would agree that we--in the West, at least--largely do. And clearly the place of religion in our societies has changed profoundly in the last few centuries. In what will be a defining book for our time, Charles Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean--of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is only one human possibility among others. Taylor, long one of our most insightful thinkers on such questions, offers a historical perspective. He examines the development in "Western Christendom" of those aspects of modernity which we call secular. What he describes is in fact not a single, continuous transformation, but a series of new departures, in which earlier forms of religious life have been dissolved or destabilized and new ones have been created. As we see here, today's secular world is characterized not by an absence of religion--although in some societies religious belief and practice have markedly declined--but rather by the continuing multiplication of new options, religious, spiritual, and anti-religious, which individuals and groups seize on in order to make sense of their lives and give shape to their spiritual aspirations. What this means for the world--including the new forms of collective religious life it encourages, with their tendency to a mass mobilization that breeds violence--is what Charles Taylor grapples with, in a book as timely as it is timeless.

General

Imprint:	The Belknap Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	September 2007
First published:	September 2007
Authors:	Charles Taylor
Dimensions:	240 x 170 x 46mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	874
ISBN-13:	978-0-674-02676-6
Categories:	Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Alternative belief systems > Humanist & secular alternatives to religion > General Books > Religion & Spirituality > Alternative belief systems > Humanist & secular alternatives to religion > General
LSN:	0-674-02676-4
Barcode:	9780674026766

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Review This Product

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 | Review by: emjay

This book is amazing. It is well and deeply thought out and repays long and thorough reading. No one reading this will look at their world in the same way afterwards. It seems to come out of a lifetime of experience, but at the same time gives evidence of careful research. It's the sort of book you go back to again and again and get something different out of it each time you read it.

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