Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity - Hardcover

Taylor, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521383315 ISBN 13: 9780521383318

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1989

Synopsis

'Most of us are still groping for answers about what makes life worth living, or what confers meaning on individual lives', writes Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self. 'This is an essentially modern predicament.' Charles Taylor's latest book sets out to define the modern identity by tracing its genesis, analysing the writings of such thinkers as Augustine, Descartes, Montaigne, Luther, and many others. This then serves as a starting point for a renewed understanding of modernity. Taylor argues that modern subjectivity has its roots in ideas of human good, and is in fact the result of our long efforts to define and attain the good. The modern turn inwards is far from being a disastrous rejection of rationality, as its critics contend, but has at its heart what Taylor calls the affirmation of ordinary life. He concludes that the modern identity, and its attendant rejection of an objective order of reason, is far richer in moral sources that its detractors allow. Sources of the Self provides a decisive defence of the modern order and a sharp rebuff to its critics.

About this title

Review

Taylor has taken on the most delicate and exacting of philosophical questions, the question of who we are and how we should live...and he has made this an adventure of self-discovery for his reader. To have accomplished so much is an important philosophical achievement.

humanity...Few books on such large subjects are so engaging.

accomplished so much is an important philosophical achievement.

Sources of the Self is in every sense a large book: in length and in the range of what it covers, but above all in the generosity and breadth of its sympathies and its interest in humanity...Few books on such large subjects are so engaging.

"Sources of the Self" is in every sense a large book: in length and in the range of what it covers, but above all in the generosity and breadth of its sympathies and its interest in humanity...Few books on such large subjects are so engaging.--Bernard Williams "New York Review of Books "

A magnificent account, full, fair, well read, well written, complicated and high spirited--a credit, one might say, to the modern self that is capable of plumbing the depths of its own heritage in such a generous way.--Jeremy Waldron "Times Literary Supplement "

For sociologists, there is no more important philosopher writing in the world today than Charles Taylor.--Alan Wolfe "Contemporary Sociology "

Undoubtedly one of the most significant works in moral philosophy and the history of ideas to appear in recent decades.--Frances S. Adeney "Theology Today "

Surely one of the most important philosophical works of the last quarter of a century.--Jerome Bruner

Sources of the Self is in every sense a large book: in length and in the range of what it covers, but above all in the generosity and breadth of its sympathies and its interest in humanity...Few books on such large subjects are so engaging.--Bernard Williams "New York Review of Books "

From the Back Cover

In this inquiry into the sources of modern selfhood, Charles 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 that has decisively if not completely replaced an older conception of reason as connected to a hierarchy based on birth and wealth.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0521383315
• ISBN 13: 9780521383318
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 622