Buy used: $108.67

FREE delivery November 7 - 21. Details

Select delivery location

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Brit Books USA

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Follow the Authors

Charles Taylor

Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity 1st Edition

by Charles Taylor (Author)

4.6 127 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$30.49

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$58.72

—

$30.00

Hardcover, December 1, 1990

$108.67

—

$104.67

Paperback

"Please retry"

$34.23

$19.76

Kindle
$30.49 Read with our free app
Hardcover
$108.67

2 Used from $104.67
Paperback
$23.91 - $34.23

18 Used from $19.76 23 New from $34.23

'Most of us are still groping for answers about what makes life worth living, or what confers meaning on individual lives', writes Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self. 'This is an essentially modern predicament.' Charles Taylor's latest book sets out to define the modern identity by tracing its genesis, analysing the writings of such thinkers as Augustine, Descartes, Montaigne, Luther, and many others. This then serves as a starting point for a renewed understanding of modernity. Taylor argues that modern subjectivity has its roots in ideas of human good, and is in fact the result of our long efforts to define and attain the good. The modern turn inwards is far from being a disastrous rejection of rationality, as its critics contend, but has at its heart what Taylor calls the affirmation of ordinary life. He concludes that the modern identity, and its attendant rejection of an objective order of reason, is far richer in moral sources that its detractors allow. Sources of the Self provides a decisive defence of the modern order and a sharp rebuff to its critics.

ISBN-10

0521383315
ISBN-13

978-0521383318
Edition

1st
Publisher

Cambridge University Press
Publication date

December 1, 1990
Language

English
Dimensions

6.46 x 1.46 x 9.25 inches
Print length

622 pages
See all details

Charles Taylor
404
Paperback
52 offers from $18.87
James K. A. Smith
593
Paperback
70 offers from $3.78
Alasdair MacIntyre
423
Paperback
42 offers from $21.55
Charles Taylor
59
Paperback
1 offer from $25.95
Carl R. Trueman
1,964
Hardcover
72 offers from $22.75
Hannah Arendt
593
Paperback
1 offer from $22.50

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

Charles Taylor's latest book sets out to define the modern identity by tracing its genesis.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press; 1st edition (December 1, 1990)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 622 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0521383315
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0521383318
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.46 x 1.46 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #7,377,104 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #19,244 in Political Philosophy (Books)
- #28,546 in Philosophy (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.6 127 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

Important information

To report an issue with this product, click here.

About the authors

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Charles Taylor
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
See more on the author's page
Charles Taylor
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
See more on the author's page

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5

127 global ratings

2 star

0%

1 star

6%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Brendan Bell

This book is absolutely incredible.

Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2022

Verified Purchase

It’s insane the depth and new insight this book as given me

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

mokezak

Best, most comprehensive, and articulate dissertation on Self I've read.

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2020

Verified Purchase

Be prepared to be called out and exposed. No more room for convenient rationalizations and judgments - ignorance. Identity, what is it and where does it come from - the good, the bad, and the reason? I love this book!

The author is concise and traverses the themes that constitute what we believe to be the Self, and Taylor ensures no psychological stone unturned from religion, theology, cosmology, and psychology (the ramparts of philosophy).

Anyone smartly provoked by inner demons such that Freud and Jung unraveled will appreciate these added viewpoints.

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Customer

great book, great price, great condition

Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2019

Verified Purchase

service was excellent as its been in the past.

Helpful

featherbear

Book in excellent condition, prompt delivery

Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2019

No review

I am just getting into this interesting book, but ...

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2015

Verified Purchase

I am just getting into this interesting book, but it is going to take a while. I'll review it when I'm done.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

D. S. Heersink

Great, BUT

Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2006

I read this very popular, yet scholarly, and extolled book when it first was published, and found it elegant, helpful, and problematic. The title is the subject of the book: What sources have gone into making of modern identity? Obviously philosophy and theology are the dominant contributors, with psychology pulling up the rear (which is as it should be, since the latter only came to be 150 years ago).

While I agree with Taylor that philosophy, more than either theology or psychology, actually informs our sense of self, particularly the modern self, I'm not sure psychologists would agree. In today's marketplace of ideas, it's psychology that crowds bookstore shelves with a panoply of "self-help" books. Conversely, while the sense of self is implicit in earlier philosophy, not many modern philosophers address the matter at all. Ergo, the need for this book.

Taylor weaves his theory through the prism of philosophical history and the evolutionary unfolding of how the sense of the modern self has come into being. It's a compelling, perhaps unattractive, pinnacle to which we have come. The "modern" sense of self begins with the works of Rene Descartes (i.e., the thinking being), which may or may not have improved on Boethius's medieval ontology (i.e., the rational animal). Still, the sense of "self" is far more complex than either a rational animal or a thinking being alone would suggest. Perhaps either thesis is the starting point, and obviously necessary, but it's certainly not sufficient, to capture what we mean by "self" today.

