Dolgochub A. "The Narratives of Secularization" in Charles Taylor's

The dissertation is aimed at conceptualizing the narrative constituent of Charles Taylor's methodology within the context of his work "A Secular Age" and present the heuristic validity of the concept "narratives of secularization". The dissertation presents Charles Taylor's methodology as cohesive convergence of its elements, such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, narrative approach, which integrate with each other and create its heuristic direction. The central thematic core which unites methodological traditions has been indicated in the thesis, it being the problem of experience, its exploration and interpretation. Charles Taylor suggests the specific phenomenological -hermeneutic synthesis which along with the narrative is employed to explore experience, the religious one in particular. A special attention has been drawn to the narrative approach in Charles Taylor's methodology which allows to use the concept of narratives in order to discover, explain and demonstrate the phenomena under analysis and the process of secularization. The dissertation has analyzed all the levels of conceptualization of the narrative ( i.e. micro-, macro-, grand- and metanarrative) which are presented in the work "A Secular Age" and which are combined by the author in the concept of "narratives of secularization" taking into consideration their hierarchy and correlations, thus making the concept a core one for the dissertation. It has been emphasized that to analyze the process of secularization Charles Taylor most frequently employs micronarratives as fractions of experience, fixed in texts, as well as metanarratives as large-scale theoretical constructions that exist in the shape of universal explanatory schemes. The heuristic validity of Charles Taylor's methodology in general and that of the concept of "narratives of secularization" in particular have both been proved in the thesis