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
... Christian spirituality . Modern utilitarianism is one of its secularized variants . And as such it connects with a more fundamental feature to Christian spirituality , which comes to receive new and unprecedented importance at the ...
... Christian thought . Indeed , it is one of them which first spawned the ideal of disengagement . But the marriage with Platonism , or with Greek philosophy in general , was always uneasy ; and another , specifi- cally Christian , theme ...
... Christian spirituality , and perfect compatibility with it , the secular ethic of altruism has discarded something essential to the Christian outlook , once the love of God no longer plays a role . Alongside ethics of fame , of rational ...
... Christian monotheism , one transcending the cosmos . In certain early religions , like the Aztec , there was even a notion that the whole world runs down , loses substance or Being , and has to be periodically renewed in sacrificial ...
... Christian religious revelations in an- other , both have been defined as historical supersessions of the Homeric ... Christianity did to the cults of pagan religions , and as the author of the Republic did to the goods and virtues of ...
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 |