Introducing the Social Imaginary
more in our series about Charles Taylor's book, A Secular Age
We are back again with Jim Aldrich to talk more about Charles Taylor’s book, A Secular Age. Jim and some colleagues here have been reading though the book together very s-l-o-w-l-y over time, and we think some of Taylor’s thinking and observations about our ever-shifting societies are important for people of faith to consider.
The Great Disembedding
Charles Taylor is always interested in our (Western) self-understanding. How is it we come to see ourselves as we do? And how is it we see ourselves? To do this, he tracks back and forth across the various stories of our origins and development over the last two millenia, paying special attention to the shifts that have taken place since the late Middle Ages to today. There isn’t one story, no one development or shift that can explain our contemporary secular age. So, the story he tells involves lots of back and forth, of actions and reactions, reactions to reactions, responses to reactions, and on and on… He makes it clear there is no “straight-line account” of the journey we have experienced, no simple single story to explain where we have arrived—let alone whether this arrival is a culmination to the journey or just another way-station on the trip.
I think of Taylor’s account like a pinball machine. The ball is put in play and proceeds through an indeterminate, possibly interminable, series of ricochets. Only, Taylor’s pinball machine has multiple balls in play at the same time, with the bumpers and flippers becoming more numerous and the game more complex the further it goes.
Our pre-Christian, tribal ancestors lived in small-scale societies with their own particular understandings of “how things work.” Whatever the details, they saw the moral order in which they lived as being given to them, theirs since time-out-of-mind. It told them who they were and how they fit into the entire cosmological order. This order might have been from God or gods or higher forces or from the cosmos itself; whatever its origins were, they were shrouded in the mists of the mystical past. They were there as revelation, as comfort, as discernment, as truth. They were not open to question, doubt, or innovation. These orders defined who the society was, how it was an essential component of the Great Chain of Being, and how it constituted this society as a people (or as “the” people.) But in the Middle Ages, as Christianity influenced the religious practices of our various predecessors and societies experienced the pressure of increasing populations, improving production practices, and general welfare, the former small-scale cosmologies came under increasing pressure.
Taylor speaks of how the ritual practices of those early religions “embedded” persons, in three ways:
Humans are embedded in particular societies.
Society is embedded in the cosmos.
Human good is the best result of living (as a society) in deference to the cosmic spirits, forces or powers to which we are subject. The moral order of these early societies/religions held that we lived in compliance with (and/or were subject to) the constraints and prescriptions of those spirits, forces, and powers.
The pressures exerted by the arrival and reforms of Christianity, and by efforts from civil elites to reform society, generated what Taylor calls “the Great Disembedding.”
“The great disembedding occurs as a revolution in our understanding of moral order. And it goes on being accompanied by ideas of moral order…. This revolution disembeds us from the cosmic sacred; altogether, and not just partially and for certain people… It disembeds us from the social sacred; and posits a new relation to God, as designer.”
Taylor argues that this new vision of moral order “played a central role in the development of modern Western society.”
Modern Moral Order
This new vision of moral order “was most clearly stated in the new theories of Natural Law which emerged in the seventeenth century, largely as a response to the domestic and international disorder wrought by the wars of religion.” Early theorists (Grotius and Locke) thought, “human beings are rational, sociable agents who are meant to collaborate in peace to their mutual benefit.”
Some features of the new understanding of order were:
Society is made up of individuals who come together to form a political entity.
These individuals are presumed to be equals.
We all have rights and obligations in regard to each other.
This order is for the here and now.
From those ideas are developed conceptions of what is right and the context in which it makes sense to pursue it. This social order is to be realizable—it isn’t for the distant mythical future when all things will be set right. Such features are in stark contrast to pre-modern orders “where order imposes itself by the course of things.”
In the modern ideal, our mutual respect and service are directed toward serving the ordinary goals of life, liberty, and sustaining one’s self and family. So the modern moral order comes to be viewed as instrumental; it is for the sake of our mutual benefit, and not, as in former times, because to do what is prescribed fulfills the ancient law which has come to us from the inscrutable past. Security and prosperity become the valued pursuit, not alignment with the spirits and powers and forces that inhabit the cosmos.
