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
... respect for life discussed above, would appeal to the theistic account I referred to and invoke our common status as God's creatures; others would reject this for a purely secular account and perhaps invoke the dignity of rational life ...
... respect of other people's life , well - being , and dignity , I want also to look at our sense of what underlies our own dignity , or questions about what makes our lives meaningful or fulfilling . These might be classed as moral ...
... respect for life and integrity do seem to go as deep as this , and to be connected perhaps with the almost universal tendency among other animals to stop short of the killing of conspecifics . But like so much else in human life , this ...
... respect . In this they treat these reactions as different from other ' gut ' responses , such as our taste for sweets or our nausea at certain smells or objects . We don't acknowledge that there is something there to articulate , as we ...
... respect . This is what we do with racists . Skin colour or physical traits have nothing to do with that in virtue of which humans command our respect . In fact , no ontological account accords it this . Racists have to claim 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 |