Finding the Bridge: Charles Taylor, Interpretive Methods and Political Philosophy (original) (raw)

Putting the Apolitical into Question: A Critique of Fullness in the Work of Charles Taylor

In A Secular Age, Charles Taylor points to the ambiguous relation between the liberal values of freedom and equality and what he claims is a fundamental human search for meaning in our secular modern society. The relation between society and the individual, especially in a context of deep diversity, is likely to see tensions over values, convictions, or traditions. Taylor has long been concerned with the effects that the absence of a universal authority has on establishing rules and values and on the state's ability to choose between equally valid demands. He contends that our secular age restricts the dominant discourse to a secular one, which hinders the possibility for an open and diverse dialogue among cultural and religious groups. Thus, Taylor seeks to articulate a notion of a 'beyond' that could be palatable to modern values and outlooks. From his own interpretation of Rawls' overlapping consensus, he proposes that the universal sentiment of fullness -or the existence of something that gives sense to one's existence -is a proper basis for the consensus.

Perspectives on the Philosophy of Charles Taylor

Sample chapters: "Introduction", Arto Laitinen, Nicholas H. Smith, pp. 5-9. http://www.jyu.fi/yhtfil/fil/armala/INTRO.pdf "On Identity, Alienation and Consequences of September 11th. An Interview with Charles Taylor", Arto Laitinen, Hartmut Rosa. pp.165-195. http://www.jyu.fi/yhtfil/fil/armala/texts/Part%20Four%201112.pdf "Culturalist Moral Realism", Arto Laitinen, p.115-131. http://www.jyu.fi/yhtfil/fil/armala/texts/2002c.pdf See the series: http://www.helsinki.fi/filosofia/acta.htm

THE STRUCTURE OF CHARLES TAYLOR'S PHILOSOPHY

International Philosophical Quarterly, 2023

Perhaps the most striking feature of Taylor's oeuvre is its breadth… his work ranges from reflections on artificial intelligence to analyses of contemporary multicultural societies. Also notable is the scope of his approach to philosophical questions, for he typically brings his knowledge of Greek, Christian, Renaissance and modern thought as well as his appreciation of the arts to bear on such questions .

A Conversation with Charles Taylor

Symposium, 2005

Charles Taylor is Canada's best-known philosopher and one of the world's most influential and prolific philosophers today. He has taught at Oxford, Princeton, and Berkeley. In 1961, he became Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at McGill University, where he is now Emeritus Professor. Taylor has published more than 280 articles and twenty books, including the much-acclaimed Hegel (1975), Sources of the Self (1989), and The Ethics of Authenticity (1991). His works have been translated into more than twenty languages, many books have been published on his philosophy, and several conferences dedicated to his thought have been organized in various countries. He has elaborated his works in dialogue with the major contemporary figures of Western philosophy while also being a key figure in contemporary debates about the self, multiculturalism, the methodology of the social and natural sciences, ethics, artificial intelligence, language, and the problems of modernity. Taylor is a political activist and public intellectual who has been highly involved in the Canadian political scene, running four times for Federal Parliament as a member of the New Democratic Party. In the 1970s he became Vice President of the NDP and today is a member of Quebec's Conseil de la langue francaise Professor Taylor is the recipient of numerous prizes, including the 2003 inaugural Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Gold Medal for Achievement in Research.

Philosophy as philosophical anthropology: an interview with Charles Taylor

in book: Herder: philosophy and anthropology, eds. Anik Waldow and Nigel DeSouza, Oxford, 2017

This interview explores Charles Taylor’s understanding of philosophical anthropology and its relationship to Herder. Taylor argues that human culture can be properly understood only in a genetic fashion, through hermeneutics and phenomenology, and names Herder as an important precursor here. Taylor illustrates this through the difference between a purely normative political theory and a contextual political philosophy. He identifies what he calls a “good naturalism”, associated with Herder, that explains what kind of animal human beings are, and a “bad naturalism” that explains human beings in reductive, natural scientific terms. Finally, Taylor outlines his current work on language, in which a similar opposition arises, between language as a rich set of language games/practices and language as pure description.