THE UNMAKING OF SACRED ORDER: Reform, Discipline, and the Birth of the Secular Self

Ringkasan

Why did modern secularity emerge—not as a rejection of God, but as the unintended outcome of religious devotion itself?In The Unmaking of Sacred Order, Kamaruzzaman Bustamam Ahmad offers a powerful and original reconstruction of modern secularity by entering deeply into the philosophical genealogy of Charles Taylor—and then moving decisively beyond it.This book argues that secularity did not arise from disbelief, rationalism, or the decline of faith. Instead, it was forged from within Christianity itself: through reform, moral intensification, discipline, and the transformation of the human self. What began as a quest for purity and sincerity ultimately reshaped the structure of the world—and the structure of subjectivity.Drawing critically on A Secular Age and Sources of the Self, this volume traces how the collapse of sacred mediation, the rise of disciplinary Christianity, and the transition from the porous self to the buffered self produced a world that no longer requires transcendence in order to function. Secularity, in this account, is not an ideology—it is a condition.What makes this book uniqueUnlike introductory or secondary commentaries on Charles Taylor, this book:Writes from within Taylor’s philosophical architecture, rather than merely explaining itOffers a sustained, chapter-by-chapter genealogy of reform, discipline, mediation, and subjectivityPositions secularity as an achievement, not a loss—while exposing its hidden psychological and existential costsBridges philosophy, anthropology, theology, and moral psychology in a single, coherent argumentAdvances an original voice, treating Charles Taylor not as an untouchable authority, but as a critical interlocutorThis is not a summary of Taylor. It is a Taylorian work with its own argument, structure, and stakes.Inside this book, readers will exploreHow religious reform intensified faith and moral seriousnessWhy discipline became the infrastructure of modern moral lifeHow saints, rituals, and sacred distance collapsed under demands for immediacyWhy the world stopped “carrying” transcendenceHow the buffered self emerged as the default subject of modernityWhy secularity feels inevitable—and where its cracks begin to showThe book culminates in a sober, reflective conclusion: secularity is not our failure, nor our triumph—it is our situation.Part of the Charles Taylor Studies SeriesThe Unmaking of Sacred Order is Volume 2 in the Charles Taylor Studies series, a scholarly project dedicated to rigorous, critical, and original engagement with Taylor’s thought on modern identity, morality, and secularity.Each volume in this series is designed not only to interpret Charles Taylor, but to extend his work into new conceptual and cultural terrains.