Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age

by Michael Warner (Editor), Jonathan VanAntwerpen (Editor), Craig Calhoun (Editor)

Overview

“What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age?” This apparently simple question opens into the massive, provocative, and complex A Secular Age, where Charles Taylor positions secularism as a defining feature of the modern world, not the mere absence of religion, and casts light on the experience of transcendence that scientistic explanations of the world tend to neglect.

In Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age, a prominent and varied group of scholars chart the conversations in which A Secular Age intervenes and address wider questions of secularism and secularity. The distinguished contributors include Robert Bellah, José Casanova, Nilüfer Göle, William E. Connolly, Wendy Brown, Simon During, Colin Jager, Jon Butler, Jonathan Sheehan, Akeel Bilgrami, John Milbank, and Saba Mahmood.

Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age succeeds in conveying to readers the complexity of secularism while serving as an invaluable guide to a landmark book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674072411
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/04/2013
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Michael Warner is Seymour H. Knox Professor of English and American Studies at Yale University. He is the editor of American Sermons: The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King and Fear of a Queer Planet. He also writes for The Nation, The Advocate, The Village Voice, and other periodicals.

Jonathan VanAntwerpen is Program Director for Religion and Theology at the Henry Luce Foundation. He was founding editor of The Immanent Frame, a Social Science Research Council digital forum on religion, secularism, and the public sphere.

Craig Calhoun is University Professor of Social Sciences at Arizona State University and was previously Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science and President of the SSRC. His books include The Roots of Radicalism and Nations Matter.

Table of Contents

A Note on Citations vii

Editors' Introduction 1

1 Confronting Modernity: Maruyama Masao, Jürgen Habermas, and Charles Taylor Robert N. Bellah 32

2 A Closer Walk on the Wild Side John Milbank 54

3 The Sacred, the Secular, and the Profane: Charles Taylor and Karl Marx Wendy Brown 83

4 Completing Secularism: The Mundane in the Neoliberal Era Simon During 105

5 Belief, Spirituality, and Time William E. Connolly 126

6 What Is Enchantment? Akeel Bilgrami 145

7 This Detail, This History: Charles Taylor's Romanticism Colin Jager 166

8 Disquieted History in A Secular Age Jon Butler 193

9 When Was Disenchantment? History and the Secular Age Jonathan Sheehan 217

10 The Civilizational, Spatial, and Sexual Powers of the Secular Nilüfer Göle 243

11 A Secular Age: Dawn or Twilight? José Casanova 265

12 Can Secularism Be Other-wise? Saba Mahmood 282

Afterword: Apologia pro Libro suo Charles Taylor 300

Contributors 325

Name Index 327

Subject Index 333

What People are Saying About This

Hent de Vries

Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age will be crucial in bringing the debate on the secular, in all of its theoretical and practical ramifications, to the next level.

— Hent de Vries, author of Minimal Theologies

Editorial Reviews

The collection can serve as a guide to reading Taylor’s work with a more critical eye. To my mind, however, the collection can stand alone—largely because of the strength of some of the chapters which make a wider contribution to debates about secularism… Varieties of Secularism is a useful collection for those attempting to work through the particularities of contemporary secularism, given not just the heightened awareness of globality but a new way of thinking about secularism that recognizes its continued dependence upon religion.

Journal of Contemporary Religion - Humeira Iqtidar

Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age will be crucial in bringing the debate on the secular, in all of its theoretical and practical ramifications, to the next level.

Hent de Vries

Make[s] an important contribution to the resurgence of scholarly interest in religion and politics in the last decade… Given the complexity and length of Taylor’s work, Varieties of Secularism serves as a useful introduction to the book. The different uses to which the contributors put Taylor in examining a range of secularisms also speaks to the variety of ideas, mediations, and propositions at work in A Secular Age.

Cultural Studies Review - Holly Randell-Moon

Many people still grapple with the proposals and analyses offered in Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, and this reviewer expects that will continue for a generation. But Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age is a sort of first report from the front, as it were—a rich, probing, multidisciplinary engagement with Taylor’s diagnosis of the present day. The volume includes contributions from some of the major voices in discussions about secularity, secularism, religion, and public life, including William Connolly, Saba Mahmood, José Casanova, and John Milbank, writing from such disciplines as sociology, anthropology, history, political science, and theology. This volume is a rich feast of both forthright criticism and extended conversation. The editors’ introduction provides a succinct overview of the argument of A Secular Age, and Taylor contributes an afterword, ‘Apologia pro Libro suo’—a response to his critics thus far—in which he also discusses how the book grew out of his Catholic faith. This excellent companion volume will highlight issues in the reception of A Secular Age.

Choice - J. K. A. Smith

The collection can serve as a guide to reading Taylor's work with a more critical eye. To my mind, however, the collection can stand alone—largely because of the strength of some of the chapters which make a wider contribution to debates about secularism...Varieties of Secularism is a useful collection for those attempting to work through the particularities of contemporary secularism, given not just the heightened awareness of globality but a new way of thinking about secularism that recognizes its continued dependence upon religion.
— Humeira Iqtidar

Journal of Contemporary Religion

Many people still grapple with the proposals and analyses offered in Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, and this reviewer expects that will continue for a generation. But Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age is a sort of first report from the front, as it were—a rich, probing, multidisciplinary engagement with Taylor's diagnosis of the present day. The volume includes contributions from some of the major voices in discussions about secularity, secularism, religion, and public life, including William Connolly, Saba Mahmood, José Casanova, and John Milbank, writing from such disciplines as sociology, anthropology, history, political science, and theology. This volume is a rich feast of both forthright criticism and extended conversation. The editors' introduction provides a succinct overview of the argument of A Secular Age, and Taylor contributes an afterword, "Apologia pro Libro suo"—a response to his critics thus far—in which he also discusses how the book grew out of his Catholic faith. This excellent companion volume will highlight issues in the reception of A Secular Age.
— J. K. A. Smith

Choice

Make[s] an important contribution to the resurgence of scholarly interest in religion and politics in the last decade...Given the complexity and length of Taylor's work, Varieties of Secularism serves as a useful introduction to the book. The different uses to which the contributors put Taylor in examining a range of secularisms also speaks to the variety of ideas, mediations, and propositions at work in A Secular Age.
— Holly Randell-Moon

Cultural Studies Review

Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age will be crucial in bringing the debate on the secular, in all of its theoretical and practical ramifications, to the next level.

Hent De Vries