Recognition, religion and secularism in Charles Taylor

Abstract

The article aims to investigate, in the light of the philosopher Charles Taylor, the question of recognition of the subjects from the relation between secularism and religion. The guiding principle of Taylor’s thinking is communitarianism. This one is related to the idea that the context of the norms that govern a society must be that of a community which in its values, practices and institutions form a constitutive horizon for the identity of its members. Only this way it would be possible to consider the questions of justice and then to answer about what is good and what should be worth for the community. According to Taylor, men are expressive beings because they belong to a culture that is nurtured and transmitted within a community. Taylor starts from the hegelian critique of the Kantian formalism which displaced the subject from the community, from history and from culture, generating demands for recognition. he emphasizes that religion, for example, is still related to the formation of several identities, just as an essential sphere in the constitution of subjects, even in secularized societies. Taylor emphasizes the existence of multiple modernities, once non-Western cultures were modernized in their own way, without the necessary separation between secularized and religious identities. Taylor advocates a redefinition of secularism which values religions as essential and indispensable sources for diverse subjects who have formed from other languages, cultures and traditions, different from the traditional conception of secularism. how, then, to think about the question of recognition, within the framework of the relationship between secularism and religion?