Introduzione

[Autom. eng. transl.] More than a decade after the publication of 'A Secular Age', Charles Taylor, in the unpublished lecture contained in this volume, focuses on some theoretical turning points traced in the impressive study on secularization, as well as on some important challenges that have emerged in this period of time. While, according to many, the passing of the years would have given rise to a further and inevitable decline of religion from the horizon of human experience until its progressive disappearance, today we find ourselves faced with an anomaly that Taylor does not avoid and for which he intends to account. Our era is characterized, in addition to terrible tragedies on a global level, also by a "culture of seekers" who, in religious faith as well as in the different spheres of life, seek an answer to their questions of meaning. This spiritual search, which involves both believers and non-believers, is configured according to the terms of a "journey" that involves both the question of one's own identity and ethical-political reflection. This investigation is conducted by the Canadian thinker within the three essays published in the volume, dominated by the question of what it is good to be and to love at the expense of a procedural ethics: only by addressing these challenges, in fact, will it be possible to develop an adequate reflection concerning the meaning of living and coexisting in a post-secular society.