Review article: Peggy Lee’s question: Charles Taylor, secularism and the meaning of life
| Author | John Horton |
| Date | 01 January 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885110386008 |
| Published date | 01 January 2011 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
10(1) 113–121
!The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885110386008
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Review article
Peggy Lee’s question:
Charles Taylor, secularism
and the meaning of life
John Horton
Keele University
Charles Taylor A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007.
Peggy Lee sings plaintively: ‘Is that all there is?’ Charles Taylor thinks that it’s not,
and ‘there has to be more to life than our current definitions of social and individual
success define for us’ (p. 507). He has a ‘hunch’ that more is religion, with its ‘belief in
transcendent reality, on the one hand, and the connected desire to a transformation
which goes beyond ordinary human flourishing on the other’ (p. 510). Indeed, at one
point, he even suggests that ‘we are just at the beginning of a new age of religious
searching, whose outcome no one can foresee’ (p. 535).
In this, Templeton-prize-winning book Taylor seeks to explore the meaning and
significance of his distinctive understanding of ‘secularism’, and to trace its emer-
gence from its medieval origins to the situation in which we currently find our-
selves. It is a formidable and impressive undertaking, running to more than 870
pages, with over 770 pages of text. Although the prime concern is with the devel-
opment of secularism as part of the configuration of modernity in the West, there
are plenty of textual excursions to other parts of the world. In the index Peggy Lee
rubs shoulders with Leibniz, Saddam Hussein with Husserl, and Nelson Mandela
with Mallarme, which is indicative of the very wide range of material that is ger-
mane to Taylor’s ambitious endeavour. Parts of the book have their origins in his
Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh in 1999, a chunk of which have already appeared as
a short book, Modern Social Imaginaries (Duke University Press, 2004). Although
there are some differences of both content and organization between that book and
what is included here, so far as I could see there were no substantial changes of
view. By any standards, A Secular Age is a rich and rewarding work of erudition,
intelligence and imagination; and certainly this writer is only too aware of his own
limitations in reviewing it.
Corresponding author:
John Horton, Keele University, UK
Email: j.horton@pol.keele.ac.uk
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