Synopses & Reviews
What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age? Almost everyone would agree that we--in the West, at least--largely do. And clearly the place of religion in our societies has changed profoundly in the last few centuries. In what will be a defining book for our time, Charles Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean--of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is only one human possibility among others.
Taylor, long one of our most insightful thinkers on such questions, offers a historical perspective. He examines the development in "Western Christendom" of those aspects of modernity which we call secular. What he describes is in fact not a single, continuous transformation, but a series of new departures, in which earlier forms of religious life have been dissolved or destabilized and new ones have been created. As we see here, today's secular world is characterized not by an absence of religion--although in some societies religious belief and practice have markedly declined--but rather by the continuing multiplication of new options, religious, spiritual, and anti-religious, which individuals and groups seize on in order to make sense of their lives and give shape to their spiritual aspirations.
What this means for the world--including the new forms of collective religious life it encourages, with their tendency to a mass mobilization that breeds violence--is what Charles Taylor grapples with, in a book as timely as it is timeless.
Review
A Secular Ageoffers an invaluable map of how the modern religious-secular divide came into being.
Review
The focus here is neither on the role of religion in public institutions nor on the extent of religious beief, but rather on its conditions...It is the slow emergence of secularity in this sense that Taylor sets out to explain, at formidable length, and in remarkable historical and philosophical detail. Binding all that detail together is an argument that Taylor manages to sustain over nearly eight hundred pages. Simply put, A Secular Ageis a magisterial refutation of what Taylor calls the “subtraction story” of secularisation.
Review
Charles Taylor's A Secular Ageoffers a uniquely rich historical and philosophical overview of how we came to take a disenchanted world for granted--quietly inviting us to reflect that if disenchantment and the absence of the divine were learned habits of mind, they might not necessarily be the self-evidently rational truths so many think they are.
Review
A Secular Agerepresents a singular achievement...Taylor is somehow uniquely able to combine chutzpah and good manners, making bold and imaginative claims, yet always attending respectfully to the whole range of disciplines that touch on the philosophical trajectory being drawn, whether that be history, sociology, theology, art theory, cultural studies, anthropology or social theory...A Secular Agesucceeds in the same way as his previous work: in illuminating through complicating. At the same time, this book seems to step up the ambition somewhat: by attempting to provide a final definitive account of all the narratives and complications that make up our contemporary age, as they implode on themselves and interact with one another...Hegel knew, of course, that "the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk"; or, in other words, that philosophy can only fathom the truth about an age in hindsight, when the day has passed. But then again, that didn't stop Hegel having a go; and we should be glad that it hasn't stopped Charles Taylor, either.
Review
A culminating dispatch from the philosophical frontlines. It is at once encyclopedic and incisive, a sweeping overview that is no less analytically rigorous for its breadth. Its subject is a philosophical history of the past, present and future of Western Christendom. As such, it begins with a deceptively simple question: How did it become possible for anyone to not believe in God? ...A Secular Age recounts the history of an idea, in other words, but in it the past is not an inert, settled fact, but a reservoir to be drawn upon to shatter the sameness and the apparent inevitability of the present. As a history it clarifies crucial intellectual and theological divisions that continue to structure debates about divinity, but with the aim of reforming the way we think about them, 'to show the play of destabilization and recomposition.' Though this isn't a book you take to the beach, it remains eminently readable. As philosophers go, Taylor is a kind of behaviorist, more concerned with elaborating the implications of a way of thinking than with showing its contradictions. Unlike most philosophers, though, Taylor seems at pains to remain accessible to a general audience to capture complex philosophical debate in ordinary language. An important part of Taylor's argument is that religion and the belief in God, most particularly the experience of transcendence, are not at all outmoded... Though it avoids predictions or prescriptions, A Secular Age leaves us with the sense that the future will be a far poorer, less human place, if we do not discover some expression for that transcendent otherness. Tyler Cowen - Slate
Review
If you are, as I am, often puzzled by the landscape of contemporary religious belief and unbelief, you will regard Charles Taylor's huge and hugely rewarding intellectual history of the secularization of European and North American culture as a marvelous gift. A Secular Ageis a first-class map of the spiritual terrain of Western modernity as well as the road that got us here.
