The Vaunted Catholic Deconstruction of Our Secular Age
Charles Taylor’s gambit of social constructionism in his history of modernity
At least when it’s been fashionable in elite circles, especially since the Scientific Revolution, religious and nonreligious folks have argued about which side has the better worldview. Does God exist? Is the Bible true? Are there miracles? Which religion is best, if any? Does faith conflict with reason? Which side has the burden of proof? And so on.
In his massive, celebrated book, A Secular Age, though, the Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor leaves aside that entire discourse because, he says, it’s naïve. In its place he adopts something like the postmodern stance of social constructionism. He’s interested not in taking the theistic and atheistic arguments at face value, but in deconstructing the atheistic ones to understand how the secular age has come to be.
Taylor’s deconstruction of the secular age
This means Taylor rejects the easy secular answer that the modern age is secular because nontheists, materialists, atheists, philosophers, and scientists won the war between faith and reason, and between theocracy and personal freedom. Again, Taylor dismisses that assessment, saying, “I don’t see the cogency of the…
