About this Book

PETER BERGER, renowned sociologist and social critic, theologian and novelist, here brings his many gifts to bear on the endlessly interesting, if also painful, predicament of living in the modern world. In discussions ranging all the way from such private experiences as marriage and psychoanalysis to such public issues as the secularization of religion, the corruptions of pornography, or the growing indifference to murder, he brilliantly demonstrates how that predicament has grown out of the modern disbelief in God and the weakening of the institutions of community. The modernity which constitutes the central preoccupation of this book raises questions of both a very general and a very particular kind: "How," in Peter Berger's own words, "can one understand that peculiar reality we know as modern society?" Beyond understanding it, how can one actually engage in meaningful political action in its American version? And how does modernity constrain or condition a man's religious quest? The author's answers, based on a sure sense of history combined with an infinitely patient yet toughminded grasp of the way societies actually work, bring new illumination to virtually every page. For those who have not accepted Peter Berger's views about the nature of our present predicament as well as for those who have-indeed, for everyone concerned with understanding himself as a modern person and as a citizen of a modern state-Facing Up to Modernity is an experience in self- discovery