Review
It is refreshing to read an inquiry into the condition of religion that is exploratory in its approach. Charles Taylor, a Roman Catholic as well as one of the world's leading political theorists, does not aim to attack or defend any system of belief in his new book, A Secular Age. Rather, he wants to elucidate the very idea of a secular world. For Taylor, the difference between the pre-modern Western world and the modern West is not simply that beliefs held then are no longer accepted today; it is that the entire framework of thought has changed.
Review
In an idiosyncratic blend of the philosophical, the historical, and the speculative, Taylor describes the shift from a world brim-full with spirits and magic to a world where divinity is absent. His account resists the idea that the rise of secularism is a process of subtraction, of loss, and of disenchantment. Rather, Taylor describes secularity's birth as the migration of ideas, subtle changes in those ideas, and the opening of new possibilities. If Taylor's communitarian scholarship celebrated historical and social rootedness, A Secular Age is an encomium to the sheer happenstance of how those circumstances arose. Lorenzo DiTommaso - Montreal Gazette
Review
Charles Taylor's remarkable book A Secular Ageachieves something quite different from what other writers on secularization have accomplished. Most have focused, on decline as the essence of secularism--either the removal of religion Charles Taylor's remarkable book A Secular Ageachieves something quite different from what other writers on secularization have accomplished. Most have focused, on decline as the essence of secularism-either the removal of religion from sphere after sphere of public life, or the decrease of religious belief and practice. But Taylor focuses on what kind of religion makes sense in a secular age...Taylor is asking not only how secularism became a significant option in a civilization that not so long ago was explicitly Christian, but what that change means for the spiritual quest, both of those who are still religious and those who consider themselves secular. I doubt many people have even perceived that aspect of secularism, and Taylor's book should be as much of a revelation to them as it was to me from sphere after sphere of public life, or the decrease of religious belief and practice. But Taylor focuses on what kind of religion makes sense in a secular age. He speaks of "the conditions of experience of and search for the spiritual" that make it possible to speak of ours as a "secular age." Taylor is asking not only how secularism became a significant option in a civilization that not so long ago was explicitly Christian, but what that change means for the spiritual quest, both of those who are still religious and those who consider themselves secular. I doubt many people have even perceived that aspect of secularism, and Taylor's book should be as much of a revelation to them as it was to me.
Review
A Secular Ageis a work of stupendous breadth and erudition.
Review
Charles Taylor's remarkable book A Secular Ageachieves something quite different from what other writers on secularization have accomplished. Most have focused, on decline as the essence of secularism--either the removal of religion Charles Taylor's remarkable book A Secular Ageachieves something quite different from what other writers on secularization have accomplished. Most have focused, on decline as the essence of secularism-either the removal of religion from sphere after sphere of public life, or the decrease of religious belief and practice. But Taylor focuses on what kind of religion makes sense in a secular age...Taylor is asking not only how secularism became a significant option in a civilization that not so long ago was explicitly Christian, but what that change means for the spiritual quest, both of those who are still religious and those who consider themselves secular. I doubt many people have even perceived that aspect of secularism, and Taylor's book should be as much of a revelation to them as it was to me from sphere after sphere of public life, or the decrease of religious belief and practice. But Taylor focuses on what kind of religion makes sense in a secular age. He speaks of "the conditions of experience of and search for the spiritual" that make it possible to speak of ours as a "secular age." Taylor is asking not only how secularism became a significant option in a civilization that not so long ago was explicitly Christian, but what that change means for the spiritual quest, both of those who are still religious and those who consider themselves secular. I doubt many people have even perceived that aspect of secularism, and Taylor's book should be as much of a revelation to them as it was to me.
Review
[A Secular Age] may become an enduring contribution to understanding religious belief, the evolution of the secular order, and the defining characteristics of modern secularism and contemporary spirituality. Like Charles Taylor’s earlier books, it is a product of prodigious erudition. Its 874 dense pages brim with original observation, cogent argument constructed from sources in a wide array of disciplines, and generous ecumenical gestures, even towards humanists. His story is complex, somewhat repetitious and yet unflaggingly interesting: it is loaded with so much novel detail and insight that the reader will be grateful for each scrap of familiar ground.
