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The Unmaking of Sacred Order: Reform, Discipline, and the Birth of the Secular Self
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jan 8 2026
Pages: 140
Weight: 0.43
Height: 0.33 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Why did modern secularity emerge-not as a rejection of God, but as the unintended outcome of religious devotion itself?
In The Unmaking of Sacred Order, Kamaruzzaman Bustamam Ahmad offers a powerful and original reconstruction of modern secularity by entering deeply into the philosophical genealogy of Charles Taylor-and then moving decisively beyond it.
This book argues that secularity did not arise from disbelief, rationalism, or the decline of faith. Instead, it was forged from within Christianity itself: through reform, moral intensification, discipline, and the transformation of the human self. What began as a quest for purity and sincerity ultimately reshaped the structure of the world-and the structure of subjectivity.
Drawing critically on A Secular Age and Sources of the Self, this volume traces how the collapse of sacred mediation, the rise of disciplinary Christianity, and the transition from the porous self to the buffered self produced a world that no longer requires transcendence in order to function. Secularity, in this account, is not an ideology-it is a condition.
What makes this book unique
Unlike introductory or secondary commentaries on Charles Taylor, this book:
Writes from within Taylor's philosophical architecture, rather than merely explaining it
Offers a sustained, chapter-by-chapter genealogy of reform, discipline, mediation, and subjectivity
Positions secularity as an achievement, not a loss-while exposing its hidden psychological and existential costs
Bridges philosophy, anthropology, theology, and moral psychology in a single, coherent argument
Advances an original voice, treating Charles Taylor not as an untouchable authority, but as a critical interlocutor
This is not a summary of Taylor. It is a Taylorian work with its own argument, structure, and stakes.
Inside this book, readers will explore
How religious reform intensified faith and moral seriousness
Why discipline became the infrastructure of modern moral life
How saints, rituals, and sacred distance collapsed under demands for immediacy
Why the world stopped carrying transcendence
How the buffered self emerged as the default subject of modernity
Why secularity feels inevitable-and where its cracks begin to show
The book culminates in a sober, reflective conclusion: secularity is not our failure, nor our triumph-it is our situation.
Part of the Charles Taylor Studies Series
The Unmaking of Sacred Order is Volume 2 in the Charles Taylor Studies series, a scholarly project dedicated to rigorous, critical, and original engagement with Taylor's thought on modern identity, morality, and secularity.
Each volume in this series is designed not only to interpret Charles Taylor, but to extend his work into new conceptual and cultural terrains.
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