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Title: Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity by Charles Taylor ISBN: 0-674-82426-1 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (6 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Tapestry of philosophies with flashes of brilliance
Comment: Taylor took two years to write this book; it took me nearly as long to read it! It is a five-part tome of 525 pages of text and 71 pages of footnotes. In this entire collection I cannot remember a single section that could be read without my complete concentration. Quiet and solitude are minimal prerequisites before tackling this book - a good grasp of the history of philosophy wouldn't hurt either.
The sources to which Taylor refers are the moral ideals, ideas, and understandings that have dominated in various historical eras. Taylor's basic premise is rather simple, "we are only our selves insofar as we move in a certain space of questions, as we seek and find an orientation to the good (p. 34)." His purpose is not to specify the good, that is, he does not seek to set normative definitions or qualifications. His purpose is to show that self-definition requires a framework in which to be understood.
The historical course of his narrative begins with the classical perspective. In this view, self was dependent on a vision of the True or the Ideal. The hierarchical nature of reality presupposed in classical thought meant that self-definition was subservient to the whole. Traditional Christian thought embraced the classical perspective and the preference for self-definition by externals.
Obviously, this short sketch of classical thought seems to be absurdly irrelevant in our contemporary world. Self is definitely not defined in relation to externals, but by an extreme interiority, complete rejection of hierarchical schemes, and the assumption that reality is defined empirically rather than conceptually. This book traces the transformation of the classical perspective through history in each of these areas: the movement toward inwardness, the affirmation of ordinary life, and the voice of nature.
I found Taylor's historical analysis of more value than his contemporary application; however, I have to admit that the latter was quite difficult for me to follow due to my lack of exposure to the material. In essence he claims that the near universal adoption of benevolence and justice as our predominant ethical values have insufficient foundation. Radical subjectivity, radical equality, and radical acceptance of nature do not provide a horizon capable of defending contemporary values.
Even though Taylor stops short of offering an external standard, his thorough critique of contemporary inconsistencies is excellent. I cannot really recommend this book to everyone because it is clearly written to a graduate audience. If you are not well-read in philosophy, theology, or psychology, it may not be worth your time.
Rating: 4
Summary: Sources, not answers
Comment: Taylor offers us an invigorating critique of the Western individualist tradition since the 17th century. His work focuses on how the Judeo-Christian tradition has been dismantled bit-by-bit as rationality has taken its place. This dynamic has left us with a "desiccated" self (e.g., no role for spirituality or grace). Taylor tells us that what is missing are powers of creative imagination and the substantive goods of ordinary life, but he does not reconcile these with the developments he critiques. Instead of sending us back to our religious roots or offering a new perspective, he leaves us asking the question we had on page 1: what gives life meaning in the 21st century.
Rating: 5
Summary: An articulate philosophy of man
Comment: With 'Sources of the Self' Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has written a seminal work along the lines of Ernst Cassirer's classic 'An Essay on Man'.
Deploring the minimal ethics of modernity and dissatisfied with post-modern nihilism, Taylor positions his moral theory in the Aristotelean tradition of 'ethos'. But Taylor does not embrace a pre-defined, teleological destiny. Rather, his premise is that in articulating 'the self' we will discover who we are, what we are supposed to do and where we are going.
Taylor's quest into what made man into what he is, is traced back to classic Greek thought and Augustinian theology. Subsequently the author takes us to early modernity: from Locke, via Neoplatonists like Shaftesbury, to the period of Romanticism. Eventually this odyssee of the mind is germinating into present-day man as a self-expressing creature.
The richness of Taylor's argumentation is often dazzling; here speaks a man of wide and deep erudition, an authoritative voice of intellectual history, seemingly equally at home in science, history and the arts.
In the post-modern wilderness of de-construction, Taylor's articulate and subtle history of mentality is an intellectual joy.
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Title: The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor ISBN: 0674268636 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: November, 1992 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory by Alasdair MacIntyre ISBN: 0268006113 Publisher: Univ of Notre Dame Pr Pub. Date: May, 1997 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Whose Justice? Which Rationality? by Alasdair MacIntyre ISBN: 0268019444 Publisher: Univ of Notre Dame Pr Pub. Date: December, 1989 List Price(USD): $17.50 |
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Title: Multiculturalism by Charles Taylor, Amy Gutmann ISBN: 0691037795 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 22 August, 1994 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited by Charles Taylor ISBN: 0674007603 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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