Taylor's Buffered Self and Nova Effect

Buffered vs. Porous Self

Nova Effect

It's not "about what people think; it's more a matter of the difference between what we take for granted", contrasted with "what people of that age took for granted." (How Not, 27, relates to A Secular Age, 30-31)

The two ways of thinking are based ontwo varying 'social imaginaries'. That is, ways of imagining the world and finding meaning within the world.

Porous Self/Enchanted World

3 obstacles to unbelief in the premodern world:


  1. The cosmos pointed to something beyond itself. [The transcendent] (How Not, 27)


  2. "Society... was understood as something grounded in a higher reality..." (How Not, 27)


  3. "[P]eople lived in an enchanted world... 'charged' with presences, ... open and vulnerable, not closed and self-sufficient." (How Not, 27)

Buffered Self/Disenchanted World

Meaning is now found in the mind, rather than in the world.

In the enchanted world, the human agent is porous. (A Secular Age, 35)

The vulnerability of the human agent is "one of the principal features which have gone with disenchantment..." (A Secular Age, 36)

The buffered self of the modern world is protected against spiritual forces, "giving its own autonomous order to its life". (A Secular Age, 38-39)

In order to validate exclusive humanism as a plausible imaginary, the world had to be disenchanted, and the self had to "be buffered and protected." (How Not, 30)

Great Disembedding

The porous self is unable to abandon faith in God, because this would leave him/her defenceless against the evils of the enchanted world.

The 'lopping off' of the top layer of the 'two-tiered religion'

"Especially in Christendom," (How Not, 31) one maintains a tension between self-transcendence, ("a turning of life towards something beyond ordinary human flourishing"), and "this-worldly concerns of human flourishing and creaturely existence." (How Not, 31)
In Christendom, "this tension is not resolved, but inhabited." (How Not, 31) This relates to Carnival, which is a temporary relief from this tension.

The modern attempts to resolve this tension, rather than inhabiting it. To do this, one can either denounce creaturely life and "demand monasticism for all" or "simply frame ultimate flourishing within this world." (How Not, 33) The latter is what happened.

Our view of the natural world has also shifted from 'cosmos' to 'universe'. Our modern universe finds its meaning within itself; the cosmos of the enchanted world found meaning beyond itself, in the transcendent. (How Not, 33-34 and A Secular Age, 60)
The universe now has an "immanent order of natural laws rather than any sort of hierarchy of being." (How Not, 34)

Taylor uses the moniker 'Reform' to denote the array of shifts which made unbelief possible.

Taylor speaks of the "two-tiered religion" or "multi-speed system" which is the hierarchical division between the clergy and the lay populace. (A Secular Age, 63, 66)

The sanctification of mundane vocations is a form of Reform which 'levels' the "two-tiered religion", and puts an expectation upon "everyone to live up to the high expectations of disciplined, monastic life." (How Not, 38)

The other option of levelling the "two-tiered religion" is to "lop off the upper tier or the eternal horizon." (How Not, 38)

"A way of putting our present condition (our 'secular age'] is to say that many people are happy living for goals which are purely immanent' they live in a way that takes no account of the transcendent". (A Secular Age, 143)

Shift toward Individualism

Relation to Sartre's Existentialism

The buffered self is the result of an "unprecedented primacy to the individual". (A Secular Age, 146 and How Not, 44)

The social life is seen as sacred in the enchanted world. To break ranks or blaspheme is not an individual's business alone. It is a detriment to the community. (How Not, 30 and A Secular Age, 41-42)

"The Great Disembedding" (A Secular Age, 146) is the shift in the view of society from an integrated collective to an atomised, individualised collection of self-sustained persons. [USE THIS PHRASE, I LIKE IT]

The triple embedding: "Human agents are embedded in society, society in the cosmos, and the cosmos incorporates the divine". (A Secular Age, 152)


The Disembedding is the reversal of the "'triple embedding' of premodern societies". (How Not, 44)

"[T]here arises in Western societies a generalized culture of 'authenticity', or expressive individualism, in which people are encouraged to find their own way, discover their own fulfillment..." (A Secular Age, 299)

The nova effect is the result of individuals feeling cross-pressured between and wanting "to go back to the earlier established faiths, and on the other..., a sense of malaise, emptiness, a need for meaning." (A Secular Age, 302)

Youths now "suffer from a lack of strong purposes in their lives..." (A Secular Age, 303)
This is the catalyst for the search of meaning which posits many within the cross-pressure.


The buffered self's "very invulnerability opens it to the danger that not just evil spirits, cosmic forces or gods won't 'get to' it, but that nothing significant will stand out for it." (A Secular Age, 303)

Compare this idea of the self being buffered against substantial meaning with Sartre's idea that, without God, we must make our own meaning. Not only are we not influenced by God or the spirits, we are totally accountable for our decisions and our destiny.

Sartre says in Existentialism is a Humanism: "We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because... from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does." (Existentialism, 29) This is the negative side of the buffered self.

There are various objections to orthodox Christianity, which form half of the cross-pressure. These are:


  • "It offends against reason", i.e. the need for mystery, and "paradoxical notions, such as the God-man". (A Secular Age, 305)


  • "It is authoritarian (that is, it offends both freedom and reason)." (A Secular Age, 305)


  • "It poses impossible problems of theodicy." (A Secular Age, 305)


  • "It threatens the order of mutual benefit" by mortifying "sensual satisfaction", enacting persecution and quarrelling with governments "dedicated to furthering the order of mutual benefit." (A Secular Age, 305)



These objections to orthodox Christianity, when coupled with an individual's perceived inability to be satisfied by meaning derived from this world alone, create a cross-pressure, which in turn, for many people, causes the nova effect.

There is a sense of relief in revolt against God. "[W]ith 'scientific' proofs of atheism, it is not the cast-iron intellectual reasoning which convinces, but the relief of revolt.
This conversion to atheism is easier if one has never experienced the love of God in a personal form. (A Secular Age, 306-307, the quotation is on 306)

"There is a generalized sense... that with the eclipse of the transcendent, something may have been lost." (A Secular Age, 307) This points to the general significance of our lives. I would relate this to our newfound accountability and responsibility for our own destinies.


This relates to Sartre, as well as to Taylor's analysis of modern youths.
This general malaise or dissatisfaction forms the other half of the cross-pressure. This half of the cross-pressure can either push one back to transcendence, that is, living life for goals whose significance lies beyond this world.

Some, who feel unable to bring themselves back to transcendence, "seek solutions, or ways of filling the lack, but within immanence; and thus the gamut of new positions multiplies." (A Secular Age, 310)
This attempt to find meaning immanently means that one does not have to appeal to religion.

"To be a premodern person... is to be constantly in danger of being invaded or overcome by demons - of being possessed and transformed". Fantasy and the Buffered Self, 3.