Religion and The Project of Autonomy

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Karl E. Smith Thesis Eleven 2007; 91; 27 DOI: 10.1177/0725513607082000 The online version of this article can be found at: http://the.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/91/1/27
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RELIGION AND THE PROJECT OF AUTONOMY

Karl E. Smith
ABSTRACT Despite his own observations that autonomy is never complete, never once-and-for-all in short, that autonomy is always relatively more-orless; or rather, human subjects, institutions and societies can only ever be more-or-less autonomous, and thus more-or-less heteronomous Castoriadis nevertheless polarizes autonomy and heteronomy. From the polarized perspective, then, he maintains that religion is intrinsically heteronomous, and thus intrinsically antithetical to the project of autonomy. By exploring Taylors more nuanced understanding of the varieties of religious experience, I argue in this article that there must be room for religious belief within an autonomous society, and that religiosity per se is not incompatible with the project of creating an autonomous society. KEYWORDS Charles Taylor Cornelius Castoriadis project of autonomy relative autonomy religious experience
Castoriadiss project of autonomy aims to institute an autonomous society: one that clearly and lucidly posits its own nomoi (laws, norms, institutions) in the clear knowledge that these nomoi have no foundations outside of the fact that society has clearly and lucidly adopted these particular nomoi. From this point of view, he maintains that religion is intrinsically antithetical to the project of autonomy: religion is always and everywhere the manifestation of societys refusal to accept that it is itself the ultimate grounds for nomos. That is, for Castoriadis, religion arises from the attempt to ground nomos in some extra-social authority such as God or the gods, the ancestors, tradition or nature. According to Agnes Heller, Castoriadis once said that if she had been brought up in the Greek Orthodox Church she would share his allergy to religion.1 Although Heller understood the comment to be made in jest, she also recognized more than a kernel of truth in the confession. Regardless of
Thesis Eleven, Number 91, November 2007: 2747 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) Copyright 2007 SAGE Publications and Thesis Eleven Co-op Ltd DOI: 10.1177/0725513607082000
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Thesis Eleven (Number 91 2007)
his reasoning as to why he is allergic to religion, religion constitutes not an absence but a eld of social inquiry about which his mind was already made up before he commenced any analysis. Castoriadis recognizes, following Durkheim, that religion is more than simply the glue that binds society together; it is society (1997b: 31819).2 This understanding is central to his argument that only two societies in history have broken free of a heteronomous institution. At the same time, his rejection of religion and refusal to allow any place for religion within his project of autonomy clearly indicates that although religion is society in religious societies, this is not the only way that society can be instituted. Nor, for him, is it an acceptable way (see 1997b: 223). Taylors claim that modern society may require a certain deity if it is to avoid collapsing in the face of its ongoing crises (1989: 5201) contrasts sharply with Castoriadiss position. We can roughly characterize these two positions as: a humanist who has no room and will make no place for a god, and a theist who believes that human beings and society have a deepseated need for a god of some sort. My aim is to play these two perspectives off against one another to nd a middle ground. To do so, it is necessary to move back and forth across the individual and social levels of analysis, to ascertain the extent to which religious expression may be seen to be autonomous and hence what space there is for religious expression within an autonomous society. I do not intend any challenge, however, to Castoriadiss claim that a religious society is intrinsically not autonomous. In other words, a religiously instituted society is clearly a heteronomously instituted society. I argue, however, that an autonomously instituted society not only need not but cannot exclude all forms of religious expression. It is worth beginning with an examination of Castoriadiss and Taylors competing views of religious experience. Castoriadis refuses to accept any distinction between something like the essential teaching or core message of a religion and its historical institution. He says he cannot overlook the atrocities of the Inquisition or the pogroms on the basis that they are not true to the essential core values of Christianity (1987: 10; 1997a: 25). Thus, for Castoriadis, Christianity, Islam and other religions are reducible to their social institutions, the church or Ummah, for example. In contrast, Taylor accepts, with qualications, William Jamess distinction between primary religious experience and the secondary accounts that are instituted and enshrined in the church (2002: ch. 1).3 His reservations on this score amount to similarly splitting the difference with James, whose highly individualistic account of religious experience discounts and rejects the importance or efcacy of the church the collective in transmitting the direct experience of the divine. In Taylors representation of James, Jamess depiction of the church has similarities to Castoriadiss view. But James accepts the veracity of direct (individual) religious experience, thereby radically departing from Castoriadiss more narrow view that such accounts are never more than
Smith: Religion and the Project of Autonomy
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(delusional) imaginary signications that serve to cover over the Abyss of Being. Taylors account of Jamess grappling with the tension between rationalistic agnosticism and religious belief is valuable in the search for a middle ground. Taylor describes James as our great philosopher of the cusp, the one who tells us more than anyone what its like to stand in that open space [between agnosticism and faith] and feel the winds pulling you now here, now there (2002: 59). Whether James tells us more than anyone is neither here nor there for present purposes what is important is that neither Castoriadis nor Taylor stand on this cusp. Taylor, however, continuously attempts to understand the other side acknowledging its strengths and merits to understand what makes it compelling to those who dwell there, while Castoriadis dismisses the other as intrinsically erroneous. According to Taylor, for James this is an epistemological problem, which rationalistic agnostics can see only one way out of: suspend belief until there is sufcient evidence of the deitys existence (2002: 445). This is the natural scientists (positivists) approach, which Taylor puts dramatically as: We can win the right to believe a hypothesis only by rst treating it with maximum suspicion and hostility (2002: 46). Despite his staunch opposition to Jamess/Taylors alternative, it would be mistaken to align Castoriadis with this view. To begin with, his justication for advocating the project of autonomy as a revolutionary project hinges on his epistemology, which entails the impossibility of knowledge adequate to the task of justifying any such project (1987: 98; 1991: 168, 172). From this perspective he cannot object in principle to Jamess/Taylors counter position to the scientic agnostic:
there are some domains in which truths will be hidden from us unless we go at least halfway toward them. Do you like me or not? If I am determined to test this by adopting a stance of maximum distance and suspicion, the chances are that I will forfeit the chance of a positive answer. An analogous phenomenon on the scale of the whole society is social trust: doubt it root and branch, and you will destroy it. (Taylor, 2002: 46)
Similar concerns about social trust are reected in Castoriadiss laments that in contemporary society the people see themselves as set against the government in an us-and-them relationship, which typically entails alienation from the law. Since, in principle, in a democratic society the law is our law, not their law, being alienated in this fashion is to be heteronomously instituted (1987: 103), and hence, undemocratic.4 It is also reected in his repeated refrain that the crisis of contemporary Western societies stems from a loss of shared values, where the only value shared is the desire for more and more things (1993: 109), and in his observation that opinion polls in recent decades indicate a deep distrust and cynicism regarding all instituted powers (1997b: 40). Hence, when James argues that the agnostics argument
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for dispassionate certainty is not dispassionate at all, but is in fact overridden by fear the fear of being mistaken, the fear of looking foolish for believing in unfounded things, etc. Castoriadis would agree that their reasoned arguments against belief are, and will forever remain, inadequate. In short, Castoriadis is not agnostic, but atheist. He does believe but, contra Taylor and James, what he believes is that there is no god and no source of foundations for nomos beyond society itself. To the extent that this belief can have any rational foundations, it is derived from his ontology of radical selfcreation, which is in turn linked to his reduction of religion to institutional forms. This is a different problem from the one that James teases out in his examination of the relative merits of the debate between agnostic scepticism and belief. Before we look more closely at this, however, it is worth following Taylors account of James a bit further. According to Taylor, James caricatures the materialist sceptics ethical view that:
it is wrong, uncourageous, unmanly, a kind of self-indulgent cheating, to have recourse to this kind of interpretation, which we know appeals to something in us, offers comfort, or meaning, and which we should therefore fend off, unless absolutely driven to them by the evidence, which is manifestly not the case. The position holds rm because it locks together a scientic-epistemological view with a moral one. (Taylor, 2002: 54)
It is tempting to credit a similar view to Castoriadis, but that would also be mistaken. It is clearly the view of Nietzsche, and is characteristic of neo-Nietzscheans (Taylor, 1999: 279). But it is not Castoriadiss view. His contention is that belief in a deity (or any other religious source of social norms) is wrong, but his concern is not moral so much as epistemological, ontological and pragmatic; for him, it is fallacious, and therefore delusional/ dysfunctional, to locate the source of nomos in anything outside of society itself. Like Nietzsche, Castoriadis contends that we need to have the courage to face up to living on the brink of the Abyss, living in the Chaos, grounding our nomos on the Groundless not because it is unmanly or uncourageous or that we are in some way less noble for not doing so, but because it is the only true state of being once we strip away the mystications and occlusions that have been instituted to give meaning to this situation. Nevertheless, his militant atheist position leads him to a polemical and narrowsighted rejection of religion which seems in principle to deny the right to believe (see Taylor, 2002: 58) in various things that are, in his view, antithetical to autonomy (1997b: 223). My point here is that although Castoriadis polarizes autonomy and heteronomy as absolute opposites, there always is and always will be some lingering heteronomy within autonomy it cannot be eradicated wholly or nally or once-and-for-all (Smith, 2006: 193ff.). Despite its many shortcomings, one of the founding principles of actually existing democratic society
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is religious tolerance and despite Castoriadiss view of religion, he shares the view that the freedom that the project of autonomy seeks is above all freedom for those who think otherwise (1997b: 78). Furthermore, despite his repeated arguments that religion is intrinsically incompatible with the project of autonomy, as we will see, his analysis of Sophocles Antigone elucidates a way of thinking that weaves together Castoriadiss sense of autonomy as radical self-creation with a belief in the gods and their laws (2006: 356) and this precisely through the radical distinction of nomos and physis that he attributes to the Greeks, a separation of the self-created laws of anthropos from the cosmic, divine or natural laws of the physical universe (2006: 289, 324). At the same time we must be clear that although Castoriadis overgeneralizes his overly restrictive view of religion, it is indisputable that at least some religious orientations are intrinsically incompatible with the project of autonomy. Any attempt to institute social norms on the grounds/authority of revealed scriptures, divine law or the like is heteronomous. But if, as I have argued elsewhere (Smith, 2006; cf. Adams, 2006), heteronomy is never wholly absent from any social institution, then clearly we must nd some way to weave together heteronomous and autonomous norms and values. Here Taylors more considered view of the matter can help us to make important distinctions when considering the varieties of religious experience/ expression, and which of these might be compatible with an autonomous society. Castoriadis denes the modern world as constituted in the tension between the competing projects of autonomy and rational-mastery (1997b: 43). Although both projects have premodern antecedents, modernity is typically dened by the radically new ways in which these projects come to be expressed in Europe from about the 15th century. Castoriadis tends to credit both of these outlooks to the Enlightenment, disregarding the Romanticist dimensions in each. More importantly, though, in treating modernity as a radical break from the past, Castoriadis is hostile towards those lingering premodern tendencies that continue to be constitutive of modernity. The manifestations of this hostility in his work occasionally seem to imply something like Habermass notion of an unnished project in the sense of having not yet completely thrown off its premodern heritage even though Castoriadis rejects this notion as both monological and implying that the project might be nishable (Arnason, 1991; 1997b: 43). Here, Taylors analysis is more nuanced and thus adds richness to our understanding. Taylor identies three main constituents of the modern world: a Christian theism that grounds moral standards; disengaged reason and naturalism (which have taken primarily scientic form); and Romanticist expressivism (1989: 495). Some sort of autonomy is a necessary condition for the last two of these. There is undoubtedly an inherent contradiction as Castoriadis maintains between autonomy and certain historical tendencies of the
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Christian churches. But Taylors position suggests that it is mistaken to conclude from this that autonomy is incompatible with religion per se. It is also clear, as many have argued, that religion was not supplanted by the rise of scientic reason or romantic expressivism, but has been complemented/ supplemented in a more-or-less conictual relationship. Taylor takes several different approaches to understanding religions lingering impact and its various manifestations. In one approach, the three constituents of modernity outlined above translate into a three-cornered battle that characterizes modern culture: There are secular humanists, there are neo-Nietzscheans, and there are those who acknowledge some good beyond life (1999: 29).5 In another, he analyses varieties of modern religious culture according to a tripartite Durkheimian scheme, giving us paleoDurkheimian, neo-Durkheimian and post-Durkheimian orientations to the relationship between religion and the state/society (Taylor, 2002). Each of these approaches to the problem is deserving of extended consideration, for each sheds different light on both our modern predicament and the relationship between autonomy and religion. The three corners of the battle do not directly correspond with the three constitutive sources of modern values (Christianity, disengaged reason, expressivism): each party may derive certain values from each of the three sets of sources outlined even when they explicitly deny drawing on one or another of the said sources. For the purposes of Taylors argument, secular humanists are those who maintain that human life itself is the highest good, thereby rejecting or denying any transcendental goods any goods beyond life itself. Taylor repeatedly explores the ways in which this outlook is selfcontradictory, if not self-defeating, but those details need not concern us here (see Taylor, 1989, 1991, 1999, 2002, 2005). What does concern us here is Taylors argument that, despite protestations to the contrary, the great achievements of secular humanist society most notably the culture of afrmative universal human rights are rmly grounded in the Christian heritage of the modern world (1999: 16ff.). Taylors concern is that modern cultures self-identied grounding in humanism is inadequate to its purpose. Part of what he sees as problematic here is that without some higher good, something beyond life itself, humanism is reduced to the pursuit of human ourishing without limit (1999: 212), thus lending itself to the project of rational-mastery and its accompanying hubris. While the secular humanists are, according to Taylor, inclined to overlook, deny or downplay the lingering impact of their Christian heritage, the neo-Nietzscheans do not make this mistake. Indeed, they reject both the humanist and theistic alternatives on the grounds that their culture of benevolence is life- or vitality-denying in myriad ways. Sufce to say that Taylor does not accept their view that life does not have value in-itself (1999: 27). Finally, there are those who believe that there is something beyond life that is of ultimate value. Here Taylor is very specic about where he
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stands. Noting that for many the idea of something beyond life refers to an afterlife, or eternal life in one of its various guises, he means something more like the point of things isnt exhausted by life, the fullness of life, even the goodness of life (1999: 20). He refers to something that matters beyond life, on which life itself originally draws, but which is good in-itself, not just because it sustains life (for then it wouldnt actually be beyond) (1999: 20). Taylor observes that the effect of this understanding is a radical decentring of the self, in relation to God (1999: 21). Here, Taylors personal bias is more pronounced than usual, for he makes this statement in drawing parallels between the beyond life attitudes of Buddhism and Christianity (cf. Connolly, 2004: 174). Since there is no god in Buddhism,6 it would be more generally correct to speak of a radical decentring of the self in relation to that which is beyond life.7 This becomes more pronounced when, having discussed the pitfalls of both ungrounded ideals (secular humanist) and strongly grounded ideals (a deity) i.e., the propensity for both to slide into something trivial, ugly, or downright dangerous and destructive (1999: 34) Taylor describes one of the ways that Christian spirituality points to a way out of these dilemmas.
It can be described in two ways: either as a love or compassion which is unconditional that is, not based on what you, the recipient, have made of yourself or as one based on what you are most profoundly, a being in the image of God. They obviously amount to the same thing. (1999: 35)
Clearly these only amount to the same thing from a very particular theistic perspective. Again, Buddhism espouses unconditional compassion of the rst type while denying the existence of a god.8 We need go no further than Taylors lecture A Catholic Modernity? (1999) to discern that unconditional love can also be found among humanists at least among those who have embraced and advanced the culture of universal human rights.9 Hence it remains unclear, and thus unconvincing, how grounding this love in a faith in God is in anyway more adequate than the alternative. But to be clear about this, we must also consider the (again very real) possibility of grounding the exclusive humanist position in something beyond life without introducing a deity for the purpose. Or rather, of grounding our position in life itself, rather than a more narrowly dened anthropocentric view of life, or an even more narrowly dened atomistic individualist attitude to the sanctity of my life .10 Arguably, Castoriadiss project of autonomy might also be cast in terms of unconditional love for (at least) human life with its primary concern being for the collective life of humanity, rather than the particular life of any individual (2006: 36 n.31). Castoriadis, however, does not use the language of love, and rejects the transcendent as having any existence beyond imaginary signication but his project clearly points to the importance of something beyond any particular human life. This is implicit in his discussions of the current ecological crisis (e.g. 1997a: 239ff.), as well
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as his understanding that the autonomous society will not be realized in his lifetime that is, he pursues this project for the good of future generations, a good beyond himself and his life (2006: 29, 36 n.31). Granted, others who have followed a similar approach, as Taylor rightly notes, have produced some of the most horric life-denying totalitarian regimes that have ever existed but again, this is also true of the more extreme manifestations of various religions, as Taylor also recognizes (1999: 35). Returning to the tension between human ourishing and the good beyond life, those who believe in some deity beyond life can, following Weber, be divided into two groups, which, roughly speaking, we might term world-rejecting and world-embracing (1977 [1948]: 323ff.).11 Taylor distinguishes them in terms of whether they embrace human ourishing in this world, or see it as an obstacle to ourishing in the after-life. He roughly denes these two poles according to whether they see any good to have come from the increasing secularization of modern society. It almost goes without saying that the world-rejecting believers see modernity humanism, materialism, consumerism, liberalism as a slide towards evil, as moving ever further away from the good. Taylor locates himself in the other category. This is an important positioning, but it depends on the recognition of the category distinction between human ourishing as good or obstacle, for otherwise we are left with little option but to accept something like Ferraras depiction of Taylor as seeking to return us to some sort of premodern orthodoxy (1998: 4). But Taylors position is far too complex and nuanced to be reduced to any simple monological conception of religion. For example, he argues that modernity has in fact advanced the gospels (i.e. Christian values) in ways that were probably not possible under Christendom (1999: 18), and suggests that secularization might perhaps have been a necessary condition to more fully realizing these values. That is, under the domain of one unifying church, Christianity became increasingly exclusive and didactic. The rupture of the Reformation and ensuing multiplication of Christian faiths can be seen as freeing up modes of religious expression as well as extending the universal message of the gospels in various ways. Yet Taylor is concerned that this pluralization risks going too far, if it has not already done so. Here his concerns overlap once again with Castoriadiss. For example, his reservations about the fragmentation of religious orientations seem to be driven by the same concerns about the effects on social solidarity and the social order. But they differ completely on what should be done about it: for Castoriadis we should set aside all things beyond society and accept that we are the only ones who can posit the nomos that structures our world. He is adamant that there is no foundation for nomos outside of us, its creators. On the rst point, Taylor seems to be largely in agreement, although he never directly says so. At the same time, to my knowledge, he never suggests that his deity is a lawgiver it is rather love or agape (1999: 35). And this is the principle upon which he thinks we
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should found nomos a universal love as enshrined in the gospels and in the universal declaration of human rights, rather than an exclusive love of our clan or fellow Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, etc., or the pursuit of valour and glory through conquest, or other similar dispensations as practiced throughout most of human history (cf. Castoriadis, 1997b: 24ff. on selfafrmation and othering). There may be something else in Taylors position which renders it incompatible with Castoriadiss project of autonomy, but to the extent that he has clearly expressed his view of God and his belief that such a God might provide the social glue for modern society, it does not seem to be incompatible with Castoriadiss project (although Castoriadis would argue that it is). Let me explain. Castoriadiss analyses of Antigone points to the necessity of weaving together competing laws (such as gods, natures and societys) and competing visions of what is right or just (as in Antigones and Creons) in order to move towards the good (2006: 247). He outlines how, for Sophocles, to believe that you are the only one who thinks right in any situation is hubris. In the conict between Antigone and Creon, neither is prepared to, or able to, appreciate the others perspective they cannot weave together their differing views. Creons attachment to what he holds as right is hubris, but so too is Antigones deance of the law in defence of her right [good]. In his discussion of Sophocles portrayal of the essence of human being, Castoriadis is clearly sensitive to the tragedy of the human condition, to the fact we are both mortal and self-creating. The latter means that we are free to transform ourselves; and the former that we are not free to do just whatever we will.12 Castoriadis rejects all religious and other extra-social (explanatory/ determining) sources of nomos because they occlude this self-creative dimension; under their inuence we are unable to act in the clear and lucid knowledge that the laws we live under are the ones we choose. Yet at the same time he is clear that there are other laws at work in the world which we do not create, including (at least some of) those that have variously been called the laws of the gods and the laws of nature (2006: 35). In this respect, mortality might fall under the broader law of creation and destruction. At the individual level, the social law has similar characteristics. Notwithstanding the argument that in an autonomous society each individual would have a say in the formulation and institution of laws each would be entitled to call these laws into question (1987: 101ff.) once debated and decided, it would then be incumbent on each individual citizen to comply with them (as Antigone apparently should have) until they are changed. We should note here that there are two different ways we might interpret this moment in history/Greek tragedy. One is to see it as a transitional moment marked by a clash between the newly created autonomous polis and the earlier traditions of gods and heroes. The other is that this is a privileged moment for bringing out certain timeless truths about the human condition and its ontological framework. Castoriadiss treatment can be read
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sometimes one way, sometimes the other. Clearly, his carte blanche rejection of all things religious would suggest the former interpretation, a clash between the radically new autonomy and the traditional heteronomies. Yet his account of Antigone also strongly suggests the timeless truths and provides an opening for arguing with Castoriadis against himself. This perspective of timeless truths provides an opening to a more pluralistic view of the world than we nd in Castoriadiss more restrictive interpretations of autonomy and religion, allowing for the permanent coexistence of fundamentally different world-views, anthropologies, etc. Castoriadiss analysis of Antigone suggests that it is possible to maintain an ontology of radical selfcreation and that nomos is therefore radically ungrounded even while believing that there is a God or gods who may or may not strike us down once in a while for hubris.13 Let us now turn to Taylors second approach to understanding the varieties of modern religious culture; the three Durkheimian stages (Taylor, 2002). In my earlier discussion of Taylors presentation of James, the focus was on differentiating religious experience from religious institutions. While this provides important insights into the tension between science and faith, and into the nature of religious experience itself, Taylor contends that James gets certain things wrong. Jamess embeddedness in a Protestant world of understanding leaves him unable to come to terms with the devotional nature of Catholicism, and his individualism obstructs his view of the corporate or collective dimensions of religious experience (2002: 23). It is the signicant historical changes that have occurred in this domain that lend themselves to Taylors characterization of three types of relationship between religion and society: paleo-, neo-, and post-Durkheimian. We can loosely position these on a spectrum of historical change from greater unity (a society organized on a unifying principle) to greater plurality (and a corresponding principle of pluralism). It must be stressed that while there is a chronological dimension to the development of these three perspectives, Taylors point is that all three continue to animate the contemporary landscape (2002: 89). There is nevertheless a rough correlation between these and what we might more commonly refer to as premodern, modern, and postmodern orientations with the qualier that the latter distinctions are typically associated with the move away from religion, whereas Taylors point is precisely that these Durkheimian religious orientations remain deeply embedded in and are signicantly constitutive of modernity. Premodern religion typically refers to an enchanted world, to societies in which the presence of God was unavoidable; authority itself was bound up with the divine, and various invocations of God were inseparable from public life (Taylor, 2002: 64). This is the straight Durkheimian situation, in which religion is society. Taylor notes that this form was not singular; but for the purposes of understanding the development of Western modernity
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what is of importance is an overall change in the orientation that occurred between the 16th and 19th centuries that change which Weber identied as disenchantment, where the strong contrast between sacred and profane began to weaken (Taylor, 2002: 65; 1991: 46, 14). Jamess position is arrived at in an already disenchanted Protestant world, with increasing individualism (that is, a weaker collective) and greater separation between the church and state. When Taylor (2002: 69) comments that James couldnt comprehend Catholicism, his point is that these relationships were not yet as disenchanted in Catholic societies the collective was not yet as weakened nor the church yet divorced from the state. These societies were certainly also affected by the Reformation and the Enlightenment, and in such a way that the old hierarchical order was increasingly compromised; but there was nevertheless a sense of the sacredness of the collective and its relationship to the monarch that endured long after the dehierarchization and equalization of Protestant (Anglophone) societies (2002: 701). Taylor refers to this as a baroque compromise, which is central to the paleo-Durkheimian view. What is most important here is that even as the world became less enchanted and certain facets of the relationship between the church and state were increasingly called into question, it was still understood that the people were united in one church, as the people of one God, and thus it still made sense to demand that people be forcibly integrated to the church, to be rightly connected to God (2002: 94). The paleo phase corresponds to a situation in which a sense of the ontic dependence of the state on God and higher times is still alive, even though it may be weakened by disenchantment and an instrumental spirit (2002: 76). We need not elaborate this position further; sufce to note that this forcible integration is the attitude that underpinned the Inquisition, the witch hunts, etc.14 and is an attitude that continues today in various forms of religious literalism.15 But in secular or materialist guises, it also drove the totalitarian projects of the early 20th century. This mode of religious belief, with its ontic dependence on God, is clearly incompatible with Castoriadiss project of autonomy as ungrounded self-institution; but as Taylor demonstrates, it is erroneous to reduce all religion to this form. The neo-Durkheimian dispensation refers to the denominationalism characteristic of the early United States in particular and the Anglophone world more generally. It involves an important step toward the individual and the right of choice (2002: 94). This is not, though, the radically individualistic and pluralistic choice that we nd later in the post-Durkheimian dispensation. It is, rather, sects, schisms and segmentations, within each of which orthodoxies are enforced. This position retains a sense of belonging to an overarching church and thus a unifying faith but allows different paths towards living this faith. In fact, it goes further than allowing and begins to demand that one nd ones own path towards spirituality, and elect to worship with those who have chosen the same path. Here Webers
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notion of a calling to a particular vocation takes on broader dimensions, manifesting now as a calling to the spiritual path that best expresses ones own sense of the divine. Hence whereas the paleo-Durkheimian church was monological, the neo-Durkheimian church begins to open towards increasing plurality of religious practice and adherence. Importantly, however, those who live under this schema remain somewhat exclusive or rather, the range of what is deemed acceptable here, although far broader than under its predecessor, is still limited; in the particular context in question, limited to various forms of Christian worship and for much of its history, this excluded Roman Catholic and Orthodox versions. This is the context in which the pre-eminently American phenomenon that Bellah et al. called civil religion arises (Taylor, 2002: 68) the people continue to be united under God, and the site of the sacred shifts from any particular religious group to the institutions of the collective. While there is a de jure separation of church and state, the sense of belonging to group and confession are fused, and the moral issues of the groups history tend to be coded in religious categories (2002: 78). At the same time, ones (confessional) faith is no longer inherited or inscribed in the same way as before each member of the society is now expected to choose their own beliefs and practices for themselves, to search out and adopt that set of practices and beliefs that rings truest for the individual. The advent of this neoDurkheimian orientation clearly marks a rupture with prevailing norms, a rupture which was then instituted as perpetual rupture. That is, each individual comes to be expected to affect their own rupture with the past in the process of creating their own institutions for their own lives. Here, then, except for the fact that these individuals continue to institute heteronomies, the practice and orientation is strongly suggestive of Castoriadiss project of autonomy as interrogation of social imaginary signications (1991: 163). The greatest obstacle to full compatibility, perhaps, lies in the continuing exclusion of those who choose radically different (i.e. non-Christian) orientations but this seems little different from a project of autonomy that would exclude those who choose to cultivate extra-social sources of the good. According to Taylor, resistance to a paleo-Durkheimian order as in France and Ireland (Taylor, 2002: 78), for example tended to take the form of radical unbelief (or better, radical atheism) while in those Anglophone societies where the churchs grip on the practitioners beliefs and practices loosened, resistance to particular manifestations of religious belief was more likely to take the form of subtle reinterpretations. He suggests that in societies where the demand for adherence to a singular doctrine weakened, the decline in belief and practice witnessed in more orthodox societies was not as prominent (Taylor, 2002: 78). In other words, where a monological form of adherence is dominant, resistance is more likely to nd expression in absolute rejection, whereas when a plurality of forms is accepted as the norm, alternatives can more readily continue to be expressed from within the fold, so to speak.
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Taylor not only recognizes the centrality of individualism to the neoDurkheimian outlook, he also sees the inuence of expressivism (1985: 223), which promoted the notion that each must seek their own path toward the divine, in order to better express their own sense of spirituality and the sacred (Taylor, 2002: 80), though this was permitted only within a delimited sphere of expressions. Similarly, on another register, while each was free to forge their own road to happiness (specically in the US context), a patriotic devotion to the collective, the nation, was largely non-negotiable. We can foreshadow discussion of the post-Durkheimian by observing that even with the loosening of the limits of acceptable modes of expression, and acceptable pursuits of happiness, in the US (and not only the US) today, unqualied devotion to the nation remains an overriding (albeit not uncontested) hypergood. While individualist and expressivist forces ruptured the paleoDurkheimian and shaped the neo-Durkheimian worlds, they became even more central as the driving forces of the post-Durkheimian world. The boundaries and limits maintained in the neo- orientation were gradually pushed back, loosened up, and in many ways collapsed altogether. The growth of non-Christian spiritualities and the ever-expanding pool of nonbelievers (including both atheists and agnostics) would become but a small part of the plethora of practices, orientations and outlooks that are commonplace today. What Taylor referred to as a three- or four-cornered battle of modernity grew in magnitude during the neo- phase, and exploded into a many-sided contest in the late 20th century the post-Durkheimian period. It is impossible to pin down the precise point of transition from the neo- to post-Durkheimian orientations. Taylor cites Virginia Woolfs famous observation that the world changed around December 1910 (2002: 84), but also suggests that the hinge moment in this particular shift came about during the individuating revolution of the 1960s (2002: 80). We might best understand the process as an uneven development sometimes gradual, sometimes occurring in ts and starts in which the new coexists with the old (2002: 89). The rst ruptures of modernity inaugurate an individuating process which gradually develops and disseminates both theoretically and concretely. It takes on new impetus and new directions with the rst formulation of expressivism, and further disseminates, becoming more deeply enshrined in the social imaginary, gradually displacing older interpretations of the human place in the universe. Social institutions transform in accordance with new orientations and understandings, providing further impetus for change and the deeper entanglement of new dispensations in everyday life. Taylor repeatedly argues that this development should not be seen to be in any way inevitable (1989: 189), and Castoriadis is adamant that the process was not determined (1987: 184; 1997a: 2012; 1997b: 75, 79, 3268). We can nevertheless imagine this unfolding as a series of explosive ruptures (some larger than others, some having more enduring impact than others)
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spreading out from an inaugural rupture in the social imaginary, each producing shockwaves that spark new ruptures. The post-Durkheimian dispensation thus refers to this ruptured or fractured world; or to put a more positive spin on it, a world of increasing pluralism. Taylor sees this as a direct result of the invention of exclusive humanism in the 18th century which fractured Western culture between religion and areligion (2002: 105). The reactions to this fracture multiplied the options in all directions (2002: 105). Amongst the drivers of this multiplying fragmentation is the (Jamesianesque) critique of institutionalized religion, from both inside and outside of the religious community, such that for those oriented towards an ultimate good beyond life, what comes to be valued is personal experience, feeling or insight (2002: 100). While this initially fed denominationalism (or neo-Durkheimianism), its multiplication and continual diffusion became ever more individualizing. As Taylor puts it:
Just as in the neo-Durkheimian world, joining a church you dont believe in seems not just wrong but absurd, contradictory, so in the post-Durkheimian age seems the idea of adhering to a spirituality that does not present itself as your path, the one that moves and inspires you. (2002: 101)
In a sense what has happened here is simply a loosening of the parameters within which one can choose and act and remain a member of the larger community. In another sense we might also see a redrawing of the boundaries of the community. That is, whereas the paleo-Durkheimians saw themselves as members of a community dened by the church, and the neo-Durkheimians as members of a looser but broader church (in some cases correlated with a nation, as in the US), for a substantial set of postDurkheimians the only sensible community to identify with is the community of humanity itself. Another set extends this community to all living beings. Taylors focus on fragmentation as a malaise seems to obscure his vision of this development, even though it is implied by his observation that the development of secular society has seen a greater realization of the values of the gospels (1999; cf. 1989: 313). In this sense he appears to be trying to have it both ways: his God appears to be of the loving universalizing sort that would approve of this widening of inclusion, but Taylor seems to be concerned that the post-Durkheimian dispensation goes too far towards atomism, which seems then to leave him favouring something like the neo position, in which adherence to a Christian faith within the broader church was expected and provided a unifying magma of signications. Interestingly, Castoriadis absolutely rejects the paleo- dispensation as well as the postDurkheimian dispensation. Does this leave him, too, in the neo zone? He appears to favour the cultural creativity of the neo era,16 seeing the era in which the post-Durkheimian orientation comes to the fore as a slide into conformity (1997b: 32ff.; Smith, 2006: 222ff.). Before we address this in more detail, though, it is worth briey eshing out Taylors views of how these
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changing religious orientations have ltered through and reshaped modern society. Noting that the shift from paleo to neo relates to a transformation in the social imaginary of the sacred a process Taylor refers to as the great disembedding of individuals from the cosmic/social order (2004: 49) he identies a corresponding emergence of new (non-sacred) public spaces or entities, the three most widely recognized being the economy, the public sphere and the sovereign people (2002: 845; 2004: 69). Each of these, at least in early efforts to articulate their specic characteristics, were understood in terms of the obligations of mutual benet and formed the bases of the neo-Durkheimian world of classical modernity. Importantly, though, while the differentiation of public and private is clearly a prerequisite to the formulation of the public sphere, it is not until after the Second World War that we nd reforms to criminal law that sanctied individual privacy, limiting the extent to which the state (or any other body) may interfere in the affairs of the individual (Taylor, 2002: 92). Taylor notes, though, that this increasing individualism has not displaced the understanding of ourselves as sovereign persons, and takes this as evidence that the moral order of mutual benet has in fact been strengthened by the advance of the post-Durkheimian orientation, as the ethic of authenticity and its underlying soft relativism demands that we shouldnt criticize each others values, because they have a[s much] right to live their own life as you do. The sin that is not tolerated is intolerance (2002: 89).17 Like the realm of acceptable religious belief itself, what is to be tolerated has also been extended far beyond anything that Locke could have imagined (or tolerated) when he rst introduced this idea to modern philosophy. As Taylor puts it, this injunction now stands alone, whereas it used to be surrounded and contained by others (2002: 89). While it may now stand alone, Castoriadis points to an antinomy between this soft relativist ethics and the universal human rights position, in that the cultural relativism entailed in the former undermines any position from which to take a stand in pursuit of the latter (1997b: 19, 30). While Taylor acknowledges that this soft relativism has indeed produced some positive social results such as strengthening the moral order of mutual benet he more generally sees it as problematic, weakening the social fabric and undermining the grounds for a strong identity. For both authors, this soft relativism evidences a loss of (strong) shared values; and both view this as politically disempowering and symptomatic of a crisis in modern society. While this may be so, it seems a mistake to credit this modern malaise solely to what Taylor calls disengaged reason and Castoriadis the project of rational-mastery. My investigations (Smith, 2006) into the positive contributions of the trend towards increasing individualism indicate that its sources include a quest for the unlimited expansion of personal freedom, and hence it is driven by a certain version of the will to autonomy (Castoriadis, 1997b: 192).
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Taylors discussion of consumerism and its relationship to individualism and new public spaces suggests that fashion amounts to a new social structure along the lines of economy, the public sphere and sovereignty (2002: 85). Here it is worth noting that the causal arrow of history goes both ways (Taylor, 1989: 2056; 2004: 31, 63), for consumerism and individualism clearly fuel each other. In the realm of fashion we also nd strong evidence of conformity, as people dress (and conspicuously consume) both to stand out and to t in. More importantly, whereas the sacred and public spaces of the paleo-Durkheimian world amounted to topical spaces where people could meet and correspond, in contemporary mass societies these types of spaces have multiplied, and have been complemented by metatopical spaces: the televisual media, cyberspace, etc. (Taylor, 2002: 87). Hence, where once we might attend church or the public square to take part in public activity, today this can also be done in the privacy of ones own home Taylor cites watching the Olympics or Princess Dianas funeral on television, knowing that there are a billion people watching with you. Not all viewers are conscious, or concerned, about the public dimension of this activity, rendering it a potentially diminished mode of public participation. But the huge number of discussions in work places, schools and cafes that are about particular television programmes or news events suggests that this metatopical space fuels a great deal of contemporary social dialogue and hence, collective meaning-making. From a different perspective, Taylor notes how a crowd of individuals can ip-over into a singular mass for common action. Here his example is a crowd at a hockey match rising as one to cheer a goal late in the game (2002: 87). In this and similar settings he identies the potential for a social fusion of the sort that was once the objective of Carnival and similar social events. And Taylor notes the presence of what Durkheim dened as collective effervescence in these (secular) spaces (2002: 88; cf. Carroll, 1998). A similar social fusion or collective effervescence can be experienced at a protest rally or a football match an experience of being at one with the group, of being intimately and intricately enmeshed with the others present. In a more abstract way, this can also be experienced on polling day, arising from the knowledge that all around the country, at the same moment (and all day long), people are queuing peacefully to have their input into the electoral process. Such togetherness is not necessarily heteronomous, even though it is a fusion of self and other, of individual and collective (or rather, a collapse of these distinctions in the formation of a collective unity). To better see the autonomous dimensions that may be present in the search for a fusion of oneself with something beyond oneself, let us look briey at a concrete social eld by considering the dynamics of the increasing consumerization of spirituality. Without denying complaints that such consumerization degrades the spirituality it peddles, it is fruitful to consider the phenomena from the
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perspective of autonomous choice. In this market or eld of social activity, people make choices about how to honour the sacred. Castoriadis clearly invalidates those choices, even though, unlike Taylor, he has no position from which to argue that choice is not a valid good in-itself.18 As I have argued, provided the separation of nomos and physis is maintained, there is no intrinsic incompatibility between spiritual or religious faith and a project of autonomy. Hence, unless we accept that Castoriadiss (or any other) ontology is the one and only clear and lucid (i.e. true) belief system, we cannot dismiss all of these choices as less than clear and lucid. In which case, even though the norms in question are extrasocial, we are dealing with instances where individuals are making these discourses their own, and hence advancing their individual/personal subjective autonomy. Here Castoriadis sometimes appears to be guilty of the same sort of monos phronein (being the only one to think right) that dened Creons particular mode of hubris (2006: 267). That modern consumers are choosing to follow different metaphysics and theologies than Castoriadis does is only a problem for the project of autonomy when the sacred is construed in such a fashion as to determine social nomos (see, for example, 1991: 162). This, of course, remains a very real problem in the contemporary world, especially troubling where we see increasing religiosity in national governments. But it does not seem to be a very common characteristic of commodied spiritualities. In this sense, governments/societies that invoke some sort of deity as the source of authority for their oppressive regimes and actions would seem to be of far greater concern than the increasing fragmentation of national, cultural and religious identities and their corresponding values. Yet at the same time, I wonder if Taylor does not have a point about a unifying deity . . . Here it is worth briey considering the longer overview of some of these trends in modernity. Castoriadis and Taylor both seem to favour the neo-Durkheimian period of modernity, albeit for different reasons. Taylor sees a more stable and secure society built upon strong sources of the good, while Castoriadis sees greater cultural creation deriving from a loosening of the shackles of heteronomous society. But by disaggregating autonomy, oblique modes of autonomy can more clearly come into view. We can see the unfolding of the logic of the quest for autonomy in myriad expressions and manifestations that were occluded by Castoriadiss more narrow view. From this perspective, we can see people acting out of their drive for autonomy even as they shop around for a meaningful connection to the spiritual or divine. The point of this discussion has been to demonstrate that there is room for religious belief within an autonomous society, and that religiosity per se is not intrinsically incompatible with a project of creating an autonomous society. The monological implications of excluding all religious beliefs and practices from our society are antithetical to the notion of an inclusive democracy. While there is no doubt that various churches throughout history have turned this type of exclusion into a highly rened practice, we cannot
44
conclude from this that such exclusion is intrinsic to religion itself (and even if it were, we could not justify being exclusive ourselves on this basis). Pragmatically, the practice of politics as the art of the possible demands that we recognize that this perennial yearning for some meaning beyond human life itself is not likely to go away, hence making its eradication a precondition for the construction of an autonomous society ensures that no such society will ever be realized. To advance the project of autonomy we must recognize and create conditions conducive to oblique and partial expressions of autonomy as well as pursuing the clear and lucid explication of a project of autonomy. We can identify a wide range of social institutions that are more-or-less autonomous, and greater degrees of autonomy can be sought within existing social institutions. But we must accept that we can only advance the cause of autonomy within existing social institutions with and through people who do not clearly and lucidly accept our own particular world-view(s).
Karl E. Smith is Lecturer in Sociology and Anthropology at La Trobe University where he recently completed a PhD comparing the thought of Castoriadis and Taylor on questions of subjectivity and modernity. [email: k.smith@latrobe.edu.au]
Notes
1. Heller reported this during a conference on Castoriadis at Columbia University in December 2000. 2. Importantly, Castoriadis distinguishes between mysticism and instituted religion: there never was and never will be mystical religion or a religion of mystics. The true mystic can only exist in separation from society. He goes on to explain that mysticism is of little interest to him because it is not (cannot be) socially effective (1997b: 325). In the process he brackets out any form of noninstituted religion, and thus simply ignores the heterodox dimensions of religious experience. Thus, he can only partially see the interplay between the instituting and interpretative dimensions of religion. We might instead see mysticism in terms of interpretative free-play. His refusal to engage with the signicance of mysticism is but one aspect of his overemphasis on institutional forms. 3. Taylors more balanced approach to this problem also allows him to acknowledge and embrace the positive contributions of the people of Christian and other faiths (e.g. as leaders in the abolition of slavery, the campaign for nuclear disarmament, advancing the cause of universal human rights, etc.), whereas Castoriadiss allergy apparently prevents him from seeing anything beyond the atrocities committed under religious banners. 4. See Cohen (2005) for a discussion of how, contra Castoriadis, the project of autonomy might be advanced within a representative democracy. Note too that Castoriadis also understands the state to be intrinsically alienated from the collectivity (1991: 156), which would thus make the term democratic state an oxymoron from his perspective.
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5. Taylor also comments that it might be better to understand this as a fourcornered battle as the acknowledgers of transcendence are divided (1999: 29). But as I discuss shortly, once we start unpacking these categories it becomes apparent that it is an oversimplication to count the corners at all, for the eld of tensions in question is far more diverse than such a representation allows. 6. It would be formally more correct to say here that historical Buddhism does not take a stand one way or another on the existence of gods but it is clear that if they exist, they have no role to play in human affairs (although later Buddhism reintroduced godlike gures; see Rahula, 1974) 7. In a similar vein, William Connolly takes issue with Taylors propensity to reduce the belief in something beyond life to God, professing a nontheistic source. One of the things that Connolly points to is the complex relationship between words and the fugitive sources they touch (2004: 167). He agrees with Taylor that ultimate sources cannot be fully articulated, but for quite different reasons: not because its intelligence transcends us but because its energies have a complexity that does not correspond entirely with human capacities for conceptual thought (2004: 169). Connollys position suggests the possibility of valuing life itself and decentring the self by acknowledging some good beyond life without understanding this ultimate value to be god-like. I think we can see a similar value in something beyond (individual) life in Castoriadiss focus on the social dimension of human ourishing (2006: 29, 36 n.31) and on the creation of enduring cultural works (1991: 219ff.); i.e. for us to ourish as individuals we must ourish as a society and therefore need to focus our efforts on a good beyond ourselves, the collective anonymous. 