Review
Sophisticated, erudite...with excursions into history, philosophy and literature, A Secular Age is a weighty and challenging tome. It is also a brilliant account of the 'sensed context' in which secularization developed. And a moving meditation, by a believer, on the 'ineradicable bent' of human beings to respond to something beyond life, to keep open 'the transcendent window.' Glenn C. Altschuler
Review
Taylor's book is a major and highly original contribution to the debates on secularization that have been ongoing for the past century. There is no book remotely like it. Alasdair MacIntyre
Review
This is Charles Taylor's breakthrough book, a book of really major importance, because he succeeds in recasting the whole debate about secularism. This is one of the most important books written in my lifetime. I am tempted to say the most important book, but that may just express the spell the book has cast over me at the moment. Robert N. Bellah
Review
If the author had accomplished nothing more than a survey of the voluminous body of 'secularization theory,' he would have done something valuable. But, although Taylor clearly articulates his disdain for the view that modernity ineluctably led to the death of God, he goes far beyond a literature review... In addition to its conceptual value, this study is notable for its lucidity. Taylor has translated complex philosophical theories into language that any educated reader will be able to follow, yet he has not sacrificed an iota of sophistication or nuance. A magisterial book. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Review
In his characteristically erudite yet engaging fashion, Taylor takes up where he left off in his magnificent Sources of the Self (1989) as he brilliantly traces the emergence of secularity and the processes of secularization in the modern age... Taylor sweeps grandly and magisterially through the 18th and 19th centuries as he recreates the history of secularism and its parallel challenges to religion. He concludes that a focus on the religious has never been lost in Western culture, but that it is one among many stories striving for acceptance. Taylor's examination of the rise of unbelief in the 19th century is alone worth the price of the book and offers an essential reminder that the Victorian age, more than the Enlightenment, dominates our present view of the meanings of secularity. Taylor's inspired combination of philosophy and history sparkles in this must-read virtuoso performance. Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Review
One finds big nuggets of insight, useful to almost anybody with an interest in the progress of human society... A vast ideological anatomy of possible ways of thinking about the gradual onset of secularism as experienced in fields ranging from art to poetry to psychoanalysis... Taylor also lays bare the inconsistencies of some secular critiques of religion. The Economist
Review
A salutary and sophisticated defense of how life was lived before the daring views of a tiny secular elite inspired mass indifference, and how it might be lived in the future. Baltimore Sun
Review
[A] big, powerful book... [Taylor's] book is massive in its historical and philosophical scope. Penetrating and dense, it would take months to fully digest. Loosely structured, it's crammed with original insights. Taylor, 75, can pack more into one of his complex paragraphs than most prevaricating, deconstructing academic philosophers can say in a chapter, or even a book... The book explores the immense ramifications of how the West shifted in a few centuries from being a society in which 'it was virtually impossible not to believe in God' to one in which belief is optional, often frowned upon. Michael Burleigh - New York Sun
Review
In A Secular Age, philosopher Charles Taylor takes on the broad phenomenon of secularization in its full complexity... [A] voluminous, impressively researched and often fascinating social and intellectual history...Taylor's account encompasses art, literature, science, fashion, private life--all those human activities that have been sometimes more, sometimes less affected by religion over the last five centuries. Douglas Todd - Vancouver Sun
Review
The real genius of this erudite and profound book resides in its grandeur of theme and richness of detail. For all its imposing intellectual density, it is a delight to read; at times, it was literally impossible to put down. Yet it is also a work that ought to be read by degrees--one chapter at a time, with ample pause for reflection. Jack Miles - Los Angeles Times
Review
Taylor's masterful integration of history, sociology, philosophy, and theology demands much of the reader. In return you will be convinced that Charles Taylor is one of the smartest and deepest social thinkers of our time. Azziz Huq - American Prospect
Review
A Secular Age is a towering achievement... It shows the ways we have traveled from the automatic certainties of 1500 to the fragile alignments of today. It transforms the secularization debate. Steven Hayward - Cleveland Plain Dealer
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“Invisible Hands is a landmark piece of work, a brilliant excavation of eighteenth-century patterns of thought. Sheehan and Wahrman demonstrate in a virtuoso manner that eighteenth-century thinkers came to discern the same fundamental quality of self-organization at work in many different systems. The authors often wax lyrical, beautifully so, in their exploration of their topic, and do not shy away from posing questions of profound philosophical import. This book will cause a stir.”
