Postsecular spirituality, engaged hermeneutics, and Charles Taylor’s notion of hypergoods

Abstract

This essay sets out to argue that postsecular spirituality is about the quest for hypergoods within today’s mass populist- and consumerist-oriented world. It shows that people who consider themselves to be spiritual, not only have many values in their lives, but rank some values higher than others, with some being ranked as being of supreme importance, the so-called hypergoods. Such ethics has an interpersonal character, and in Christian circles this reopens the issue of biblical hermeneutics, especially the phenomenon of conflicting interpretations. Against the background of the various options of being religious in the secular age, the essay focuses on Charles Taylor’s view of the discovery of spirituality in a posttheistic world and his emphasis on the love of God and the ethics of justice as hypergoods.