Bilimoria, Purushottama2019-09-252019-09-252014-02-2520149788189958794http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12424/201464In his tome, The Secular Age, Charles Taylor sets out three senses of secularism (French, laicité). The first of these pertains to the separation of ‘state’ (the political, economic, educational, bureaucratic institutions and social organizations governing the public sphere) from the ‘Church’ (the spaces marking the broadly cultural and faith-spheres of believers, or the adherence to God or predicated on some notion of ultimate reality). This is the predominant ideology of the modern capitalist and post-industrial West, Western Modernity and much of postmodernism as well. It is our ‘secular age’. Thus a secular state must base its laws and political decisions on reasons and the communicative apparatus of rationality that everyone could accept, irrespective of their particular ethical or religious conceptions.1Pages:217-246engWith permission of the license/copyright holderHindu EthicsSecular AgePredominant IdeologyPolitical ethicsReligious ethicsMethods of ethicsPhilosophical ethicsBook chapter