Does Charles Taylor Have a Nietzsche Problem? (Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory 2017 24:3, 372-386) (original) (raw)

This paper critically discusses Charles Taylor’s ontological views in an ongoing discussion with Mark Redhead’s analysis of what he calls “Taylor’s Nietzschean predicament.” The paper is divided in five sections. The first section examines Taylor’s evaluation of the difference between theistic and non-theistic moral sources. It becomes clear in the second section that this is only the gateway to Redhead’s critique of Taylor. I argue that his analysis, while revealing, is largely based on interpretive errors. After locating Taylor’s “Nietzsche problem” by drawing heavily on an insightful paper by Michael Shapiro in the third section, I continue to discuss the implications of this problem for Taylor’s views in the fourth section by showing that his hermeneutic perspective of strong evaluation tends to close the very questions that Nietzsche’s genealogy opens up, and finally reflect in the concluding fifth section on how these issues affect Taylor’s ontology as a whole.