Post Secularism

The Coming Discontinuity: A Theological Reflection through the Sensibility of a Progressive Catholic

I realize that in this moment the idea of recovering a Catholic sensibility is so much spitting in the wind, but nevertheless, in the long run something like it is called for because without a restoration of a sense of the sacramental, the machines win. I'll come back to defend this assertion toward the end.
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Eagleton on “Theory”

'Theory' indicates that our classical ways of carving up knowledge are now, for hard historical reasons, in deep trouble. But it is as much a revealing a symptom of this breakdown as a positive reconfiguration of the field. The emergence of theory suggests that for good historical reasons, what had become known as the humanities
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History & Meaning

Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?–Blaise Pascal The growing rush and the disappearance of contemplation and simplicity from modern life [are] the symptoms of a complete uprooting of culture. The waters of religion retreat and leave behind pools and bogs. The sciences . . . atomize old beliefs.
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It’s the Meaninglessness, Stupid

I've just finished Sebastian Junger's Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging after just having read J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. Both focus on what I've been writing about here for years, which is that the problem at the root of American societal dysfunction since the sixties is the lack of a meaning narrative that gives Americans a
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Taylor’s ‘A Secular Age’, Part 4

Part 4: The Anthropocentric Turn Let's sum up what we've presented in Parts 1 – 3. Part 1 focused on the process of disembedding from the premodern enchanted social and cosmic imaginary to one that is thoroughly disembedded and disenchanted. This disembedding process has produced the buffered selves that we have become and the radically secular society
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Taylor’s ‘A Secular Age’, Part 3

Part 3: The Impersonal Order In Part 1, I discussed briefly Taylor's ideas about a social imaginary. I don't think the idea is hard to understand, but understanding its implications reinforces the idea I have written a lot about on this blog, which is the way we moderns imagine 'reality' is very provisional: humans did not always
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Taylor’s ‘A Secular Age’, Part 2

Part 2. Reform: The Rage for Order Many societies have moments of 'reform', but Taylor wants to make the case that the rage for Reform in the Latin West was unique and was central to the emergence there of the secular society Westerners introduced to the world. As described in Part I, before the reform bug bit elites
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On Charles Taylor’s ‘A Secular Age’, Part 1

Part 1: Disenchantment: Post Axial Disembedding Charles Taylor's A Secular Age seeks to answer the fundamental question: How is it that if five hundred years ago it would have been very unusual to profess yourself an atheist, today it is no longer the case, and among intellectuals it's arguably the majority position. Another way of saying it is that there were always the
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C.S. Peirce on Believing 1

If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit, why should we not attain the desired end, by taking any answer to a question which we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief,
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Believing 2

Earlier this week I tried to make the case that "believing" is what we all do when we give value, meaning, and purpose to our experience and to our work in the world. Believing is fundamentally an irrational act. It draws upon resources that transcend what the brain/sense system can give us with certainty. The
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