A Taylorean Glossary for Theologians III

By the way, you really must check out The Immanent Frame.

Social Imaginary Taylor uses this term in his latest work The Secular Age, but also in Modern Social Imagineries. He means by it to indicate something of the way people imagine their social existence. It is crucially an act of imagination rather than an intellectual scheme: it involves the myths and stories and legends that we tell about our common life and identity, and so on. As Taylor puts it, he means how people 'fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations'. (MSI, p. 23)This term, then, can include the way ordinary people think about their common identity as well as a more elitist, theoretical account.

Of course, it is a complex business to describe a social imaginary, because it is a complex idea! It 'incorporates a sense of the normal expectations we have of each other, the kind of common understanding that enables to carry out the collective practices that make up our social life.' (MSI, p. 24) And yet, this term is crucial for Taylor's project: because it is 'social imaginaries', modern and less modern, that he is largely in the business of describing. It is part of his intellectual bravery that he is willing to embark on such a risky strategy, because it is so obviously open to challenge at every point of the description.