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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

Charles Taylor's A Secular Age « Previous | |Next »
November 8, 2007

I've just come across the Immanent Frame weblog hosted by the Social Sciences Research Council. The blog is on secularism, religion, and the public sphere and there is a conversation about Charles Taylor's recently published A Secular Age, which I have yet to read.

The Secular Age text explores what it means to live in a secular age. In this excerpt--How Has the Moral Landscape Changed? Taylor says:

The generations that have been formed in the cultural revolution of the 1960s are in some respects deeply alienated from a strong traditional model of Christian faith in the West. They are refractory to the sexual disciplines which were part of the good Christian life as understood, for instance, in the nineteenth-century Evangelical revivals in English-speaking countries. Indeed, the contemporary swing goes beyond just repudiating these very high standards.... Not only do people experiment widely before settling down as a stable couple, but they also form couples without ever marrying. In addition, they form, then break, then reform these relationships. There is something here deeply at odds with all forms of sexual ethic----be it folk tradition or Christian doctrine----that saw the stability of marriage as essential to social order.

There can be stability of relationships outside marriage--it's not an either marriage or a free for all. However, the ethical questioning of Christianity goes deeper than marriage, as Taylor acknowledges, and then explores.

He says that the:

combination of clerical reform from the top, moralism, and repression of sexual life would come into conflict with developing modernity. The emphasis on individual responsibility and freedom would eventually run athwart the claims of clerical control. And the post-Romantic reactions against the disciplines of modernity, the attempts to rehabilitate the body and the life of feeling, would eventually fuel a reaction against sexual repression.

He says the ethical strands of this revolution are fourfold:
(1) the rehabilitation, continued from the 1920s, of sensuality as a good in itself; (2) the continued affirmation of the equality of the sexes, and in particular the expression of a new ideal in which men and women come together as partners freed of their gender roles; (3) a widespread sense of Dionysian, even “transgressive” sex as liberating; and (4) a new conception of one’s sexuality as an essential part of one’s identity, which not only gave an additional meaning to sexual liberation, but also became the basis for gay liberation and the emancipation of a whole host of previously condemned forms of sexual life.

On Taylor's interpretation the sexual revolution was moved by a complex of moral ideas in which discovering one’s authentic identity and demanding that it be recognized was connected to the goal of equality, the rehabilitation of the body and sensuality, and the overcoming of the divisions between mind and body, reason and feeling.

It is not an outbreak of hedonism as many conservatives currently claim. The moral landscape has changed.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:19 PM | | Comments (1)
Comments

Comments

The trouble is is that we are so thoroughly embedded in the secular paradigm or what my favourite philosopher calls "objectification culture" that it is how we unconsciously and automatically define "reality" altogether.It has become completely "natural" to us--the all pervasive invisible mind-scape(MATRIX)into which everything has been enfolded.

EVERY aspect of our individual(so called) and collective endeavour is permeated by the the dominat MATRIX.
Any and every seemingly new possibility immediately gets enfolded into the same MATRIX---the same consensus "reality".

The universities are the citadels of this left-brained objectification "culture". Charles Taylor and his associates at the SSRC are all products of this paradigm too. And no amount of left-brained philosophy or theology can or will make the slightest difference.

This reference describes the objectification bias of the academy.

1. www.dabase.org/ilchurst.htm

This reference gives a very detailed description of how we are all thoroughly embedded in the objectification paradigm/MATRIX. And how it is impossible to think ones way out of the matrix.

1. www.aboutadidam.org

A quote from a recent essay re the extraordinary power of the objectification matrix.

"All human individuals are being manipulated and confounded by ego-based powers, forces, and patterns in the "world". Thus, everyone is, in fact, being absolutely subordinated---to the "world" of powers, forces, and patterns---but everyone is, all the while, being propagandized and fooled into believing he or she is individually satisfying "self"-interest and "self"-attention, even by accepting the absolute subordination to the "world".