“The order of mutual benefit is an ideal to be constructed…to establish a stable peace…then remake society… The proponents of the theory already see themselves as agents who through disengaged, disciplined action can reform their own lives, as well as the larger social order.” “Free agency is central to their self-understanding.”
The basic features, then, of this order of mutual benefit, are:
It is between individuals (or at least free moral agents).
It includes life and the means to life.
It is meant to secure freedom and finds freedom’s expression in terms of rights.
“These rights, this freedom, this mutual benefit, is to be secured to all participants equally.”
The Social Imaginary
Taylor continues to reference both the Great Disembedding and the Modern Moral Order (MMO) throughout the book. In doing so, he also uses the term “social imaginary” quite often. It’s important, fundamental even. But for many of us non-academic persons (such as myself), it isn’t just that we hadn’t thought about it; until being introduced to the notion of a social imaginary, it didn’t exist as a thing. (We can recognize this as describing how we as humans, in societies, often function.)
What is a social imaginary? Taylor says, in using the term he is:
“thinking…of the ways in which (people) imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations which are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images which underlie those expectations.”
A social imaginary is different from social theory, in several ways: It’s “the way ordinary people imagine their social surroundings, which are carried in images, stories, legends…” A social imaginary is shared by large groups of people, possibly the whole society, and it’s the common understanding that makes sense of and legitimizes common practices.
So a social imaginary is obviously basic to functioning as a human in human society. Can’t do without one. Long before we created social theory, our ancestors lived with a social imaginary. It was, and still is, largely or entirely, unarticulated and unstructured, yet always well-formed. With the social imaginary, we know what to expect and how things usually go, as well as how things should go. It tells us how we stand in relation to each other, how we got where we are, how we are to understand groups.
The Modern Moral Order, then, is an example of how social imaginaries can shift, be transformed, over time. Slowly, over generations, the new understanding of order infiltrated and replaced that which came before. Even as new theory comes into contact with old practice and old imagination, the theory is altered, revised, and gently reformed in each environment it encounters. So not only does theory inform and revise common social imaginary and practice, but practice feeds back into theory, and the two play a back-and-forth zig-zagging game.
A lot of this went on, back 500 years ago. And it has only increased since then.
How might you describe or articulate our current social imaginaries? How does the social imaginary impact how we show up as congregations and communities?
A new resource for sermon and worship planning:
We’re excited to tell you that Lectionary Poetry: Year A, Volume 2 is available now! This ebook includes classic and contemporary poetry from diverse writers, all of which is selected to accompany Revised Common Lectionary readings for Year A. Volume 2 includes Pentecost Sunday through Ordinary Time (For the first half of the church calendar, see Volume 1. Years B and C forthcoming!)
Poets include Paul Laurence Dunbar, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver, Lucille Clifton, George Herbert, Maya Angelou, and many more!
Our hope is that pastors and preachers will find these poems useful and inspiring when it comes to sermon prep and worship planning. As Walter Brueggemann once said, “Freedom, justice, peace, and abiding joy (emerge) when the poet comes, when the poet speaks, when the preacher comes as poet.”
Purchasing a copy directly from Englewood Press helps support our work here at Cultivating Communities. The ebook is also available from Amazon, Bookshop, Apple Books, and most places you buy ebooks.
Happy reading!!
Goodness, Grief, and our Local Neighborhoods
After a brief hiatus, The Englewood Review of Books Podcast back! On the show, we bring writers and authors into conversation with one another about their work.
On Episode 92, C. Christopher Smith speaks with Shannan Martin and Amar D. Peterman about the intersecting themes of faith, justice, and community in their new books. Their conversation explores the tension between life’s “heavy goodness” and its “undercurrent of grief,” demonstrating that “we can only counter what we’re first willing to weigh,” as Martin puts it. The conversation explores the tension between one’s personal comfort and the call to “draw near in mercy” to our neighbors.
You can find the episode on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!