NATURALIZING CHRISTIAN ETHICS: A Critique of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age

This essay critically engages the concept of transcendence in Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. I explore his definition of transcendence, its role in holding a modernity-inspired nihilism at bay, and how it is crucial to the Christian antihumanist argument that he makes. In the process, I show h...

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1. VerfasserIn: Hart, William David (VerfasserIn)
Medienart: Elektronisch Aufsatz
Sprache:Englisch
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Veröffentlicht: Wiley-Blackwell 2012
In: Journal of religious ethics
Jahr: 2012, Band: 40, Heft: 1, Seiten: 149-170
weitere Schlagwörter:B Secular
B Transcendence
B Naturalism
B God
B Humanism
B Nihilism
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Zusammenfassung:This essay critically engages the concept of transcendence in Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. I explore his definition of transcendence, its role in holding a modernity-inspired nihilism at bay, and how it is crucial to the Christian antihumanist argument that he makes. In the process, I show how the critical power of this analysis depends heavily and paradoxically on the Nietzschean antihumanism that he otherwise rejects. Through an account of what I describe as naturalistic Christianity, I argue that transcendence need not be construed as supernatural, that all of the resources necessary for a meaningful life are immanent in the natural process, which includes the semiotic capacities of Homo sapiens. Finally, I triangulate Taylor's supernatural account of transcendence, naturalistic Christianity, and Dreyfus and Kelly's physis-based account of “going beyond” our normal normality in All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics for Meaning in a Secular Age.
ISSN:1467-9795
Enthält:Enthalten in: Journal of religious ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9795.2011.00513.x