William T. Cavanaugh and Charles Taylor On Western Secularism: A Critical Comparative Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26443/jcreor.v1i0.4Abstract
The objective of this paper is to instigate a dialogue between theologian William T. Cavanaugh and philosopher Charles Taylor on the topic of Western secularism. Both criticize what Cavanaugh calls the “myth of religious violence,” that is, the idea that the modern liberal nation-state emerged as an indispensable bulwark against religious war and violence. Under this general agreement, however, there are profound rifts when it comes to their understanding of modernity and secularization. The paper is divided in four sections, retracing step by step the argument deployed in the four chapters of Cavanaugh’s influential book The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (2009). The respective themes of these chapters are (1) the distinction between religious and secular violence, (2) the underlying dichotomy between religion and the secular, (3) the European wars of religion, and (4) the ideological function of the myth of religious violence, which raises the deeper question of the modern secular state’s legitimacy. On all counts, the challenge is to sort through the authors’ agreements and rifts so as to allow the most significant points of contention to be properly focused.
References
Bhargava, Rajeev. “Rehabilitating Secularism.” In Rethinking Secularism, edited by Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, 92–113. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Brisson, Sylvain. “Un exercice d’imagination théologique. La théologie de la non-violence chez William T. Cavanaugh.” Revue d’éthique et de théologie morale 4, no. 299 (2018): 47-59. https://doi.org/10.3917/retm.300.0047.
Carlson, John D. “Religion and Violence: Coming to Terms with Terms.” In The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence, edited by Andrew R. Murphy, 5-22. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
Casanova, José. “The Secular, Secularizations, Secularisms.” In Rethinking Secularism, edited by Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, 54–74. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Cavanaugh, William T. “The Blurred Line Between Law and Violence.” Political Theology Network, February 20, 2015. https://politicaltheology.com/the-blurred-line-between-law-and-violence-william-t-cavanaugh/).
Cavanaugh, William T. “‘A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House’: The Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State.” Modern Theology 11, no. 4 (October 1995): 397–420.
Cavanaugh, William T. Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011.
Cavanaugh, William T. The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Cavanaugh, William T. “On Being Thankful: A Rejoinder to Brad Littlejohn’s Rejoinder.” Political Theology Network, July 29, 2013, https://politicaltheology.com/on-being-thankful-a-rejoinder-to-brad- littlejohns-rejoinder/.
Cavanaugh, William T., and Craig Martin. “On the Myth of Religious Violence: An Interview with William T. Cavanaugh.” Religion Bulletin (blog). Bulletin for the Study of Religion, July 23, 2012. http://bulletin.equinoxpub.com/2012/07/on-the-myth-of-religious-violence-an-interview-with-william-t-cavanaugh/.
Cavanaugh, William T. “Puncturing Progressive Myths: Response to Brad Littlejohn.” Political Theology Network, July 5, 2013, https://politicaltheology.com/puncturing-progressive-myths-response-to-brad-littlejohn/.
Cavanaugh, William T. “Religion, Violence, Nonsense, and Power.” In The Cambridge Companion to Religion and Terrorism, edited by James R. Lewis, 23–31. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Cavanaugh, William T. Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgy as a Political Act in an Age of Global Consumerism. London: T&T Clark, 2002.
Cavanaugh, William T. Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998.
Dreyfus Hubert, and Charles Taylor. Retrieving Realism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.
Ferguson, R. Brian. “Ten Points On War.” Social Analysis 52, no. 2 (summer 2008): 32–49. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23182396.
Jaspers, Karl. Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte. Zürich: Artemis Verlag, 1949.
Kessler, Michael. “Book Reviews: The Myth of Religious Violence.” Journal of the Academy of Religion 80, no. 1 (September 2012): 813–817. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfs048.
Littlejohn, Brad. “Demythologizing Violence: A Rejoinder to Bill Cavanaugh.” Political Theology Network, July 10, 2013. https://politicaltheology.com/demythologizing-violence-a-rejoinder-to-bill-cavanaugh/.
Littlejohn, Brad. “One thought on ‘On Being Thankful: A Rejoinder to Brad Littlejohn’s Rejoinder.’” Political Theology Network, July 29, 2013. https://politicaltheology.com/demythologizing-violence-a-rejoinder-to-bill-cavanaugh/.
Maclure, Jocelyn, and Charles Taylor. Laïcité et liberté de conscience. Montréal: Boréal, 2010.
Miller, Paul. “Cavanaugh’s Aversion to the Modern State, a Response.” Global Conversations 1, no. 1 (November 2013): 62–84. http://gc.uofn.edu.
Rawls, John. Political Liberalism, expanded edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
Ricœur, Paul. De l’interprétation: essai sur Freud. Paris: Seuil, 1966.
Rosenberg, Randall S. “The Catholic Imagination and Modernity: William Cavanaugh's Theopolitical Imagination and Charles Taylor's Modern Social Imagination.” The Heythrop Journal 28, no. 6 (November 2007): 911–31. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2265.2007.00349.x
St-Laurent, Guillaume. “La religion dans les limites de la raison herméneutique. Sur la question de la vérité de la religion chez Charles Taylor.” In Religion et vérité, edited by Garth Green and Jean Grondin, 241-249. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2017.
St-Laurent, Guillaume. “La solution implicite de Charles Taylor au problème de l’historicisme transcendental.” Symposium 21, no. 2 (2017): 179–207. Doi:10.5840/symposium201721226.
Taylor, Charles. “Cross-Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate.” In Philosophical Arguments, 181-203. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Taylor, Charles. Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011.
Taylor, Charles. “Interpretation and the Sciences of Man.” In Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2, 15–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Taylor, Charles. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
Taylor, Charles. “The Polysemy of the Secular.” Social Research 76, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 1143–1166. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40972206
Taylor, Charles. “Religion is Not the Problem.” Commonweal Magazine, February 18, 2011. https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/religion-not-problem/.
Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007.
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Taylor, Charles. “Western Secularity.” In Rethinking Secularism, edited by Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, 31–53. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Taylor, Charles. “Why We Need A Radical Redefinition of Secularism.” In The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, edited by Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, 34–59. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
van der Veer, Peter. Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Warner, Michel, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, and Craig Calhoun. “Editor’s Introduction.” In Varieties of Secularisms in a Secular Age, edited by Michel Warner, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, and Craig Calhoun, 1–31. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
Downloads
Published
Versions
- 2019-12-12 (2)
- 2020-08-27 (1)
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2019 Guillaume St-Laurent
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
