Abstract

To analyse and explain Charles Taylor′s understanding of secularity in terms of “optionality” or “plurality” and to illuminate the nature of the hypothetical stance and the virtuality of beliefs it entails requires one to engage in a larger than empirical and, as it were, deeper than merely historical inquiry, one that is, if not metaphysical, then at least ontological or pre-ontological. The conditions of the secular age should, on this view, not be confused with the epistemological or, more broadly normative, criteriological terms that categorize experience and the search for the spiritual “fullness”. As a consequence, neither specific elements or forms of belief nor their successive repudiation, neither historical nor empirical, neither sociological nor psychological findings will ever allow us to determine where or when, exactly, secularity begins, let alone suspect whether it might very well come to an end. What is required is, rather, to take a step back and to investigate why and how the advocacy of “public secularity” and the broader assumption of the eventual practical and existential demise or irrelevance of faith – which has been falsified by recent trends and current affairs in “global religion” – could have emerged as a theoretical construct at all