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“Cooper has undertaken an impressive survey of the historical and contemporary literatures to elucidate and explain the limitations posed by the mistaken presumption that self-aggrandizement is a corollary of secularization. An erudite and truly excellent study, Secular Powers is positioned to make an extremely important contribution to contemporary arguments about the fortunes and possibly the future of secularism in political life.”
Review
“With
Secular Powers, Cooper traces an alternative account of secularism, showing that the very feature critics single out for abuse—the relocation of divine sovereignty in the human individual—is in fact a central concern of early secularists, who predicated human empowerment upon the cultivation of a ‘modest disposition.’ Drawing on both little-studied works from the period and a broad range of current scholarship, Cooper makes a highly original contribution to an important interdisciplinary dialogue in the history of ideas.”
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“Cooper challenges the standard view that modern political secularism displaces God as the ultimate authority in favor of putting humans in that place. Secularism does not inevitably lead to self-deification, but is compatible with humanity. She argues that each of the three major theorists of the early period, Thomas Hobbes, Benedict Spinoza, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, emphasizes that humans have to recognize their finitude or limitations and that, paradoxically, this finitude is the source of human empowerment. . . .Recommended.”
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“Sheehan and Wahrman offer exciting insights into the discourses of order and self-organization, which informed such disparate domains as the emerging life sciences, concepts of human cognition, politics, and economics. The reader is skillfully guided on a complex journey of discovery, at times through arcane archives, which are opened up for new and creative uses. Enjoyably witty, this is a most engaging read for anybody interested in the intersections of intellectual and cultural history.”
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“Free markets; non-linear systems; chaotic dynamics: our world seems always at the mercy of uncertainty but still mysteriously orderly. Sheehan and Wahrman ingeniously locate the origins of our anxieties about self-organization in the busy, bruising world of the early Enlightenment. Invisible Hands is itself something of a miracle of organization, drawing together the histories of theology and botany, political economy and epistemology, mechanics and medicine, into an unsettling but strangely satisfying whole.”
Review
andquot;Classical thinkers understood scientia and religio as qualities or virtues; beginning around the 16th century, however, the meanings gradually shifted such that both were understood as entities conceived in terms of doctrines and practices. This shift, Harrison contends, was the precondition for modern conflicts between science and religion. Considering important turning points in a long swath of Western history from the classical world to the present, Harrison analyzes past activities connected to our present understanding of these terms, including natural philosophy, theology, belief, and doctrine. Arguing cogently and persuasively on a vital topic, The Territories of Science and Religion is a much-needed scholarly work.andquot;
Review
andldquo;This is one of the most sophisticated accounts of the supposed battle between science and religion that I have read. The strategy taken is historical: Harrison argues that science and religion as we now understand them are both recent concepts, and that in the past, they were more complementary than opposed. In this way the author hopes to undermine the idea that there is an eternal and fundamental tension between the two. Superbly documented and incisively argued, this book brings a welcome new perspective on a difficult debate.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Simply put, Peter Harrisonandrsquo;sand#160;The Territories of Science and Religionand#160;is the most significant contribution to the history of science and religion since the appearance of John Hedley Brookeandrsquo;s landmark study,and#160;Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives, nearly a quarter-century ago.and#160;and#160;Drawing on his wealth of historical, philosophical, and linguistic knowledge, Harrison provides a fresh, authoritative introduction to this still all-too-often misunderstood topic.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Learned, lucid, and illuminating, Peter Harrisonandrsquo;s analysis of scientia and religio from antiquity to the present shows how their non-linear transformation from interior virtues to exteriorized bodies of knowledge made possible the creation of the later nineteenth-century myth about an allegedly timeless andlsquo;conflict between science and religion.andrsquo; One hopes that not only historians of science and religion but also contemporary perpetuators of the myth read and learn from this book.andrdquo;
Review
“In this beautifully written book, Cooper makes the case for modesty as the queen of the virtues. By focusing on Hobbes, Spinoza, and Rousseau, she shows how their philosophies rest less on the idea of the sovereign individual and the deification of human powers than on the embrace of ‘finitude’ and an awareness of our limitations. At a time when recent events have forced us to reckon yet again with the dangers of the unintended consequences of our actions, this modest case for modesty could not be more timely.”
