This unit will provide students with language to understand more critically both our Western secular world and themselves, in order that they are able to engage critically with the concepts of immanence and secularity. Apart from its intrinsic philosophical interest, the unit aims to give access to an important intellectual underpinning for pastoral care and for missiology in this secular age. Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age (2007) is a seminal work that gives a philosophical/history-of-ideas account of the development and spread of exclusive humanism as a viable alternative to Christianity to whole societies. Parts 4 and 5 of this book provide a mental map of our secular world with its longings, projects and searches for significance within an “immanent frame.” This immanent frame is the focus of this course, along with critical consideration of the discourse on the work that emerged after its publication, for example, by thinkers such as Hunter (2011), Harrison (2010), and Milbank (varia).
Unit code: DA3162C
Unit status: Approved (New unit)
Points: 18.0
Unit level: Undergraduate Level 3
Unit discipline: Mission and Ministry
Proposing College: Catholic Theological College
Show when this unit is running1. | Critically explain Parts 4 and 5 of A Secular Age carefully; |
2. | Situate A Secular Age in relation to its purpose and philosophical and historical context; |
3. | Critically explain the theories, terminology and arguments encountered in A Secular Age; |
4. | Assess Taylor’s account of the current situation and relate it to examples from current Australian society. |
Pedagogy will depend on the mode. Semester weekly mode will be lectures, tutorials, and seminars. Intensive mode will be seminars and guided reading; learners will accordingly engage with lecture input, directed reading activities, and seminars to achieve the learning outcomes.
Type | Description | Word count | Weight (%) |
---|---|---|---|
Essay | OPTION 2: 1 x 5000-word essay 100% End of semester OR OPTION 1 OR OPTION 3 |
5000 | 100.0 |
Tutorial Paper/Seminar Paper | OPTION 3: 5 x 1000-word tutorial papers/summative reflections critically expounding and evaluating a theory or argument from a chapter of Taylor. Each paper is to draw on a different chapter and to cover a different topic to the essay. OR OPTION 1 OR OPTION 2 |
5000 | 100.0 |
Essay | OPTION 1: 1 x 2,000-word essay 40% End of semester plus 3 x 1000-word tutorial papers/summative reflections critically expounding and evaluating a theory or argument from a chapter of Taylor. Each paper is to draw on a different chapter and to cover a different topic to the essay. 60% Handed in within a fortnight of the chapter covered. OR OPTION 2 OR OPTION 3 |
5000 | 100.0 |
Unit approved for the University of Divinity by John Capper on 6 Aug, 2018
Unit record last updated: 2019-05-30 13:59:34 +1000