Charles Taylor's monumental A Secular Age (about which I blogged on dotCommonweal some weeks back) has received a substantive and suggestive review by John Patrick Diggins in tomorrow's Times Book Review.Here is Diggins' conclusion:

Emerson called society a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members, its material pleasures the very soil of secularism itself. Durkheim expected that such insatiable pleasures would be restrained by society, the role once assumed by religion. Taylor, for his part, promises an understanding of Gods presence among us in the fullness of ordinary life. But the belief that God inheres in life itself suggests Taylors Hegelianism and the dialectical fantasy that an indwelling spirit governs the material world. To see the sacred within the profane, to derive God from the sentiments of society, does little to relieve us of Webers secularized world where politics is no longer an ethical calling and religion no longer an ascetic ideal. Taylor may locate the drama of the soul in society, but the meaning and mystery of God remain as elusive as the enigma of existence and religious morality becomes little more than social convention. There are many reasons to read the profound meditations in A Secular Age, but waiting for God to show up is not one of them.