Review
“Do we need God to be humble? If so, then it seems that secular humility is impossible, as any move towards denying God could imply deifying humanity. Cooper’s challenging and illuminating Secular Powers provides close readings from key works of Hobbes, Spinoza, and Rousseau to fashion a genealogical narrative of humility within a secular context.”
Review
andquot;Harrisonand#39;s work is an admirable contribution to the history of science and religion. Though itand#39;s aimed mainly at an academic audience, general readers will also be interested in this analysis and its challenges to assumptions about both disciplines.andquot;
Review
“[Secular Powers] will be of great interest in those dealing with the nature and development of early modern political thought. . . . Cooper’s book, with its focus on the secular critique of pride initialised by Thomas Hobbes and continued by such thinkers as Spinoza and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, hopes to offer an alternative way to understanding the development of that thought.”
Review
andquot;[Harrisonand#39;s] is a careful and nuanced scholarship, which is precisely why it doesnandrsquo;t get much play in a public discourse invested in the clickbait of the conflict metaphor. In Territories, first presented at the 2011 Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh, Harrison builds on his previous work to take on the new atheist and#39;conflictand#39; party more directly. The bulk of the book is a patient, fine-grained archaeology of the terms and#39;scienceand#39; and and#39;religion.and#39; Indeed, in some ways, Harrison has written a biography of these concepts.andquot;
Review
andquot;The complexities of ancient attitudes toward our cherished practices, which we assume had to be valued by all reasonable ages, can be found admirably laid out in Peter Harrisonandrsquo;s invaluable new tome, The Territories of Science and Religion. Harrisonandrsquo;s book deserves a place right next to all your most important critiques of modernity and genealogies of secularization.andquot;
Synopsis
The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.
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Charles Taylor is Winner of the 2007 Templeton Prize
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Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2007 Selection
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2008 Christianity Today Book Award, History/Biography Category
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A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year
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A Tablet Best Book of the Year
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2008 Henry Paolucci/Walter Bagehot Book Award, Intercollegiate Studies Institute
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A New York Times Notable Book of 2008
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A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, 2008
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Charles Taylor is winner of the 2008 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy, given by the Inamori Foundation
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The conflict between science and religion seems indelible, even eternal. Surely two such divergent views of the universe have always been in fierce opposition? Actually, thatandrsquo;s not the case, says Peter Harrison: our very concepts of science and religion are relatively recent, emerging only in the past three hundred years, and it is those very categories, rather than their underlying concepts, that constrain our understanding of how the formal study of nature relates to the religious life.
In The Territories of Science and Religion, Harrison dismantles what we think we know about the two categories, then puts it all back together again in a provocative, productive new way. By tracing the history of these concepts for the first time in parallel, he illuminates alternative boundaries and little-known relations between themandmdash;thereby making it possible for us to learn from their true history, and see other possible ways that scientific study and the religious life might relate to, influence, and mutually enrich each other.
A tour de force by a distinguished scholar working at the height of his powers, The Territories of Science and Religion promises to forever alter the way we think about these fundamental pillars of human life and experience.
