{"id":4206,"date":"2015-02-28T07:15:58","date_gmt":"2015-02-28T07:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=4206"},"modified":"2015-02-28T07:15:58","modified_gmt":"2015-02-28T07:15:58","slug":"immanent-frame-the-buffered-and-porous-selves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/immanent-frame-the-buffered-and-porous-selves\/","title":{"rendered":"Immanent Frame: The Buffered and Porous Selves"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week provided a challenge to continue to absorb a-little more, seek to go deeper and basically unravel Charles Taylor\u2019s A Secular Age<\/em>. Throughout the writing, Taylor creates and maintains an inquisitive approach that engages the reader. At the outset, Taylor asks a seemingly unpretentious question, \u201cWhat does it mean to live in a secular age?\u201d[1]<\/a> However, the root of Taylor\u2019s query deepens: \u201cWhy is it so hard to believe in God in the modern West, while in 1500 it was virtually impossible not to do so.\u201d[2]<\/a> It is apparent that Taylor leaves no stone unturned while investigating every miniscule segment of knowledge that might shed some light on the transition that is referenced in the question.<\/p>\n

Taylor refers to a number of themes[3]<\/a> that when considered together interlock like a puzzle to clarify and reinforce the answer. Taylor notes a few: enchanted world, disenchantment, buffered self, buffered identity, internal spaces, disciplined self, and individualism.[4]<\/a> He notes the outcome of the interlocking themes:<\/p>\n

[t]he buffered identity of the disciplined individual moves in a constructed social space, where instrumental rationality is a key value, and time is pervasively secular. All of this makes up what I want to call “the immanent frame”. There remains to add just one background idea: that this frame constitutes a “natural” order, to be contrasted to a “supernatural” one, an “immanent” world, over against a possible “transcendent” one.[5]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I propose that Taylor is giving a significant dimension to the concepts, themes and outcomes that form the answer to the question, \u201cWhat does it mean to live in a secular age?\u201d Ultimately, in a secular age, the possibility remains to choose for oneself to be closed (buffeted self) or open (porous self) to the reality of the transcendent. There are \u201ctwo different ways of seeing the world within this immanent frame, one closed and one open. One does have the choice to open one\u2019s self to the beyond<\/em> or the transcendent<\/em> \u2026each [open or closed] is a picture that holds us captive.\u201d[6]<\/a> It is a scriptural imperative that we choose. There are many ways humankind, in all ages, comes to God. In A Secular Age<\/em> it is no different; the natural and the supernatural, the immanent or the transcendent; serving God or self; the spiritual or the physical. The imperative is that we should not waver between the two.<\/p>\n

In our on-line chat I was able to get a glimpse of the key themes in A Secular Age.<\/em> Also, there were several references to \u201cSummaries of Charles Taylor.\u201d So I did some searching to find summaries or synopsis on Taylor\u2019s writing. I did find several summaries and blog spots, especially on \u201cimmanent frame\u201d and \u201cbuffered self\u201d that were helpful.<\/p>\n

I want to pull out some summary thoughts \u2013 they do not necessarily tie together as the interlocking pieces as noted by Taylor, but for me they are clarifying.<\/p>\n

Eugene Raikhel clarifies the porous and buffered self:<\/p>\n

[t]he distinction between modern and what [Taylor] calls pre-modern senses of self. Taylor characterizes the difference as one between the world of the \u201cporous self\u201d\u2013an \u201cenchanted world\u201d in which spirits and cosmic forces \u201ccould cross a porous boundary and shape our lives, psychic and physical,\u201d and that of the modern \u201cbuffered self\u201d \u2014 in which the boundaries between self and other, as well as between mind and body, are much more evident and firm.[7]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is a process that characterized the pre-modern to modern transition. Taylor notes that it was in part the \u201cmaturing of unbelief\u201d or in \u201cthe nineteenth century when unbelief comes of age.\u201d[8]<\/a> In a published blog spot, Taylor illuminates the process:<\/p>\n

