Charles Taylor, "A Secular Age." WHY? RADIO, October 10, 2010.

Even the most religious of people understand that their belief is only one option of many; a different attitude than those who lived 500 years ago when theological commitments were so automatic as to not be questioned. What caused this radical cultural shift? This is the question Charles Taylor seeks to answer in his new book A Secular Age. In doing so, he asks about the nature of religion, the meaning of secularism, and the history of how much of the world shifted from the former approach to the latter. Join WHY? as we ask about this innovative and important topic, and connect it to Taylor's long career of influential philosophical study. WHY?'s host Jack Russell Weinstein says," I'm overwhelmed by the opportunity to talk with Charles Taylor. His work has been so important to me, but even more so, conversations with him, early in my career, helped focus my thoughts for a decade or more. I can say with confidence that not only is he a kind and accessible person, but he is also one of the smartest people I have had the good fortune to meet and learn from."

Charles Taylor is one of the most important and influential philosophers alive today. His 1992 book Sources of the Self continues to impact a great deal of contemporary philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and other disciplines. Taylor is Professor Emeritus at McGill University, a recipient of the prestigious Templeton Prize, the author of more than a dozen books, and countless scholarly articles.

Download the broadcast here: http://www.whyradioshow.org/episode21.html.

Audio: "Rethinking Secularism: Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor in Conversation," November 20, 2009.

This is audio and a transcript of the October 22 discussion between Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor, moderated by Craig Calhoun, in which the two leading philosophers discuss the place of religion in the public sphere and whether there are differences in kind between religious and secular reasons. Visit: http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2009/11/20/rethinking-secularism-jurgen-habermas-and-charles-taylor-in-conversation/ Listen to the paper presentations that preceded this discussion here: http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2009/11/02/rethinking-secularism-audio/. Add your own voice to the discussion here https://mail.cavehill.uwi.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2009/10/23/the-power-of-religion-in-the-public-sphere-open-thread/

Taylor, Charles. Interview with Chris Bloor. PHILOSOPHY NOW 74 (July / August 2009)

Charles Taylor’s intellectual journey took him from studying at McGill University in Montreal to Balliol College Oxford, then back to McGill. There he has taught philosophy and politics while writing a series of influential articles on concepts of freedom and the nature of explanation in the social sciences. His books include works on Hegel, as well as Sources of the Self: the Making Of The Modern Identity. His most recent book, A Secular Age, was published in 2007. In 2007 he was also awarded the Templeton Prize for his life’s work, which comes with an award of $1.5 million; and this year he was awarded the Kyoto Prize, which includes an award of 50 million yen ($500,000). Read the interview here: http://www.philosophynow.org/issue74/74taylor.htm.

Cfp: "A Secular Age: Tracing the Contours of Religion and Belief," Mater Dei Institute of Education, Dublin, Ireland, June 8-11, 2009.

Plenary speakers include: Professor Ruth Abbey (University of Notre Dame, USA) Professor Eamonn Conway (Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland) Professor Michael Conway (Pontifical University of Maynooth, Ireland) Professor Michael Cronin (Dublin City University, Ireland) Dr. Conor Cunningham (University of Nottingham, UK) Dr. Joseph Dunne (St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin City University, Ireland) Professor Michael Paul Gallagher (Gregorian University, Rome) Dr. Padraig Hogan (National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland) Professor Gregor McLennan (University of Bristol, UK) Professor Roland Robertson (University of Aberdeen, UK) Dr. Fainche Ryan (Mater Dei Institute of Education, Dublin City University, Ireland) The conference will explore the way in which theology and philosophy, when placed in dialogue with the social sciences, can reinvigorate public discourse. Suggested themes for papers include, but are not restricted to: Assessment of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age; The relationship between religion, belief and modernity: a critical assessment; The role of theology and philosophy in the public square; The decline of the appeal to an objective moral order and the rise of the human rights culture; Moral sources and diverse contexts today. We welcome the submission of papers by those who are currently engaged in research in this area. Papers will be presented at the parallel sessions and speakers will be allotted approximately 20 minutes presentation time followed by a 10 minute question and answer session. Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and should be prepared for blind review (please provide a separate cover sheet with your name, contact details, institutional affiliation, and level of study, i.e. graduate student or faculty member). Please do not include any personal details on the main document. Abstracts should be submitted electronically (Microsoft Word or PDF format) to: mary.kennedy@materdei.dcu.ie. The deadline for submission of abstracts is: Monday 6th April, 2009. For further information, please contact Ms. Mary Shanahan, conference organiser, at: mary.kennedy@materdei.dcu.ie or visit www.materdei.ie.