Synopsis
In Invisible Hands, the historians Jonathan Sheehan and Dror Wahrman identify a defining feature of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment: the decline of God as a source of order in favor of a new model of self-organization.” Sheehan and Warhman provide a novel account of how people on the threshold of modernity understood the continuing presence in the world of apparent disorder, randomness, and chance. If God no longer actively guaranteed that order will always prevail, what or whom did? The answer, the authors argue, was a new appreciation for complexity, new understandings of causality, and new functions for the divine hand. At the foundation of this novel way of thinking was the ability to imagine complex systems--be they natural or human--as self-organizing. Invisible Hands maps and explains the intensifying presence of the languages of self-organization throughout the eighteenth century, proliferating as they did with ever greater sophistication across numerous intellectual domains and cultural arenas. For self-organization was less a theory than a field of new insights: insights into the dynamics of chance and randomness, into the relationship between agency and determinism, into the role of God in a world without hands-on providence.
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Why is the world orderly, and how does this order come to be? Human beings inhabit a multitude of apparently ordered systemsnatural, social, political, economic, cognitive, and otherswhose origins and purposes are often obscure. In the eighteenth century, older certainties about such orders, rooted in either divine providence or the mechanical operations of nature, began to fall away. In their place arose a new appreciation for the complexity of things, a new recognition of the worlds disorder and randomness, new doubts about simple relations of cause and effectbut with them also a new ability to imagine the worlds orders, whether natural or manmade, as
self-organizing. If large systems are left to their own devices, eighteenth-century Europeans increasingly came to believe, order will emerge on its own without any need for external design or direction.
In Invisible Hands, Jonathan Sheehan and Dror Wahrman trace the many appearances of the language of self-organization in the eighteenth-century West. Across an array of domains, including religion, society, philosophy, science, politics, economy, and law, they show how and why this way of thinking came into the public view, then grew in prominence and arrived at the threshold of the nineteenth century in versatile, multifarious, and often surprising forms. Offering a new synthesis of intellectual and cultural developments, Invisible Hands is a landmark contribution to the history of the Enlightenment and eighteenth-century culture.
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Secularism is usually thought to contain the project of self-deification, in which humans attack God’s authority in order to take his place, freed from all constraints. Julie E. Cooper overturns this conception through an incisive analysis of the early modern justifications for secular politics. While she agrees that secularism is a means of empowerment, she argues that we have misunderstood the sources of secular empowerment and the kinds of strength to which it aspires.
Contemporary understandings of secularism, Cooper contends, have been shaped by a limited understanding of it as a shift from vulnerability to power. But the works of the foundational thinkers of secularism tell a different story. Analyzing the writings of Hobbes, Spinoza, and Rousseau at the moment of secularity’s inception, she shows that all three understood that acknowledging one’s limitations was a condition of successful self-rule. And while all three invited humans to collectively build and sustain a political world, their invitations did not amount to self-deification. Cooper establishes that secular politics as originally conceived does not require a choice between power and vulnerability. Rather, it challenges us—today as then—to reconcile them both as essential components of our humanity.
About the Author
Jonathan Sheehan is professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture. Dror Wahrman is the Ruth N. Halls Professor of History at Indiana University–Bloomington, as well as the Vigevani Chair in European Studies and dean of humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of several books, including Mr. Collier’s Letter Racks: A Tale of Art and Illusion at the Threshold of the Modern Information Age and The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England.
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I: The Work of Reform
- 1. The Bulwarks of Belief
- 2. The Rise of the Disciplinary Society
- 3. The Great Disembedding
- 4. Modern Social Imaginaries
- 5. The Spectre of Idealism
- Part II: The Turning Point
- 6. Providential Deism
- 7. The Impersonal Order
- Part III: The Nova Effect
- 8. The Malaises of Modernity
- 9. The Dark Abyss of Time
- 10. The Expanding Universe of Unbelief
- 11. Nineteenth-Century Trajectories
- Part IV: Narratives of Secularization
- 12. The Age of Mobilization
- 13. The Age of Authenticity
- 14. Religion Today
- Part V: Conditions of Belief
- 15. The Immanent Frame
- 16. Cross Pressures
- 17. Dilemmas 1
- 18. Dilemmas 2
- 19. Unquiet Frontiers of Modernity
- 20. Conversions
- Epilogue: The Many Stories
- Notes
- Index