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 6-10 of 85
... notion that the life of production and reproduction , of work and the family , is the main locus of the good life flies in the face of what were originally the dominant distinctions of our civilization . For both the warrior ethic and ...
... notion of an identity defined by some mere de facto , not strongly valued preference is incoherent . And what is more , how could the absence of some such preference be felt as a disorienting lack ? The condition of there being such a ...
... notion of self which connects it to our need for identity is meant to pick out this crucial feature of human agency , that we cannot do without some orientation to the good , that we each essentially are ( i.e. , define ourselves at ...
... notion of ' identity ' , as we saw above . My self - definition is understood as an answer to the question Who I am . And this question finds its original sense in the interchange of speakers . I define who I am by defining where I ...
... a direction towards what I am not yet is what Alasdair Maclntyre captures in his notion quoted above that life is seen as a ' quest'.27 This of course connects with an important philosophical issue about 48 • IDENTITY AND THE GOOD.
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 |