A Secular Age -reflection-

Having just completed Taylor's A Secular Age and having presented an analysis of it to my colleagues, I feel leaving a few of my reflections here makes for good closure.

One major conclusion I made was that Taylor and Žižek are in fact trying to do the same thing: revitalize their respective traditions with a vision of renewal. Taylor, following Péguy's comments, could have just as easily been quoting Žižek:

"Creative renewal was only possible in action which by its very nature had to have a certain temporal depth. This kind of action had to draw on the forms which had been shaped in a deeper past, but not by a simple mechanical reproduction, as with “habit”, rather by a creative re-application of the spirit of the tradition."

It was Lenin, when faced with implementing the New Economic Policy in 1922 (after the Bolshevik Revolution), a policy allowing a greater market economy and private ownership, who said it is sometimes necessary to “begin from the beginning” again and again. Žižek, apropos the Left, says this repeatedly. Following Badiou he emphasizes a fidélité à l’événement (Fidelity to the Event), in this case, a fidelity within a given context which is always "beginning from the beginning" in a creative reinterpretation of the emancipatory Idea. This is precisely Taylor's formulation for the Christian Church (sans the transcendent):

"The goal in this case is not to return to an earlier formula, inspiring as many of these will undoubtedly be; there will always be an element of imitation of earlier models, but inevitably and rightly Christian life today will look for and discover new ways of moving beyond the present orders to God."

Some Christians have begun to do this, to contextualize and move beyond traditional forms, while creatively reapplying the "spirit of the tradition". Whether they will gather momentum remains to be seen, a large part of this depending on their ability to avoid defining themselves by what they are not, or what they perceive themselves to be a corrective to. These considerations should not even enter the equation. Another risk will involve making the particular the universal, imposing some local form as a mould for all others. So a particular form may be successful (transformative etc), we may write books about it, others may start to think it would be possible to transplant the forms in other places (didn't something analogous to this happen with communism, so that we have Russian communism, Chinese communism, Cuban communism, etc, each taking on slightly or radically different form?). No, both Taylor (the transcendent frame) and Žižek (the immanent frame) insist on the key concept of contextualization, serving the Idea (which is Universal) of the movement from precisely where one is. Each of these emancipatory groups (or Christian groups, who may also have an emancipatory orientation in the Leftist sense) form a kind of communion. Taylor sees the way forward as a “communion of itineraries”, a multiplicity of “whole lives”.

So much more could be said here, but this will suffice for now. I close Taylor's massive tome with a new appreciation for this Catholic thinker at McGill. I am richer because of him. To be continued...