Philosophy on the Edge of Empire

FEATURE REVIEW ESSAY Philosophy on the Edge of Empire Robert Sibley N “Some Reflections on the Liberal Tradition in papers and a dozen books, Taylor has offered deeply Canada,” his 1946 presidential address to the thought theories for reconciling diverse cultures and even Canadian Historical Association, Frank Underhill diverse theories of knowledge. He has written on every- declared that Canada had gained considerable political thing from political theory, ethics and cultural criticism to Iautonomy and economic maturity during the war years. epistemology and linguistic theory. His book on Hegel Yet, somehow, Canadians remained philosophically remains essential reading 30 years after its publication. In immature. “[T]o the discussion of those deep underlying more recent works — Sources of the Self, Multiculturalism intellectual, moral and spiritual issues which have made and The Politics of Recognition, Modern Social Imaginaries such chaos of the contemporary world we Canadians are and Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited — making very little contribution.” He returned to this Taylor explored the genesis of the concept of selfhood, theme nearly 20 years later when he delivered the CBC’s notions of identity and authenticity and the various ways Massey Lectures, published as The Image of Confederation. westerners have “imagined” the meaning and purpose of The “lack of a philosophical mind to give guidance to the their civilization. thinking of ordinary citizens has been a great weakness If there is one thread that winds through Taylor’s of our Canadian national experience throughout our his- thought, and, arguably, binds it together, it is his critique tory,” he wrote. of “scientism.” For Taylor, the “scientific” world-view and Four decades later, would the historian be justified in its narrowly empirical understanding of human knowl- making such a claim? Not likely. Canadian philosophic edge goes astray when it attempts to interpret humans as thinkers have acquired a significant reputation both at “objects” or “things” that can be “known” for what they home and abroad since the 1960s. Will Kymlicka, most essentially are when detached from the social and Michael Ignatieff, James Tully, Waller Newell, Tom natural worlds in which they have their lives. Against this Darby, Barry Cooper: these thinkers, among others, have epistemology, Taylor has set his own project, one ground- gained audiences in places as far flung as India, Australia ed in an idea taken from French philosopher Maurice and eastern Europe. Tully’s thought on constitutionalism Merleau-Ponty: “Because we are in the world, we are con- and Kymlicka’s ideas on citizenship attract attention as far demned to meaning.” (As Nicholas H. Smith notes in away as India and Africa. Cooper and Newell publish Charles Taylor: Meaning, Morals and Modernity, “Taylor’s well-received books in the United States. Darby’s writings complex project germinates from this simple core idea.”) on globalization appear in journals and essay collections A simple notion, perhaps, but as Taylor’s latest work in eastern Europe and the United States. Ignatieff needs demonstrates, it has had immense consequences for west- no introduction, of course; before he returned to Canada ern civilization. A Secular Age extends Taylor’s search for in hopes of becoming prime minister he had an interna- the sources of meaning within modernity with a mam- tional reputation for his work on human rights, ethnic moth accounting of the rise of secularism and the retreat warfare and the new age of empire. of Christianity. Throughout the book Taylor returns However, if there is one thinker who has put paid to repeatedly to one essential question: What does it mean, Underhill’s lament, it has to be Charles Taylor, professor and how has it happened, that we, as westerners, have emeritus of philosophy at McGill University. He’s been described by Craig Calhoun as “among the most influen- Charles Taylor, A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: The tial of late 20th-century philosophers,” and credited with Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007, 874 pages helping to develop “a distinctive Canadian school of Janet Ajzenstat, The Canadian Founding: John Locke and political theory” that has gained international attention Parliament. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s with its focus on questions of citizenship, constitutional University Press, 2007, 199 pages order, justice and multiculturalism. Earlier this year, Hugh Donald Forbes, George Grant: A Guide to His Thought. Taylor reinforced this judgment by winning the 2007 Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007, 200 pages Templeton Prize for “Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities.” Alexander John Watson, Marginal Man: The Dark Vision of He was certainly a worthy choice. Over the course of Harold Innis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. a long career that has produced more than 300 scholarly 545 pages U NDERHILL R EVIEW FALL 2007 11 shifted from being an “enchanted” God-centred civiliza- appeal of science. The