Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity

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Harvard University Press, 1989 - Philosophy - 601 pages

In this extensive inquiry into the sources of modern selfhood, Charles Taylor demonstrates just how rich and precious those resources are. The modern turn to subjectivity, with its attendant rejection of an objective order of reason, has led—it seems to many—to mere subjectivism at the mildest and to sheer nihilism at the worst. Many critics believe that the modern order has no moral backbone and has proved corrosive to all that might foster human good. Taylor rejects this view. He argues that, properly understood, our modern notion of the self provides a framework that more than compensates for the abandonment of substantive notions of rationality.

The major insight of Sources of the Self is that modern subjectivity, in all its epistemological, aesthetic, and political ramifications, has its roots in ideas of human good. After first arguing that contemporary philosophers have ignored how self and good connect, the author defines the modern identity by describing its genesis. His effort to uncover and map our moral sources leads to novel interpretations of most of the figures and movements in the modern tradition. Taylor shows that the modern turn inward is not disastrous but is in fact the result of our long efforts to define and reach the good. At the heart of this definition he finds what he calls the affirmation of ordinary life, a value which has decisively if not completely replaced an older conception of reason as connected to a hierarchy based on birth and wealth. In telling the story of a revolution whose proponents have been Augustine, Montaigne, Luther, and a host of others, Taylor’s goal is in part to make sure we do not lose sight of their goal and endanger all that has been achieved. Sources of the Self provides a decisive defense of the modern order and a sharp rebuff to its critics.

 

Contents

Inescapable Frameworks
3
The Self in Moral Space
41
Ethics of Inarticulacy
53
Moral Sources PART II
105
Inwardness
109
Moral Topography
111
Platos SelfMastery
115
In Interiore Homine
127
The Providential Order
269
The Culture of Modernity
285
The Expressivist Turn
368
Our Victorian Contemporaries
405
Visions of the PostRomantic
419
Epiphanies of Modernism
456
The Conflicts of Modernity
495
3
539

Descartess Disengaged Reason
143
Lockes Punctual Self
159
Exploring lHumaine Condition
177
Inner Nature
185
A Digression on Historical Explanation
199
PART III
209
God Loveth Adverbs
211
Rationalized Christianity
234
Moral Sentiments
248
25
541
53
551
91
568
III
573
127
582
143
585
185
596
211
599
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About the author (1989)

Charles Taylor is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at McGill University. Author of The Language Animal, Sources of the Self, The Ethics of Authenticity, and A Secular Age, he has received many honors, including the Templeton Prize, the Berggruen Prize, and membership in the Order of Canada.

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