Charles Taylor is well known for the use of the term the autonomous self. At times, Taylor refers to this as expressive individualism, self-sufficing individualism or in terms of exclusive humanism and the buffered-self.[1] Today, there is a near categorical rejection of any source external to the individual to serve a basis for ethics. This culture of authenticity[2] is “…the understanding of life….that each of us has [for] realizing our humanity, and that it is important to find and live one’s own way, as against surrendering to conformity with a model imposed on us from outside, by society, or the previous generation, or religious or political authority.”[3]
So how are we to “think in terms of a Biblically informed world view and act contextually” in an era marked by globalisation, secularity and this pervasive hyper-individuality? This later term is often referred to as the privitisation of beliefs? In large part this means a rigorous definition of terms so we do not simply repeat what has been said over the past 50 years. I am intentionally using Taylor’s word, secularity, as he is one of the conversation partners in this exchange. Secularity in counter distinction to secularism or secularization refers to the conditions of beliefs or the shift in our understanding on which our society is grounded. “The great invention of the West was that of an immanent order in Nature, whose working could be systematically explained on its own terms, leaving open to the question whether the whole order had a deeper significance and whether if it did, we should infer a transcendent Creator beyond it.”[4] This becomes for Taylor, the immanent frame. “…the life of the buffered individual, instrumentally effective in secular time, created the practical context within which self-sufficiency of this immanent realm could become a matter of experience… we come to understand our lives as taking place with a self-sufficient immanent order…(that) can slough off the transcendent.”[5]
But does this shift necessarily give rise to hyper-individuality? Taylor seems to think so and he dedicates 776 pages in A Secular Age to describe this shift! He summarizes it this way, “…one could offer this one-line description of the difference between earlier times and the secular age: a secular age is one in which the eclipse of all goals beyond human flourishing becomes conceivable; or better, it falls within the range of an imaginable life for masses of people. This is the crucial link between secularity and a self-sufficing humanism.”[6]
However, it would be important to underscore that this does not mean that religion by any stretch of the imagination is in retreat in public life or that there is a decline in belief and practice – a sort of private religion, if you will, as a result. All social science surveys illustrate the opposite. My working premise is that (post) Christendom urban cultures produce a separation between the private and public spheres of life and therefore focus on the personal dimensions as the arena for the development of individual freedom and fulfillment. The Church buys into this and further marginalizes the social significance of faith in the city.
Yet to what extent are “globalisation, secularity and a self-sufficing humanism” an evidence of what we call the public/private divide or the privitisation of the social significance of faith? What is the relationship to the globalizing tendencies in our post Christendom city/regions?
The emerging social conditions of globalization, coupled with secularity and hyper-individuality, are a perfect context to understand the public/private distinction that is central to this chapter. Jeff Weintraub develops a fine typology to help us weave through this issue, explaining four ways in which this distinction is often used.[7] First, in the classic Roman distinction, there is the res publica or the domain of citizenship governed by the sovereign state. This is public life. Second, it is used in making a distinction between public administration and the market economy of private enterprise sometimes referred to as the second sphere. Third, a distinction is made between the private domain of the family and the larger economic and political “public” orders. These aspects of the distinction are not under consideration in this chapter. However, there is a fourth way to understand the public/private distinction. There is the fluid, “public” realm of social life and the cultural ways that we sustain it. We talk here of public space. This sociability is the realm most under pressure with hyper-individuality in the globalized city. With the compression of time and space, the immanent world dominates. We control everything on our own. There is little sense of the transcendence in daily life. The lives of human beings in cities are increasing split between an intimate and a public sphere, between public and secret behaviors.
These realms have existed for decades. Personal, intimate, intense life was lived out in the family, with friends and a primary group. Public space in the boulevards, the gardens, the squares and festivals provided the place for strangers to meet. Increasingly, this public sociability has suffered decline and friendship and the family (in particular) cannot bear the weight of emotional expectations.[8]
The consequences of the decline of sociability also affect the very nature of our urban understanding. John Mercer has illustrated at length the fundamental differences in Canadian and American cities on a private – public (city) continuum.[9] Whereas public cities prioritise the collectivity, the common good, belief and trust in government and active urban planning, private cities look to autonomy in municipal affairs, special purpose districts, individual rights and extensive use of user fees. It is not merely a question of government intervention, regardless of the level of intervention. The continuum reflects the result of the nature of the intervention. Sam Bas Warner did the classical work on the issues in his historical study of Philadelphia.[10] However, over the course of the past 20 years, the city I live in, Montréal, is increasingly becoming a “private city” as evidenced by the significant percentage of people who live alone – now close to 40% of the population on the island of Montréal.[11] This movement to a private city will only be accentuated in the days ahead. With the monumental infrastructure challenges that cities like Montréal face, the polarized social landscape rooted in educational and economical polarities and the marginalization of institutional life this privitisation will only get larger.
[1] Taylor articulates this in his book, Sources of the Self, (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1989). I am choosing to use the notion of “hyper-individuality” in this article. Margaret Somerville likes to use the notion of “intense individualism”.
[2] In his most recent book, A Secular Age (Boston: Belknap Press, 2007) Taylor unpacks this idea in chapter 13.He explores this issue at length in his Massey Lectures, published subsequently in The Malaise of Modernity, (Toronto: Anansi, 1991).
[3] A Secular Age, 475.
[4] Ibid, 15.
[5] Ibid, 543.
[6] Ibid, 19-20.
[7] See his chapter, The Theory and Politics of the Public/Private Distinction in Public and Private in Thought and Practice, edited by Jeff Weintraub and Kristan Kamur (Chicago: The Chicago University Press, 1997)
[8] The most significant contribution to this thinking is Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man: On the Social Psychology of Capitalism (New York: Vintage, 1978). I am writing this article in the autumn of 2009 during the second phase of the H1N1 pandemic. It represents an interesting yet frightening case study about what the globalisation of information looks like when people need to make a “health” choice. In this age of hyper-individuality where the citizen is king and with access to all sorts of information – regardless of its scientific validity, the individual chooses what s/he wants. In Québec, as of this writing, 67% of the respondents were not going to get vaccinated.
[9] Goldberg and Mercer initially articulated this thesis in The Myth of the North American City (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1986). Mercer pursued it further in The Canadian City in Continental Context, in Canadian Cities in Transition, 3e edition, edited by Trudi Bunting and Pierre Fortin. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2006.) 24-39.
[10] Sam Bass Warner, The Private City. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968) Eric Jacobsen uses similar nomenclature in his interesting text, Sidewalks in the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Bravos Press, 2003.) 49-56 and 157-159. However, it applies the idea primarily to the Church.
[11] Annick Germain and Damaris Rose, Montréal: The Quest for a Metropolis. (West Sussex: John Wiley and Sons, 2000) 193-197.