Pragmatism and the Postsecular - by Tae Sung (Hardcover)

About the Book

A postsecular reading of the pragmatists Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James that contributes to a new interdisciplinary discourse about gift theories.

Book Synopsis

Offering a postsecular reading of Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James, Pragmatism and the Postsecular contributes to an interdisciplinary discourse about gift theories across literary, religious, and philosophical studies.

In this study the focus is on Emerson and James' religious language of gifts. We see how they interpret the reception of gifts as dynamic sources of agency, inspiration, and empowerment-the kinds of moral sources that Charles Taylor worries might be increasingly unavailable in our secular age. Tae Sung applies a similar non-economic reading of dynamic gifts to American writers including Herman Melville, Ralph Ellison, Marilynne Robinson, and Min Jin Lee. His approach reframes related debates around religious ethics (after Derrida and John Milbank) and multicultural politics (after Richard Rorty and Taylor).

Aimed at readers interested in the complex relationship between the religious and secular in the US, Sung's reading of pragmatism challenges us to reconsider how we understand gifts. The goal of such a reconsideration is to locate common ethical and political ground between secular liberalism and religious traditionalism.

Review Quotes

This important book will be welcomed by everyone who longs for a better conversation between religious and secular perspectives in contemporary America. Exploring the heritage and possibilities of pragmatism and the mediating capacity of literature, Tae Sung leads us through a profound set of discussions that are erudite, informed, sensitive, and timely.

With remarkable interdisciplinary expertise and incisive interpretive skill, Tae Sung has made a major contribution to American literary study, public theology, and rhetorical pragmatism. By developing a theory of dynamic gifts focusing on Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James, Sung proposes a postsecular pragmatism that overcomes the impasse between secular and religious literary critics and mediates the more general conflict between secular thinking and religious traditionalism. In so doing, Sung helps create the shared vocabulary necessary for reviving democratic options for collective action working toward the common good.

About the Author

Tae Sung is a Professor of English and Dean of Student Success at California Baptist University, USA. He completed his MA in theology at Fuller Seminary and his PhD in American literature and critical theory at UC Irvine where he was awarded the Strauss Fellowship in English and the Koehn Fellowship in Critical Theory for his dissertation on gift theories. He is the author of Gift: The (Im)possible Conditions of Grace in Melville's Fiction, which appears in the volume Literature and Religious Experience (2022), and In the Way of the Gift: The Conditions of Grace in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (2020).