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

Description

Charles Taylor and the Post-Secular Imagination
Moral Ontology, Resonance, and the Renewal of Meaning in the Secular Age
By Kamaruzzaman Bustamam Ahmad
Published by KBA13 Insight (Banda Aceh, 2025)

In this profound philosophical work, Prof. Kamaruzzaman Bustamam Ahmad engages in an illuminating dialogue with the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, exploring how moral and spiritual meaning can be rediscovered in a disenchanted world.

Bridging Western moral ontology and Islamic metaphysics, the author interprets Taylor’s thought not merely as commentary but as an active conversation between faith, reason, and imagination. The book follows the genealogy of the modern self—from Augustine and Descartes to Rousseau and Nietzsche—and culminates in a post-secular vision where transcendence returns within the immanent frame of modern life.

Through the concepts of moral sources, resonance, and fullness, Ahmad shows how Taylor’s ideas open a path toward moral renewal in the age of technology and pluralism. Charles Taylor and the Post-Secular Imagination is both a work of rigorous scholarship and a contemplative meditation on how humanity can live meaningfully after the loss of sacred horizons.

A vital resource for readers of philosophy, theology, cultural studies, and post-secular thought, this book situates Taylor alongside thinkers such as Augustine, Corbin, and Heidegger, inviting us to re-imagine the moral self as a site of illumination amid the noise of the modern age.

About The Author

Kamaruzzaman Bustamam Ahmad

Prof. Kamaruzzaman Bustamam Ahmad (KBA) has followed his curiosity throughout life, which has carried him into the fields of Sociology of Anthropology of Religion in Southeast Asia, Islamic Studies, Sufism, Cosmology, and Security, Geostrategy, Terrorism, and Geopolitics. Prof. KBA is the author of over 30 books and 50 academic and professional journal articles and book chapters. His academic training is in social anthropology at La Trobe University, Islamic Political Science at the University of Malaya, and Islamic Legal Studies at UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta. He received many fellowships: Asian Public Intellectual (The Nippon Foundation), IVLP (American Government), Young Muslim Intellectual (Japan Foundation), and Islamic Studies from Within (Rockefeller Foundation). Currently, he is Dean of Faculty and Shariah, Universitas Islam Negeri (UIN) Ar-Raniry, Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

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