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 84
... vision of order in the cosmos , but rather is defined procedurally , in terms of instru- mental efficacy , or maximization of the value sought , or self - consistency . The framework of self - mastery through reason has also developed ...
... vision and expressive power . There is a set of ideas and intuitions , still inadequately understood , which makes us admire the artist and the creator more than any other civilization ever has ; which convinces us that a life spent in ...
... vision of the incomparably higher , while being true to the central modern insights about the value of ordinary life . We sympathize with both the hero and the anti - hero ; and we dream of a world in which one could be in the same act ...
... vision of contempo- raries , can even be quite misunderstood by them . But the drive to original vision will be hampered , will ultimately be lost in inner confusion , unless it can be placed in some way in relation to the language and ...
... vision of the good . The excellences of aesthetic sensibility , say , those shown by a great performer , are of this kind . As are perhaps those definitive of a Nietzschean superman . But the great mass of our terms seem to require that ...
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 |