Almost everyone can agree that one of the big differences between us and our ancestors of five hundred years ago is that they lived in an \u201cenchanted\u201d world, and we do not; at the very least, we live in a much less \u201cenchanted\u201d world. We might think of this as our having \u201clost\u201d a number of beliefs and the practices which they made possible. But more, the enchanted world was one in which these forces could cross a porous boundary and shape our lives, psychic and physical. One of the big differences between us and them is that we live with a much firmer sense of the boundary between self and other. We are \u201cbuffered\u201d selves. We have changed.[9]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The buffered self in the modern world is the effort to gain control, to give an autonomous order to life. There are boundaries that act as a buffer against the outside sources present in a \u201cporous self\u201d that believes in, yields to, and practices the presence of transcendent powers that are external influences. Gordon E. Carkner gives insight to autonomous self as it relates to the imminent framework as experienced from the perspective of the buffered self:<\/p>\n

The buffered<\/em> identity (as opposed to the porous pre-modern) self is a key part of such a mental frame. It operates within a disenchanted world where supernatural beings or forces with teleological goals or intentions are deemed close to impossible. Final causes are eliminated from the picture. With this immanent frame, there is a loss of a cosmic order; everything important is this-worldly, explicable on its own terms; it fits within the time-space-energy-matter dimensions. Social and political orders are constructed by humans solely for mutual benefit, not to please a divine entity. Society is made up of individuals (the normative element). Each human is charged with finding her or his own way of being human \u2026 their own individual spiritual path. Everyone has also become an individual measure of the good.[10]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Our chat session was helpful in understanding some of the themes in A Secular Age<\/em>. Concerning \u201cimmanent frame\u201d John said, \u201cImmanent frame is the concept that we live in disenchanted, buffered existence that leaves our ideas of life and the cosmos based on our rational and exclusive human understanding…mainly scientific in nature.\u201d Jason responded, \u201cJohn, that\u2019s it!\u201d while further stating, \u201cfrom the reformation onwards, the ordered categorizing of life left to talking about the world in a way that removed the need to refer to God and we ended up with a ‘buffered self’ and ultimately a self with no reference to God needed….\u201d<\/p>\n

I have only scratched the surface. Charles Taylor in A Secular Age<\/em> characterizes the concepts and practices in our contemporary social and religious era. Secularity helps to understand post-Christian, modernity and postmodern; the church can better minister by understanding the social, cultural, religious and philosophical shifts as presented by Taylor.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Charles Taylor, A Secular Age<\/em> (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), Kindle ed. 30.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., 8535.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., 8535-8564.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid., 8585-8587.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Gordon E. Carkner, \u201cCharles Taylor Articulates the Immanent Frame of the Secular,\u201d BCU Blog<\/em>, (accessed February 26, 2015) http:\/\/ubcgcu.org\/2013\/10\/11\/charles-taylor-on-secularity-immanent-frame\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[7]<\/a>Eugene Raikhel, \u201cCharles Taylor on \u2018buffered and porous selves,\u2019” Somatosphere & more<\/em> (accessed February 25, 2015), http:\/\/somatosphere.net\/2008\/09\/charles-taylor-on-buffered-and-porous.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Taylor, Secular Age<\/em>, 5800, 6006.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Charles Taylor \u201cA Secular Age: Buffered and Porous Selves,\u201d The Immanent Frame:Secularism, Religion, and the Public Sphere<\/em> (accessed February, 25, 2015) http:\/\/blogs.ssrc.org\/tif\/2008\/09\/02\/buffered-and-porous-selves\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Carkner, Ibid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week provided a challenge to continue to absorb a-little more, seek to go deeper and basically unravel Charles Taylor\u2019s A Secular Age. Throughout the writing, Taylor creates and maintains an inquisitive approach that engages the reader. At the outset, Taylor asks a seemingly unpretentious question, \u201cWhat does it mean to live in a secular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[491,2,186],"class_list":["post-4206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lgp4-3","tag-dminlgp","tag-taylor","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4207,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206\/revisions\/4207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}