"Charles Taylor wins Kyoto Prize for Arts, Philosophy." THE GAZETTE November 11, 2008.

In Japan yesterday, renowned Montreal philosophy professor Charles Taylor was presented with the Kyoto Prize, one of the world's biggest cash awards. Often referred to as the "Japanese Nobel," the prize consists of a diploma, a 20-karat gold medal and 50 million yen ($604,000). Taylor, 76, is a professor emeritus at McGill University. He became a familiar face in Quebec over the past year through the Bouchard-Taylor Commission into religious diversity, which he co-chaired with historian and sociologist Gérard Bouchard. Taylor won the Kyoto Prize in the arts and philosophy category, one of two Canadians to pick up the award. . . . Further information is here: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=743d35f2-53af-46c5-bac7-462781cda595.

Morgan, Michael L. "Review of Charles Taylor's THE SECULAR AGE." NDPR (August 2008).

Taylor, Charles. The Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007. This is a very important book and quite an extraordinary one. Some years ago, a colleague of mine began a review with a sentence that I have always wanted to use myself: "if I had written this book, I would die a happy man." The sentiment expressed by this sentence, that the book being reviewed has about it a kind of greatness and worth such that authoring it could easily count as the culmination of a fully worthwhile life, is one that I admit to feeling about Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age. Taylor of course is well-known for his books on psychological explanation, Hegel, communitarian political philosophy, ethics and moral philosophy, and much else. Arguably he is one of the most influential English- language philosophers of the past half century. The scope of his thought is impressive -- history, political theory, ethics and moral philosophy, art, epistemology, and religion. But more to the point, it is the special way in which Taylor has bridged the gap between continental and analytic philosophy that is important and the way that in the course of bridging that gap he has shaped an historically rich and philosophically powerful conception of the modern identity and its social and cultural matrices. The current work is a much-expanded version of Taylor's Gifford Lectures and a natural successor to his earlier book Sources of the Self. In that book, Taylor identified the major features of our moral-political-religious identity in the Western world and showed how those features developed and crystallized out of various historical processes. He also framed the demands of such an identity broadly in terms of what he there called "moral sources" in order to display various modern options for what empowers and inspires our moral sensibilities. I am convinced, moreover, that in that work Taylor ultimately endorses the ways in which a religious moral source can and should be called upon to satisfy our needs as moral and political selves in the modern world. In the end, that is, Sources of the Self is both an exploration of who we are as modern selves and an apology for an ethics that refers to transcendence and is religious, and specifically Christian in spirit. But the focus of Sources of the Self is ethical and political, even if its conclusions, as I read it, are spiritual and religious, even if, that is, it argues that only a transcendent moral source is sufficient to inspire and empower the moral order that we in fact occupy. This is where A Secular Age constitutes a supplement to the earlier work. In the new book Taylor explores the religious -- and specifically the Christian -- character of our age and the various options available to believers and non-believers in our time. Moreover, not only does he provide a narrative of how these options arose and developed, from 1500 to the present, but he also examines the challenges they face and the dialectical ways in which these options are related to their cultural and political context, our needs and values, and one another. In the course of this account, furthermore, Taylor occasionally identifies his own proclivities and commitments, his own receptivity to transcendence and engagement with the historical, cultural, and political challenges we all face. Along the way, of course, we are introduced to a variety of ideal types of religious and non-religious ways of life, but this is no disinterested scholarly inquiry, no disengaged charting of territory or classification. It is rather an elaborate and committed mapping of territory for inhabitants by a co-inhabitant and a restrained eulogy to a particular domicile by one who occupies it. A Secular Age is a philosophical paean to one form of Christian moral and political life. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=13905.