Taylor and Feuerbach on the problem of fullness: Must a meaningful life have a transcendent foundation?

At first glance, there would appear to be no wider gulf than between persons who believe that life is meaningful and valuable only if oriented by some transcendent force or being and those who try to steer themselves by earthly signposts alone. Since at least the Enlightenment secular humanists have tried to construct what Charles Taylor has called purely “immanent” ethics. In Taylor's influential but controversial view, materialist humanist ethical theories, and accounts of the good for human beings can be internally consistent and satisfying to their adherents, but ultimately incomplete. Taylor's argument remains compelling more than a decade after the publication of A Secular Age because he does not argue that “exclusive” humanist doctrines are incomplete on the terms of believers in transcendent forces and beings, but incomplete on their own terms. All deep commitments to meaning, purpose, and value in life, he suggests provocatively, in fact contain a concealed longing for transcendence of the unrecoverable passage of time and the oblivion into which subjects will disappear if there is nothing more than the physical universe and the human social world. This paper will treat Taylor's conclusions as a challenge to account for life-value within the confines of secular time and without making secret appeals to transcendent forces or beings.1 I am not going to try to turn tables on Taylor and argue that all religious believers secretly interpret their sacred texts and principles with a view to earthly happiness, but I will argue that there are more overlapping concerns than dogmatists on either side believe. My argument will be critical of Taylor's conclusions, but it is also a response to his invitation for members of different faith, traditions, and secular humanists to engage in a “more frank exchange” that acknowledges the differences but is conducted “with the kind of respect that can only come from a sense that we have something to learn from each other” (Taylor, 2010a, p. 402). I will argue that the most important lesson that humanism teaches is that the desire for fullness, in earthly life or on some transcendent plane is not necessary and may even be a mistake. In contrast to fullness as the overarching goal of life, I will suggest that receptive openness to the world best accords with the known conditions of human existence. Since the receptively open person who accepts the finality of death does not demand fullness, they cannot be justly suspected of secretly steering their goals by transcendent principles. The paper begins with a focused analysis of Taylor's argument that the emergence of natural scientific accounts of the elements and dynamics of the universe created a crisis of meaning. Exclusive humanisms are attempts to reconstruct the foundations of meaning within the confines of secular time, but no matter how rich the texture of their values, Taylor argues, they must always fall short of absolute fullness. Since, in Taylor's view, implicit in the experience of happiness, fulfillment, and joy—key markers of good human lives—is the demand that they continue forever, the exclusive humanist who delights in such experiences secretly pines for the eternal. In the second section, I will turn to a focused examination of one aspect of Feuerbach's work. I look back to Feuerbach for two reasons, both of which connect Taylor directly and indirectly, to Feuerbach. First, Taylor himself, in a review essay of Marx Wartofsky's book on Feuerbach, came close to recognizing the value of Feuerbach as charting a course for a materialist humanism that escapes the problem of the physicalist elimination of meaning from life (Taylor, 1978, p. 417, 419; Wartofsky, 1977, p. 390). Second, in response to a roundtable discussion of his book, Taylor seems to open the door to just the sort of open receptive disposition towards nature, society, artifacts, and people that typifies Feuerbach's social philosophy. He does not reference Feuerbach here but acknowledges that his idea of the “porous self” (which he associates with the worldview of the European Middle Ages) “can be recovered” in the scientific world of the twenty-first century (Taylor, 2010b). Taylor himself has not recovered or developed a contemporary version. I believe that Feuerbach can help the recovery and development begin.2 In the spirit of giving credit credit is I will account of materialist humanism not in to the of but account of the as and receptively open to the of the world on from the elements of the to fullness is not a necessary for valuable In the short section, I will Taylor's that materialist humanists are secretly by a desire for if the demand fullness. if they the that life in secular time they can and the experiences they have and of life rich to as meaningful as it is for to A Secular Age a of analysis of the passage from a world in which in to a world in which people to natural scientific and is a the and Taylor has for on in that is I am not going to try to his argument p. p. I believe that the argument that I will has to the human of to the world and the of My conclusions would have to be and in but I not the conclusions that I are only for a of human which most in Taylor's argument is how he the of the with the world. to and not as theories, that the people account for or I to on the different of experience in life one or the other” (Taylor, p. 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