A Secular Age

Introduction

Taylor’s book of nearly 900 pages grew out of his Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh in 1999 and appeared in 2007. It asks how the West moved from a society around 1500 in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God to one in which belief is one option among others – and often not the easiest. Taylor rejects “subtraction stories”, according to which religion simply fell away as science advanced. Instead he describes the rise of a “buffered self” closed off from spirits and forces, the disciplinary reforms of the early modern period and the “immanent frame” of modern life, within which belief and unbelief compete. The book has become a reference point for sociologists, historians and theologians as well as philosophers.

Connections

Builds on

• The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism1905 · Max Weber
• Sources of the Self1989 · Charles Taylor

More works by Charles Taylor

• 1989Sources of the Self
• 1992Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition