Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays

This collection of essays showcases Charles Taylor's distinctive approach to questions of meaning, belief, and secularization in contemporary Western societies. Taylor examines how modern individuals navigate between religious and secular worldviews, arguing that conventional narratives about secularization fail to capture the complexity of lived experience in what he terms our "secular age."

Central to Taylor's analysis is his critique of "subtraction stories" - accounts that portray secularization as simply the removal of religious belief, leaving a neutral, rational remainder. Instead, he presents secularization as an active construction of new frameworks of meaning that themselves require examination. This perspective challenges both confident secularism and defensive religiosity, suggesting that the modern condition involves navigating between multiple sources of significance rather than choosing one over others.

Taylor develops his concept of "fullness" - experiences of meaning that transcend ordinary life - to show how both religious and secular worldviews offer distinct paths to human flourishing. He argues that exclusive humanism, while presenting itself as the default rational position, actually represents one contestable option among others. This pluralist framework resists both the assumption that religion will inevitably disappear and the counterclaim that secular worldviews lack substance.

The essays engage critically with new atheist arguments, particularly their tendency to reduce religion to belief in supernatural entities. Taylor contends this misses religion's experiential and communal dimensions, as well as the way religious frameworks shape moral sources and identity. His phenomenological method draws on lived experience to reveal how both believers and non-believers inhabit complex moral and spiritual landscapes that exceed simple categorization.

Throughout, Taylor employs a genealogical approach influenced by Hegel and Merleau-Ponty, tracing how contemporary positions emerged through historical transformation rather than logical necessity. This method allows him to show why neither pure naturalism nor traditional theism adequately addresses modern predicaments of meaning.

The collection's significance lies in reframing debates about God and religion beyond simple affirmation or denial. Taylor demonstrates that questions about transcendence persist even in secular contexts, appearing in concerns about meaning, morality, and human flourishing. His work suggests that productive dialogue requires moving beyond entrenched positions to examine the deeper sources of contemporary worldviews.