{"id":35058,"date":"2016-04-06T09:01:34","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T14:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=35058"},"modified":"2016-04-22T10:16:24","modified_gmt":"2016-04-22T15:16:24","slug":"enchantment-and-disenchantment-charles-taylor-round-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2016\/04\/enchantment-and-disenchantment-charles-taylor-round-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Enchantment and Disenchantment: Secular Age Round 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sec(Links to\u00a0Rounds 1<\/a> and 2<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

These next several posts will cover chapters in Parts I-III, which comprise Taylor\u2019s account of the western historical trajectory towards secularity, from the enchanted world of 1500 AD to the disenchanted and pluralistic one of 2000 AD. Overall, Taylor\u2019s historical account challenges the\u00a0 \u201csubtraction\u201d stories that explain the road to modernity as one in which human beings have “lost, or sloughed off, or liberated themselves from certain earlier, confining horizons, or illusions, or limitations of knowledge\u201d [1]. According to Taylor, this naive and selective view fails to account for the \u201cpositive\u201d developments and changes in sensibility, meaning, and social imaginaries that made alternatives (like secular humanism) possible. The \u201csubtraction\u201d of God from the social and cosmic imaginary was merely one element, thought it was not linear or even, and certainly not inevitable.<\/p>\n

Taylor begins the historical trajectory in chapter 1, the \u201cBulwarks of Belief,\u201d describing the major elements of the early modern imaginary that had to be removed for exclusive humanism to emerge. One was the belief that the natural world was divinely orchestrated\u2014part of a semiotic cosmos that pointed beyond to an order and force beyond itself (God). Secondly, society was embedded in a higher time and higher reality: collective rituals, holy days, and other practices brought society into contact with the \u201chigher\u201d dimension of time or existence, as well as protected them from malevolent forces. The \u201chigher reality\u201d \u2014the Kingdom of God\u2014 made demands of spiritual transformation that competed with the demands of ordinary human life, generating a perpetual tension that society navigated by creating a hierarchical complementarity of classes\u2014some dedicated to the collective work of transformation (monks praying \u00a0behalf of society, for example) and the others dedicated to mundane needs and concerns (ruling class and laborers, for example)\u2014with safety valves like Carnival to temporarily suspend some of those demands and tensions. Thirdly, people inhabited an enchanted and porous world; the existential condition of the early modern westerners was rife with vulnerability and permeability, charged with extra-human forces, moral meaning and divine messages. \u00a0These elements of the early modern social imaginary made disbelief and disenchantment difficult and dangerous; the stakes were real, and surrendering the protection of the collective or power-charged \u201cmagical\u201d objects or practices (sacramentals and sacraments, etc.), for example, would leave one at the mercy of demonic and destructive forces that continually threatened to breach.<\/p>\n

The modern, secular social imaginary did away with these elements, though in the process generating new \u201cconstruals\u201d or backgrounds for experiencing the world. The enchanted and porous world gave way to a\u00a0 \u201cbounded\u201d self that was buffered from impersonal forces, with an inner mental world that imposed meanings on an indifferent universe; in turn, that buffered self eroded early modern sociality with its increased interiority and atomism. Notions of \u2018higher\u201d or multidimensional time gave way to unilinear, sequential, \u201cempty\u201d time; the semiotic cosmos shifted to a mechanistic universe, shorn of symbols and its normative \u201cmicro-order,\u201d instead run by exceptionless laws instrumentalized by human agents. The tension between transformation and flourishing was dissolved, alternatively by trying to raise everyone up to the same level of \u201chigher” living or transformation (i.e. the Protestant Reformation),\u00a0 or eventually by eradicating the \u201chigher reality\u201d and its demand for \u201ctransformation\u201d altogether so that only \u201cflourishing\u201d (in the demands of ordinary life) remained.<\/p>\n

Of course, none of these changes happened linearly or inevitably. The driving force behind these changes was religious<\/i> reform; the eventual birth of secular humanism from theologically-driven, piety-focused changes\u00a0 demonstrates that more than the \u201cshedding\u201d of God and belief are at play. Why religious reform? Taylor argues that\u00a0the tensions between the demands of spiritual transformation and the demands of ordinary human life, and the resulting hierarchical compromise, became a major fault line. Various reform movements within Christianity sought to close the gap by converting more people to \u201chigher gear\u201d of religious devotion (Christian humanism, pietistic movements, the rise of mendicant preachers urging more personal, interior devotion, etc.).\u00a0The Protestant Reformation was a culmination of these reforming movements, but with important differences that paved the way for secular humanism.<\/p>\n

