Review of Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Ambivalence of Charles Taylor’s Philosophy: What makes our Everyday Reality Real?
Dialogue, 2017
In The Language Animal, Charles Taylor’s struggle to provide a theoretical framework for his narration of the self finally becomes obvious. About 30 years after he wrote his great and fascinating Sources of the Self, Taylor closes the gap between the self as a radical being-in-the-world and its analytical premises. Even if the main topic of Taylor’s new book may seem to be only a comparison of what he calls ‘HHH-theory’ and ‘HLC-theory,’ there are two other authors, the combination of whose ideas clarifies not only his approach to language but also to his concept of ‘reality’ as such: Gottlob Frege and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Sources of the Other. The humanities and the arts in Taylor’s criticism of modern individuality
This paper proposes that the primary unit of Taylor’s investigations is not the self on its own, but one in dialogue with its binary opposite, the other. This latter is a term which Taylor does not use explicitly in Sources of the Self, but which emerged from critical discussions of the modern notion of the individual, first in the writings of the classical German idealists (notably of Hegel and Fichte), and then was made more recognizable by a particular line of 20th century authors, connecting Bakhtin to Levinas and onwards. This paper tries to show that we can only appreciate the significance of Taylor’s thought on the human phenomenon correctly if we look at him as placed at the crossroad of (mainly, but not exclusively French) phenomenology and mostly German philosophical anthropology – both of them relying on Aristotelian inspirations, and both widening up the discourse of liberal individuality, and facing the problem of the connection between the one and the many.
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 .
Philosophy Today, 2020
The patent absence of a shared canon of great living thinkers may be taken to be another sign of philosophy's loss of self-confidence today. Disagreement about the relevant ranking factors is conspicuous and runs deep in the minds of the entitled appraisers. The case of the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor is exemplary in this regard. His view of philosophy as a non-self-contained and non-self-sufficient bridge discipline makes his texts both an interesting read for people working in different fields (history, literature, sociology, psychology, political theory, anthropology, etc.) and an insoluble puzzle for analytic philosophers who abhor above all amateurism in their peers.