UNFEASIBLE MODERNITY”¦? THE THEOLOGICAL PERTINENCE OF “ALTERNATIVE MODERNITIES”: READING CHARLES TAYLOR

Abstract

The present article aims at being a contribution to ongoing discus­sion around the subject of Modernity. As the title suggests, it has a reluctant and interrogative character. Reluctant because of the very understanding of Modernity, through recent attempts to arrive at a precise distinction between Modernity and post-Modernity, does not find a consensus among scholars. Interrogative because it does not seem to us that western Modernity is unique and uniformly universalizable, as suggested by various recent advances. With this in mind, we explore Charles Taylor's “alternative modernities”, the limits of those approaches that he himself calls acultural and the dangers of Mono-narrative, maintaining, nevertheless, the question of the theological pertinence in the Taylorian proposition.