For one, the Protestant Reformation was a central figure in the \u201cabolition of the enchanted cosmos\u201d; Luther and others definitively rejected the power of sacramentals, saints, and other salvific mechanisms as encroachments on God\u2019s sovereignty and demonic distractions from recognizing mankind\u2019s hopeless incapacity to \u201cgive satisfaction\u201d; while some received \u00a0this \u201cincapacity, countered by God\u2019s mercy\u2026as good news\u201d [2]\u2014 a release from the enormous burden of orchestrating one\u2019s salvation\u2014\u00a0new tensions resulted from Reformation\u2019s broadening of the required scope of inner transformation (no longer in terms of sacramental duties, but a transformation and consecration of all parts of life) while limiting its mechanisms to God\u2019s mercy alone. Since God\u2019s saving mercy was supposed to be visible in one\u2019s inner spiritual confidence and external daily life, and facilitate the creation of a pious, ordered society, the temptation to generate that confidence and way of life created new anxieties. \u00a0But it also generated a greater sense of empowerment to reorder the life of individuals and, increasingly, civilization writ large, through various mechanisms of \u201csocial discipline\u201d (sketched out in chapter two, the \u201cRise of the Disciplinary Society\u201d) which resulted in a \u201cgreat disembedding\u201d (chapter three), where notions of identity and society became radically reconstituted.<\/p>\n

To give a sense of where those chapters will take us, Taylor observes that the desire for order becomes a matter of human flourishing alone, rather than of serving God, and the power for order becomes a matter of human capacity, rather than God\u2019s grace. In other words, people become too good at reform. They begin to feel they can do it without God\u2019s help, and for their own self-sufficient reasons. Ironically, through Christianity\u2019s very attempts to remake the world, \u201cthe \u2018world\u2019 won after all\u201d [3].<\/p>\n

That is the nutshell version of the key differences between the medieval\/early modern social imaginary and the modern one. The next several chapters will analyze in more detail the \u201czigzag\u201d nature of these historical developments and accompanying changes in core construals of identity and social imaginaries, including\u00a0conceptions of the will, of virtue, of society\u2019s function and purpose, the natural order, and so on.<\/p>\n

My commentary on Mormonism is minimal here, since Mormonism doesn\u2019t yet fit in the historical trajectory at this point and direct discussion may introduce anachronisms or jump the gun on later chapters. Generally, though, Mormonism fits uncomfortably in this western Christian trajectory, straddling Protestant and Catholic attitudes, enchanted and secular construals. For example, Mormons do believe in places that connect us to a \u201chigher\u201d time or reality (temples as sites of God\u2019s presence) and objects with \u201cmagical\u201d powers (the protection of garments); yet we lack a liturgical calendar that is conventionally used to do this work of connecting to higher time\u2014indeed, our liturgical calendar primarily consists of the cycles of General Conference, which are firmly anchored in \u201cthis world\u201d time (prophetic counsel tailored to our historically specific context, \u201cupdated\u201d every six months). Mormon sacramentalism is also conflicted; the Book of Mormon\u2019s explanation of the sacrament is very Protestant or symbolic (an ordinance of \u201cremembrance,\u201d) but the colloquial understanding that it cleanses us of the \u201cweek\u2019s sins\u201d gestures back towards a \u201cmagical\u201d sacramental understanding (as does the belief in sealing ordinances that metaphysically bind family members together, willingly or not). We believe everyone should be living at or striving towards the same \u201chigh religious gear\u201d but\u00a0utilize\u00a0hierarchical divisions of labor in which men obtain various\u00a0ranks of priesthood offices and responsibilities (though the slow [re-]infusion of \u201cpriesthood\u201d language into Relief Society discourse lately may be a significant direction). The emphasis on signs and tokens in temple ordinances again bespeaks a Protestant \u201csymbolizing\u201d mechanism, but their essentiality points more towards Catholic soteriology. I think explanations of Mormon sacramentalism have yet to be fully fleshed out [4], but doing so could once again complicate Taylor\u2019s narrative–or our own– in interesting ways.<\/p>\n

[1] Taylor, 22.
\n[2] Taylor, 79.
\n[3] Taylor, 158.
\n[4] Terryl Givens\u2019s forthcoming second volume of his theological history of Mormonism deals with this topic directly; look out for it when it\u2019s released.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Links to\u00a0Rounds 1 and 2) These next several posts will cover chapters in Parts I-III, which comprise Taylor\u2019s account of the western historical trajectory towards secularity, from the enchanted world of 1500 AD to the disenchanted and pluralistic one of 2000 AD. Overall, Taylor\u2019s historical account challenges the\u00a0 \u201csubtraction\u201d stories that explain the road to modernity as one in which human beings have “lost, or sloughed off, or liberated themselves from certain earlier, confining horizons, or illusions, or limitations of knowledge\u201d [1]. According to Taylor, this naive and selective view fails to account for the \u201cpositive\u201d developments and changes in sensibility, meaning, and social imaginaries that made alternatives (like secular humanism) possible. The \u201csubtraction\u201d of God from the social and cosmic imaginary was merely one element, thought it was not linear or even, and certainly not inevitable. Taylor begins the historical trajectory in chapter 1, the \u201cBulwarks of Belief,\u201d describing the major elements of the early modern imaginary that had to be removed for exclusive humanism to emerge. One was the belief that the natural world was divinely orchestrated\u2014part of a semiotic cosmos that pointed beyond to an order and force beyond itself (God). Secondly, society was embedded in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10389,"featured_media":34843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,41,53,390,1312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-comparative-religion","category-latter-day-saint-thought","category-liberal-arts","category-mormon-review"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/sec-age.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35058"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35147,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35058\/revisions\/35147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}