Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern IdentityIn 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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 74
... speaking world , has given such a narrow focus to morality that some of the crucial connections I want to draw here are incomprehensible in its terms . This moral philosophy has tended to focus on what it is right to do rather than on ...
... speak of " natural " rights , and now to such things as life and liberty which supposedly everyone has . In one way , to speak of a universal , natural right to life doesn't seem much of an innovation . The change seems to be one of ...
... speak is shaped from the earliest moments by our awareness that we appear before others , that we stand in public space , and that this space is potentially one of respect or contempt , of pride or shame . Our style of movement ...
... search might fail . This might happen through personal inadequacy , but failure might also come from there being no ultimately believable framework . Why speak of this in terms of a loss of meaning ? Partly Inescapable Frameworks 17.
... speak of the ' sense ' of a qualitative distinction . Plato's distinction stands at the head of a large family of views which see the good life as a mastery of self which consists in the dominance of reason over desire . One of the most ...
Contents
3 | |
41 | |
53 | |
Moral Sources PART II | 105 |
Inwardness | 109 |
Moral Topography | 111 |
Platos SelfMastery | 115 |
In Interiore Homine | 127 |
The Culture of Modernity | 285 |
Fractured Horizons | 305 |
Nature as Source | 355 |
The Expressivist Turn | 368 |
Our Victorian Contemporaries | 405 |
Visions of the PostRomantic | 419 |
Epiphanies of Modernism | 456 |
The Conflicts of Modernity | 495 |
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 |
The Providential Order | 269 |
3 | 539 |
25 | 541 |
53 | 551 |
91 | 568 |
III | 573 |
127 | 582 |
143 | 585 |
185 | 596 |
211 | 599 |