emergence of science and its tion to being a “disenchanted” civilization in which belief promise to make the world more knowable, and to mate- in a divinely ordered world is no longer a given? rially improve the human condition by means of that It is a daunting question, obviously, but at 874 pages knowledge, allowed people to look elsewhere besides the A Secular Age makes a monumental effort to provide an church for sources of moral and spiritual meaning. In the answer. It is not an easy read. That’s not to say the lan- age of belief, people assumed their sources of meaning- guage is burdened with academese or jargon. Taylor is a fulness, including their social and political arrangements, fine craftsman of language. There is an intimacy to his were anchored by their faith in God; in a secular age, style. You sense that his lectures would be engrossing. people believe they have alternatives to God for conduct- The difficulty lies in the density of his argument and the ing and making sense of their lives. Over the course of circumlocutionary approach to his topic. You have to pay the modern era, a God-saturated moral outlook has given close attention, practically taking each paragraph as a way to a science-based, humanist perspective that morsel that needs to be thoroughly chewed before you “consists of new conditions of belief,” including atheism, swallow and move to the next thought. or, to use Taylor’s phrase, “exclusive humanism.” In Essentially, Taylor examines the displacement of reli- other words, according to Taylor, secularism reflects a gious faith from the centre of the West’s social, political spiritual shift, not a rejection of spirituality. and cultural configurations and the emergence over the Taylor finds the sources for this shift within last half-millennium of those “modern social imaginaries” Christianity itself. He traces the retreat of Christendom to that have filled the vacuum of faithlessness. By ‘modern the high Middle Ages and the Reformation in the 16th social imaginaries,’ a phrase that became the title of a century when notions of a more personalized relationship book he published in 2004, Taylor means that “historical- between man and God began to displace rituals rooted in ly unprecedented amalgam of new practices and institu- collective worship. The Protestant Reformation, in particu- tional forms (science, technology, industrial production, lar, fostered the idea of inner or spiritual freedom in deny- urbanization); of new ways of living (individualism, secu- ing the need for institutional orders to mediate between larization, instrumental rationality); and of new forms of man and God. The idea of salvation through work rather malaise (alienation, meaninglessness, a sense of impend- than through faith further promoted individual autonomy, ing social dissolution).” According to Taylor, we now live while the rising importance of everyday life displaced the in an age of “secularity,” which, for most people, refers to pre-modern focus on the life beyond this world. the decline in religious beliefs and practices, the retreat The Enlightenment philosophes pushed the of religion from the public arena and, at the political Reformation ethos even further down the secular path. level, the separation of church and state. As he puts it: They sought to master the human world in the same way “The question I want to answer here is this: why was it the natural sciences were mastering nature. The applica- virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in tion of scientific methods of objective observation and our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this inductive calculation would allow man to remake the not only easy, but even inescapable?” human world in his own image. Thus, the philosophes Taylor distinguishes two theories regarding the effectively turned the Protestants’ desire to be free to wor- process of western secularization. One theory sees the ship as they wished into subjective worldly freedom. increasing acceptance of a scientific epistemology leading The last two centuries have taken this notion of free- to a decline in personal faith, the result of which was the dom, or individual autonomy, to the extreme. Many peo- fading of religion as a political force. Darwin’s theory of ple, perhaps most, no longer assume a spiritual dimen- evolution, for example, made it increasingly untenable to sion to the political or social structures — marriage, fam- believe in a God-created world that was only a few thou- ily, community, etc. — within which they have their lives. sand years old. A second theory flips the relationship to The desire for meaningfulness is by and large personal argue that social and institutional changes — economic, and subjective. Modern westerners now focus on political and educational — set in motion during the “authenticity” and counter-culture ideals of self-fulfill- Reformation and Enlightenment increasingly marginal- ment. We have become what Taylor calls “buffered ized religion, which resulted in the waning of personal selves,” individuals capable of acting morally and ration- faith.

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