The Search for Meaning in a Secular Age

Catalog description

What does it mean to live in a secular age? How does living in a secular age offer new opportunities and challenges for the perennial human quest for meaning? This multi-disciplinary course tackles these fundamental questions. Drawing on philosophy, sociology, and political science from the Western canon, we will examine three senses of secularity. The first is a political sense, where religion is largely if not entirely removed from public life, as is the case in many modern liberal democracies. The second sense of secularity is sociological, and it is identified with a situation in which there has been significant decline in religious belief and practice (recently discussed in terms of the rise of the “nones,” that is, those who answer “none” when asked for their religious affiliation). The third sense of secularity is an existential sense, where it has to do with a change in the circumstances of the human quest for meaning, namely, where there has been a move from a condition in which a traditional religious outlook was taken for granted to one where it is regarded as one option among others. This third sense of secularity will be our primary focus, though we will also be concerned with its relationship to the other two senses of secularity. In exploring the existential (or lived) sense of secularity, we will examine philosophical writings on meaning in life from religious, secular, and spiritual-but-non-religious perspectives, seeking to understand what makes for a worthwhile life. Finally, we will explore how secularization has influenced politics today on both sides of the political spectrum and consider what role spirituality and religiosity might still have in public life.