A Secular Age

A Secular Age engages with broader academic and philosophical discussions that include key figures such as Max Weber and Jürgen Habermas, whose theories on rationalization, disenchantment, and the public sphere provide context and contrast to Taylor’s arguments. Taylor challenges the “subtraction stories” of secularization, which suggest that modernity sheds old superstitions to reveal a more rational human nature. Instead, secularism results from new constructions of self-understanding and practices that have reshaped how people experience belief and unbelief. This perspective places Taylor’s work in dialogue with Weber and Habermas and other thinkers concerned with the existential implications of modernity, such as Nietzsche and Foucault.

Max Weber’s concepts of rationalization and disenchantment are crucial to understanding the context of A Secular Age. Weber describes the process of rationalization as the growing dominance of reason and systematic thinking in various spheres of life, which gradually diminishes the role of religion and magic in explaining the world. This leads to Weber’s idea, commonly translated as the “disenchantment” of the world, where society sidelines life’s spiritual and mystical aspects in favor of a more calculative, objective approach.

Taylor builds on and diverges from Weber’s ideas by exploring how the secular age is not solely about the decline of religion but the transformation of belief systems. He argues that the shift is not simply from belief to unbelief but from a world where belief in God was unchallenged to one where belief is just one option among many. Taylor’s approach brings nuance to Weber’s more linear narrative that rationalization inevitably leads to secularism.

Jürgen Habermas’s theories on the public sphere and communicative rationality also inform the backdrop of Taylor’s work. Habermas discusses how the rise of the public sphere in modern societies allowed for a new form of rational-critical debate, which supported secularization by creating spaces where religious and metaphysical claims could be openly questioned and debated. Habermas views this as a positive development in the democratization of society, where rational discourse can lead to consensus.

Secularism has also led to new forms of pluralism and “cross-pressures” in belief. He argues that secularization has not led to a uniform adoption of rationality and unbelief but has created a complex landscape where various belief systems coexist, often in tension, termed the “immanent frame”—a shared space where different worldviews interact, often without a clear consensus on ultimate meaning.