A Secular Age

A Secular Age engages with broader academic and philosophical discussions that include key figures such as Max Weber and Jürgen Habermas, whose theories on rationalization, disenchantment, and the public sphere provide context and contrast to Taylor’s arguments. Taylor challenges the “subtraction stories” of secularization, which suggest that modernity sheds old superstitions to reveal a more rational human nature. Instead, secularism results from new constructions of self-understanding and practices that have reshaped how people experience belief and unbelief. This perspective places Taylor’s work in dialogue with Weber and Habermas and other thinkers concerned with the existential implications of modernity, such as Nietzsche and Foucault.

Max Weber’s concepts of rationalization and disenchantment are crucial to understanding the context of A Secular Age. Weber describes the process of rationalization as the growing dominance of reason and systematic thinking in various spheres of life, which gradually diminishes the role of religion and magic in explaining the world. This leads to Weber’s idea, commonly translated as the “disenchantment” of the world, where society sidelines life’s spiritual and mystical aspects in favor of a more calculative, objective approach.