Modernity and Transcendence: A Dialogue with Charles Taylor

This collection of essays explores Charles Taylor's idea of Catholic modernity, assessing its relevance to other religious traditions and reflecting on Taylor's own ideas 25 years later.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 248 pages
Publication date: 06 October 2021
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

This collection of essays delves critically into Charles Taylor's notion of Catholic modernity, focusing on the pivotal issue of the shape and role of religion in modernity. Taylor introduced this concept in his seminal 1996 essay, "A Catholic Modernity?", and it is here examined in relation to other Christian denominations and non-Christian traditions. Taylor's proposal holds the potential to become a central and encompassing perspective in understanding the relationship between modernity and religion or transcendence within each religious tradition.

Six renowned authors, hailing from diverse backgrounds, assess Taylor's Catholic modernity idea and explore whether and how extending it to other religious modernities (Anglican, Pentecostal, Confucian, Islamic, Jewish) makes sense. These authors include David Martin, Bernice Martin, Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Robert Cummings Neville, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, and Jonathan Boyarin.

Charles Taylor responds to these considerations and reflects on his own idea 25 years later. The essays in this collection offer insightful perspectives and engage in a lively debate about the future of religion in the modern world.

Weight: 382g
Dimension: 156 x 233 x 17 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9789463721189