A Secular Age

By: Charles Taylor

Narrated by: Dennis Holland

Length: 42 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2007 Charles Taylor (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Brilliant

A very compelling diagnosis of the modern secular culture. Extremely helpful in understanding the tensions between the modern moral order and modern epistemology, which often seem incompatible. The narrator is a perfect choice for this book. Very clear articulation and enjoyable for listening. Highly recommended.

Paradigm Shifting

I cannot unsee the reality that Taylor unveils through this magisterial work. If you have questions/doubts/wonders about how & why the spiritual longings and ethical concerns of our modern day fit with the scientific, “Enlightened” view of the world... there’s no better exposition.

Exclusive Humanism and Religious Beliefs

Charles Taylor master narrative about secularism is full of history context and well founded insights. His exposition of the relevant facts in western civilization path toward humanism and rationalism is clear. His interpretation of these facts and the way in which they were understood in our society gives the readers an enlightened perception of our postmodern condition. This is a work that deserves multiple readings or listenings. I already listened to it three times and each one of them provided me with new insights and reflections.

Clear presentation

Very pleasant voice and pacing although the speaker's French was a bit hard to catch at times (I can't speak for the German though)

Greatest story ever told

It is a comprehensive, philosophically informed historical sociology of Western European Christianity and its fate today. Spectacular

What it means to live in a secular age

The book itself is well written and important, but the narration was problematic. There are many extended quotations in French (followed by English translation), which the narrator relentlessly mangles. A small thing compared to the overall importance of the book, but after several hours it was annoying and distracting.

Wine and wine skin

Worth the effort. A wonderful account of the world’s quest to experience the Wine in ever evolving wine skins. And Taylor describes it wonderfully and invites us to stand with him at the intersection. Of Dust and Spirit. Self as Divine Participant. Man as potential. Steinbeck”s Timshel. “”Thou mayest”

Needs Guest Narrators for French and German

It's great to have such a serious academic title available on audio, but the publisher, Audible Studios, need to seriously reconsider using English language narrators for the many long passages in French or German. Audible Studios produces French and German audiobooks for their foreign .fr and .de sites, so this is hardly beyond their resources or competence. Holland makes so many errors with his French, and his German is simply growling, guttural English (not remotely like anything that sounds like German and utterly unintelligible), that the foreign language passages, which frequently come in the space of every couple minutes, make the book an unnecessarily painful experience for the many multilingual listeners who are likely to be among its audience. Passages shouldn't be unintelligible just because they're in a foreign language, especially for listeners fluent in those languages.

Prospective listeners not fluent in French or German needn't be put off from the book in that all such passages are translated after the initial (horrific) reading.

I still give the book 4 stars overall, as any audio production of a 900-page tome from Harvard Press is a considerable service. Holland well captures Taylor's meditative yet embattled tone, though the book lacks structure and I think promises more than it delivers in terms of its thesis.

secularism as conscious, deliberate choice

Taylor's book, long, often wordy and perhaps needlessly complex, nonetheless is a must read for people of faith living in the the North Atlantic nations. A Secular Age explains why believers are so often like the man in the gospels who cried out to Christ, "Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief. It also explains the difference between Christianity as practiced and explained south of the equator from the same faith north of the equator, a matter Phillip Jenkins has described so well. I am certainly the richer for the hours spent listening and pondering this most important work.

CT's massive work is worth the work

What about Dennis Holland’s performance did you like?

The reading quality was good, well-paced and understandable. Some reviewers have objected to the pronunciation of the French. It was cool with me. Actually, I enjoyed listening to it, but I don't know from beans when it comes to French pronunciation.

Any additional comments?

Charles Taylor (CT) won me over right away with his erudition. He pulls from everywhere, which can be overwhelming. Scholars like CT are impressive and my hat's off on that score. CT is also, I think, a generous and honest scholar. All things considered, I feel that he's a master, and I'm naught but a student. I hope to read more of his work and plan to benefit from it if I do.

This book is trying to tell the story of how we got to where we are: a secular age. But such a story, as CT himself confesses, depends heavily on where one thinks we actually are. As to where we are, I'm left with the impression that secularism, naturalism, and materialism are on their way out. At least, it would seem that such narrow, unnatural views of the world -- even when combined and re-combined in this way and that -- have proven anemic to the task of developing a fulsome understanding of life in its dizzying variety, especially its spirituality. The Imago Dei is far too interesting to be hemmed in by these modern categories.

Amidst a study of such staggering breadth, certain narrownesses stand out. CT says that the post-Latin Christian world is the domain of secularism. This "secular age" and its philosophical, ethical commitments are vigorously rejected by cultures outside the niche of Northern-Atlantic West. While secularism et al are hugely influential, that influence is mostly rejected throughout the world, making evident the narrowness of the "secular age". CT also lays a good deal of responsibility at the feet of the magisterial Reformation and its children (especially Calvinism) but doesn't focus much (at all?) on the effects of the Council of Trent and the Roman Catholic Reformation on the development of modernity. Nor does he focus on the Radical Reformation's contributions. Finally, I found his categorization of the enchanted and disenchanted worlds to be intriguing and helpful, but also sterile or unnatural. The categories of porous and buffered selves are similar. CT's analytical categories make some good sense. They get at something helpful and true, but they seem unable to offer cogent gradations between these poles, which is where we all live.