Charles Taylor and the Post-Secular Imagination: Moral Ontology, Resonance, the Renewal of Meaning in the Secular Age

In an age marked by moral fragmentation and the decline of shared meaning, Charles Taylor remains one of the few philosophers who still believes that the modern world can be redeemed through understanding. His monumental works, Sources of the Self and A Secular Age, offered not only a genealogy of modern identity but also a vision of how humanity might rediscover depth within freedom and transcendence within immanence. In this bold and elegant study, Kamaruzzaman Bustamam Ahmad reinterprets Taylor's philosophy as a living response to the spiritual challenges of modernity. Charles Taylor and the Post-Secular Imagination explores how moral sources continue to shape human experience even after the "death of God," and how the modern self may evolve beyond secular disenchantment toward a renewed moral horizon. Through rigorous analysis and lyrical clarity, the book traces Taylor's journey from Augustine and Descartes to the crisis of authenticity and the rediscovery of "fullness" in A Secular Age. It examines the rise of the immanent frame, the fragility of belief, and the re-emergence of transcendence as a condition of moral and cultural renewal. At its core lies a radical question: Can meaning survive in a world that no longer believes in absolutes? Profoundly philosophical yet accessible to general readers, this work invites scholars, students, and seekers alike to enter Taylor's moral universe—where philosophy becomes a form of care and imagination a mode of faith. It is both a tribute to Taylor's enduring influence and a call to reawaken the moral imagination in the twenty-first century.