Immanent Critique of the Immanent Frame: The Critical Potential of A Secular Age

Abstract

ABSTRACT Charles Taylor’s method of philosophical argumentation is distinctive, interlacing historical, ontological, phenomenological, hermeneutical, theistic, and ethical strands. His writings contribute to debates in many domains, including sociology, theology, and political theory, speaking both to his peers in the academy and to wider publics. Often, he assumes the role of socio-cultural critic, diagnosing the features of our contemporary culture and society that people experience as a loss or decline. In this paper, I focus on A Secular Age, where he discusses the predicament of the modern secularized self, who exists in a condition of spiritual instability, pulled in two directions: on the one side motivated by the oppressive effects of religious orthodoxy to reject the earlier established faiths; on the other side, driven by a sense of emptiness to look for something that could compensate for the meanings lost with theistic transcendence. My paper discusses Taylor’s account of the ‘immanent frame’ of the modern secularized self-understanding, assessing the strengths and limitations of his hermeneutical approach to this self-understanding. It calls on him to develop its potentials as a more robust form of immanent critique.