8. This is not to deny the strong parallels between this notion of what you are most profoundly and the idea of an essential Buddha nature. 9. Taylors argument that exclusive humanism does not provide adequate grounds for this culture, thereby opening it to the (very real and too frequently realized) possibility of sliding into destructive forms is important, as is his observation that theists and other religious adherents have just as often slid into the same quagmire (1999: 345). 10. Some environmentalist movements, for example, believe that all living beings are entitled to the same rights as enshrined in the universal human rights position (Hasegawa, 2004: 204). Some go further, treating human life as a risk to other life forms, and thereby of lesser value in the overall scheme of things: this is the deep ecology position (for example, see Soda, 2006: 267), but such an attitude renders the love more-or-less conditional. This represents another corner of the battleeld, presenting a non-anthropocentric ethic in contradistinction to the anthropocentrism of both exclusive humanism and Taylors theism. 11. We should probably think instead though, of a continuum between these two poles (Smith, 2006: 81 n.43). 12. There are of course a myriad of other obstacles/limitations to this freedom, such as the culture we are born into, the particularities of embodiment, the law of creation/destruction, etc. I simply employ mortality here as shorthand for that entire range of things. 13. Note, though, that there is no evidence that Taylors is a vengeful, smiteful god, either. Taylor rejects the notion that once you accept God (or the Absolute/Ideal
46
14. 15.
16.
17.
18.
Good) as the ultimate authority you will know what to do in any circumstances (1989: 73), as well as the associated cosmological and metaphysical foundations. This suggests that he might be open to Castoriadiss ontology of radical selfcreation. Of course, integration also assumes far more benign forms, including the socialization of children into the church through baptism, conrmation, etc. Although fundamentalism is the term commonly used today to refer to this set of phenomena, it is more appropriately labelled literalism, for what unites these diverse groups is a literalist interpretation of their respective scriptures. Using the term era loosely, for, as mentioned, Taylor argues that all three dispensations continue to coexist in the contemporary world: My claim is not that any of these provides a total description, but that our history has moved through these dispensations, and that the latter has come more and more to color our age (Taylor, 2002: 97). Bauman and others have criticized this tolerance principle, which lies at the heart of modern liberalism, noting the difference between tolerance and acceptance (see, for example, Bauman, 1993: 235ff.; 2001: 135). For Bauman, to tolerate one need neither accept nor approve simply put up with it. And tolerance can be withdrawn at any moment. He suggests we need to work on developing a culture of acceptance of difference. In terms of the tension between unity and plurality, tolerance implies a unity (a dominant majority/ norm) that puts up with deviance from the norm (within limits, of course); Baumans preferred alternative might then be seen as a plurality that is unied through mutual acceptance of each others differences. Taylor contends that choice alone cannot provide an adequate moral horizon: unless some options are more signicant than others, the very idea of selfchoice falls into triviality and hence incoherence (1991: 39). The freedom of choice is only of value because some choices are more signicant (noble, valued, authentic) than others; and this signicance is independent of the choosing subjects will. Indeed, according to Taylor, the ideal of self-determining selffulllment presupposes that independent of my will, there is something noble, courageous, and hence signicant in giving shape to my own life (1991: 39, emphasis in original). Without this requirement, the ethos of self-fulllment becomes shallow and trivialized and those who pursue it suffer attened and narrowed lives (1991: 40). This is perhaps most obvious in those narcissistic modes of the culture of authenticity wherein self-fulllment is sought in opposition to the demands of society or nature (1991: 40, emphasis in original).
References
Adams, S. (2006) Castoriadis and the Circle of Physis and Nomos: A Critical Interpretation of his Philosophical Trajectory, unpublished PhD thesis, La Trobe University, Bundoora. Arnason, J. P. (1991) Modernity as Project and as Field of Tensions, in Axel Honneth and Hans Joas (eds) Communicative Action: Essays on Jrgen Habemass The Theory of Communicative Action (trans. Jeremy Gaines and Doris L. Jones), pp. 181213. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bauman, Z. (1993) Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (2001) Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Carroll, J. (1998) Ego and Soul: The Modern West in Search of Meaning. Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins. Castoriadis, C. (1987) The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. K. Blamey. Cambridge: Polity Press. Castoriadis, C. (1991) Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, ed. D. A. Curtis. New York: Oxford University Press. Castoriadis, C. (1993) Political and Social Writings, Vol. 3, 19611979: Recommencing the Revolution: From Socialism to the Autonomous Society, trans. and ed. D. A. Curtis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Castoriadis, C. (1997a) Castoriadis Reader, ed. D. A. Curtis. Oxford: Blackwell. Castoriadis, C. (1997b) World in Fragments, trans. D. A. Curtis. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Castoriadis, C. (2006) Figures of the Thinkable, http://www.notbored.org/FTPK.html Cohen, J. (2005) The Self-Institution of Society and Representative Government: Can the Circle Be Squared?, Thesis Eleven 80: 937. Connolly, W. (2004) Catholicism and Philosophy: A Nontheistic Appreciation, in Ruth Abbey (ed.) Charles Taylor, pp. 16686. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ferrara, A. (1998) Reective Authenticity: Rethinking the Project of Modernity. London: Routledge. Hasegawa, K. (2004) Constructing Civil Society in Japan: Voices of Environmental Movements. Melbourne: Trans Pacic Press. Rahula, W. (1974) What the Buddha Taught, 2nd edn. New York: Grove Press. Smith, K. E. (2006) Perennial Questions, Contemporary Responses: Exploring Meaning, Subjectivity and Society through Cornelius Castoriadis and Charles Taylor, unpublished PhD thesis, La Trobe University, Bundoora. Soda, O. (2006) Philosophy of Agricultural Science. Melbourne: Trans Pacic Press. Taylor, C. (1985) Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, C. (1989) Sources of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, C. (1991) The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Taylor, C. (1999) A Catholic Modernity? New York: Oxford University Press. Taylor, C. (2002) Varieties of Religion Today. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Taylor, C. (2004) Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press. Taylor, C. (2005) Merleau-Ponty and the Epistemological Picture, in T. Carman (ed.) Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weber, M. (1977 [1948]) From Max Weber, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

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Thesis Eleven

http://the.sagepub.com Religion and the Project of Autonomy

RELIGION AND THE PROJECT OF AUTONOMY

Thesis Eleven (Number 91 2007)

Smith: Religion and the Project of Autonomy

Thesis Eleven (Number 91 2007)

Smith: Religion and the Project of Autonomy

Thesis Eleven (Number 91 2007)

Smith: Religion and the Project of Autonomy

Thesis Eleven (Number 91 2007)

Smith: Religion and the Project of Autonomy

Thesis Eleven (Number 91 2007)

Smith: Religion and the Project of Autonomy

Thesis Eleven (Number 91 2007)

Smith: Religion and the Project of Autonomy

Thesis Eleven (Number 91 2007)

Smith: Religion and the Project of Autonomy

Thesis Eleven (Number 91 2007)

Smith: Religion and the Project of Autonomy

Thesis Eleven (Number 91 2007)

Smith: Religion and the Project of Autonomy

Thesis Eleven (Number 91 2007)

Smith: Religion and the Project of Autonomy

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