Charles Taylor Lecture: Master Narratives of Modernity
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- čas přidán 15. 06. 2024
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For more on the Berkley Center, visit: berkleycenter.georgetown.edu
October 21, 2008 | World-renowned philosopher Charles Taylor explored the master narratives of modernity -- sound in some respects, but questionable in others -- that provide the matrix within which secularization theories have been advanced. This was the first of the 2008 Berkley Center lectures on the topic "Narratives of Secularity." The lectures surveyed the master narratives which have underpinned secularization, explored more adequate ones, and hazarded a picture of the present predicament of religion and spirituality in the West.
Charles Taylor is one of the world's leading scholars working at the intersection of religion, secularity, and modernity. A philosopher open to other humanities and social science disciplines, he has authored many path-breaking books, including The Sources of the Self (1992), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (1994) and, most recently, A Secular Age (2007). Taylor was for many years Professor for Political Sciences and Philosophy at the McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he now serves as professor emeritus. He was awarded the Templeton Prize in 2007.
"The only remedy for a bad master narrative is a better one." Many thanks for your intuitive words. 😊
Taylor's actual talk starts at 7:00
I love the official subtitles for when he speaks of a French author and his work "Auguste Comte" = "(mumbles) Ponte"
Some of these questions during the Q&A were excellent
thanks professor!
Funny how the caption for the french names mentionned is (mumbles). Auguste Comte = Mumbles. Ernest Renan = Mumbles.
Fabulous again😊
6:55
First lecture.
Yes, Macchiavelli once noted that the Swiss were most armed and most free (armatissimi et liberissimi).This was only partially true because the Swiss confederate states had very diffenrt constitutions and there were numerous conquered territories where a kind of serfdom was the rule. Yet there are stiill some traditions alive, such as the fact that every Swiss citizen who is a soldier (and draft is still somehow compulsory) has the right to keep his assault rifle at home.
God is not only come with prewritten legal system. God also come with duality and equality based Social believes .
why do they need someone apart from the holder to introduce the lecturer?
It’s all about validation.
Protocol
1:21
good
Can someone explain to me what a 'master narrative' is exactly. I'm confused about it's definition.
A master narrative is therefore a particular type of narrative, which is defined as a "coherent system of interrelated and sequentially organized stories that share a common rhetorical desire to resolve a conflict by establishing audience expectations according to the known trajectories of its literary and rhetorical
Meet Tim Keller
czcams.com/video/Ehw87PqTwKw/video.html
@@a5dr3 thanks for the link. It's interesting (and refreshing) he names so many secular thinkers in this talk. I couldn't help but think how much richer these ideas become with the framework of Lacan's system
what he is describing is the definition of myth
Worldview. The general presuppositions a group or society shares about the nature of the nature of reality. Master/meta-narratives answer the most important questions about life, eg:
What is true,
what is false,
what is good,
what is evil,
why are we here?
what is our purpose?
how’d we get here?
where are we going?
Every human person has a worldview or master narrative they apply to make sense of reality. Groups tend to form around shared master narratives. A master narrative based on false or arbitrary presuppositions, AKA relativism, leads to personal confusion and the eventual fall of the society or group. Progress is not a stable foundation for a master narrative. If the persons of a society cannot ground the purpose of their progress in a transcendent, eternally true (unchanging) standard confusion will cause conflict that cannot be reconciled without suppression of expression (tyranny) and/or violence (domination or revolution) and that society will eventually fall. This is the story of human history in rebellion to God.
“Buy the truth and sell it not.” -Proverbs 23.23
Consider truth as a thing of the highest value, and spare no pains, cost, or sacrifice to obtain it, because there is no higher purpose, as self-evident truth is that which frees man’s mind, spirit, and life. Once Truth has been gotten, keep it safe; do not barter it for earthly profit or the pleasures of sense; do not be reasoned out of it, or laughed out of it; do not part with it for any price, or promise. Such os the cause of all suffering in the world since the beginning.
What is truth?
Three properties of Truth: wisdom - practical knowledge;
instruction - moral culture and discipline;
understanding - the faculty of discernment.
35:00
It's ironic that he says that he is arguing against the sociological secularization thesis from Steve Bruce but they doesn't present any evidence against it whatsoever.
ortcutt He wrote an entire 800 page book on it.
It's in his book A Secular Age. It is long and somewhat disjointed.
In one sense his thesis is, "It didn't happen". So the 'evidence' is that religion and modernisation go together, keep affecting each other and so on.
Evan Hadkins & @Ortcutt if I could attempt a two-sentence summary of the 800-pg monster (I’m like 20% thru it ....but have read James K.A. Smith’s insightful 200-pg summary) it would be that political developments (corruption of the medieval Catholic Church -> forceful Protestant Reformation -> several centuries of bloody, bloody infighting btwn the two camps) rather than scientific advancements pushed most Enlightenment thinkers towards secularity. The widespread Catholic corruption preceded (and as Taylor argues persuasively IMO, prompted) the philosophical division btwn religious and the Enlightenment intellectual/scientific camp.
covid-19 also has led to a subtraction thesis like situation, where is the Aristotelian dunamis? stages of the entire humanity being subtracted. not stadial or radial, but viral modernity is here
This was completely confused, I fear he was not anymore in his right mind.
Stick to fantasy fiction buddy. You're out of your element.
@@kvaka009 I hold 3 degrees in philosophy, a BA, an MA and a PhD. But I guess you're the expert in this field, buddy.
@@ericadler9680 defending my disser in one month. Been teaching philosophy for over a decade. Yep, I dabble in philosophy. Charles Taylor is brilliant, even if you disagree with him. His views are provocative at the least. Sources of the Self is brilliant as well, though a bit long winded. So yea, like I said, stick to fantasy fiction where "men are men and women are women". Don't be salty at Taylor because he referred to your views as medieval. They are. Oh and Tolkien was an anarchist.
@@kvaka009 I've been reading philosophical works for 30 years. And no, Tolkien was not an anarchist, he was a conservative who preferred small states of the size of Belgium, and there certainly are reasons for taking such a view. Anarchists don't want any state at all, which may come as a surprise to you. And yes, Taylor is brilliant - in print, I have read some and will read more. I guess you could call him a social conservative, he defends a culture-based (Franco-Canadian) nationalism. But in this lecture he was clearly confused. Your rejection of criticism of T. makes you sound like a fundamentalist, it's anti-philosophical. And you might be surprised how philosophical fantasy fiction can be at times. Some, like the works of Le Guin, are even used in philosophical seminars. My views are not medieval, they are shared by the great majority of people. If you present conservative views to people without calling these views conservative (because unfortunately, "conservative" has the ring of being hostile to all change, which is not true), most people will actually agree with you, apart from immature humanistic academics who prefer to stick with cliched slogans like "patriarchy" and "toxic masculinity" because they are too lazy to study what the world really looks like. Most academics, especially humanistic academics, know shockingly little about real-world problems, and they don't even want to know about them, like the relationship between mass immigration from Third World countries and violent crime, especially rape (just look at the way Sweden has changed in just 20 years). Your arrogance does not ring of maturity. Grow up and learn to respect people, your behaviour is embarrassingly juvenile.
@@ericadler9680 your attempts to disguise your xenophobic and racist views as underpinned by the "real world" is just undigested bullshit. There are no "natural" roles. Respecting tradition is not the same as swallowing it uncritically. And grouping "humanist" philosophers together like that is absurd. Is Heidegger a humanist? He sure as hell shared your views of the volk and the land. Turned out to be a bad idea. I responded to your disrespectful, "juvenile" slander of Taylor (to say he defend franco-nationalism is your fantasy fiction leanings kicking in). Just because you've been reading for a long time doesn't mean much if you didn't understand a damn thing you've read, like you didn't understand Taylor here. Perhaps you've just been wasting your time. At least if you posted some argument, even as dumb one as "look at Sweden" I would've seen what you are and wouldn't have responded. You are what we call stateside a "shitekopf".
he is an intelligent person, but wow does he ramble on, like please get to the point
He is not a good speaker. I'll try one of his books instead
Rather weak.
As always, Taylor talks of his close social circle and makes a theory out of it
All one can say here is… “that this lecture promotes one, rather narrow (increasingly outdated) and chronically presumptuous view that falls drastically short for anyone who knows that ‘we’ / ‘our civilization’ is in no way in charge of such things alone. ALL Empires of man will collapse… (Ozymandias)… The spirit world whether you like it or not is alive, thank God.
It is for this reason (coupled with new believers of course) that Christ is indefatigably on the march. Although not in the “fully civilized” West where it is decreasing , Christianity is in fact growing on Earth once again and is a massive force (for obvious and almighty reasons).
Furthermore, the ‘old fashioned’ dinosaurs in their angry death throes are finally losing their grip… Their controlled media is seen to be an organ of outrageous propaganda and flagrantly dim-witted “scientific” totalitarianism… The futurist Truth will not be denied. The End is already our victory through God.
Christ is indestructible - because He was and is God - and is ETERNAL.
Save your breath - anyone wanting to argue here.
This lecture is already 50 years out of date - and was always deluded.