To Taylor's credit, he begins to add other necessary features, and the features he adds aren't uncontroversial. Yes, phenomenology is a part of the structure; so too is language a key feature to the identity of the modern self; but where are the well-spring of the emotions? This particularly salient feature of emotions barely registers on Taylor's radar. And it's this deficit, the failure to bring our emotional features to bear, that makes this work such an enormous disappointment.

For the other facets, dimensions, and features, Taylor elegantly, eruditely, and heuristically surveys philosophical history and culls most of its ideas. But how could the emotions (e.g., love, hate, joy, grief, etc.) not figure into Taylor's conception of the "modern self." Even if Taylor relies primarily on philosophical perspectives, the philosophy of emotions is not a nil set. David Hume devoted Part II of his seminal "Treatise on Human Nature" to the passions; numerous contemporary philosophers have addressed focused on the emotions in the years immediately preceding the publication of this book. And even if Taylor had been deprived of the philosophical accounts, he certainly could not have been deprived of psychological accounts. So, the minimalist attention to this most salient of features is jarring.

Why such a fuss about this omission? Robert Solomon, whose works both precede and follow Taylor's book, insists that it is the emotions that make life itself meaningful and valuable: Not independent of the other salient features, but intrinsically integrated with them. The "passions" are what give life zest and interest and dynamic. When's the last time that looking at language's performatives brought "joy" to one? What happens when the self ratiocinates that makes it meaningful to us? Of course, the "eureka" of discovery, the pride of accomplishment, the joy of understanding, the hope of implementation, the desire to act, etc., are what make ratiocination interesting and valuable. Cogitation qua cogitation is significant, no doubt, but we cogitate in order to understand, and understand to implement, and implement to enjoy. Thus, pleasure is integral to the cogitation, for without it, it's simply cold, calculating, and indifferent ratiocination. Per Solomon, the passions (i.e., emotions) are what give life meaning.

If Solomon's thesis about emotions giving the self meaning is true, and it is, how could something so obvious and necessary have been overlooked in this magisterial tome? This singular omission marrs this otherwise fascinating and comprehensive history and analysis of what it means to have a "self." It's as if Taylor started to analyze the pictures on the wall, but ignored the elephant in the middle of the room. The emotions are what give life meaning, and any examination of "the self" that omits them may have given us the container, but has also forgotten to fill it.

Happily, despite this serious omission, Taylor provides a probing and detailed exegesis of the development and structure of the modern self. As long as one supplements this massive tome with other reading (e.g., Solomon's "The Passions," "Love," "The Philosophy of Erotic Love," etc., or Martha Nussbaum's "The Therapy of Desire," "Upheavals of Thought," etc., or Ronald de Souza's "The Rationality of Emotions"), Taylor's work provides the outline and identity of the other salient features, but having given us the wall, but missed the nucleus, of the cell, the work lacks life.

99 people found this helpful

Helpful

Maria Baes

very comprehensive

Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2014

Verified Purchase

A very comprehensive way to show that our understanding of the self did not just emerge among the flower children of the sixties.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2009

The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has written two extended studies of what many people describe as modernity. The more recent of these books, "A Secular Age" (2007) examines the ways in which modern life became increasingly secularized or "disenchanted". Taylor in that book offered a long historical and analytical discussion of how people had, over centuries, tended to move away from a religious, transcendental outlook on life. Taylor received the Templeton Prize for this impressive study.

Nearly 20 years earlier, Taylor wrote the book I am reviewing here, "Sources of the Self" (1989). This book is, if anything, more difficult to read than its successor. The book addresses the same complex of questions as does "The Secular Age", but from the other end. Rather than focusing on God and secularization, the book describes "the making of the modern identity" -- concepts of human selfhood and human personality that have helped made modern life what it is.

Both books show a great deal of erudition and take an approach both analytical and historical. As Taylor says, in order to know where we are, we have to know where we have been. In "The Secular Age", Taylor identifies himself at the outset as a practicing, believing Catholic. In the earlier book, he keeps his hand somewhat more hidden. His own commitments might even be missed under a casual reading of an extraordinarily dense book.

Although the book wanders and lacks strong focus, Taylor's primary interest lies in showing what gives meaning to life. In the opening Part of this five-part book, Taylor explores the relationship between views of personal identity and views of the good. This section of the book is essential to understanding the long historical discussion that forms the remaining four Parts of the study. Taylor attacks various forms of ethical and metaphysical theories that deny the intelligibility of talking about "the good" or "the good life" for human beings. The denial frequently is based on various naturalistic or relativistic theories about the nature of the good which, Taylor claims, are in turn based upon a fractured approach to human knowing that he will describe in detail in the historical sections of the book. Human life, for Taylor, differs from other forms of life or types of things in that only human life possesses dignity. To have dignity, choices, and projects is what it is to be human and a self. By cutting the self off artificially from these sources is to narrow unduly the inquiry into self and goodness at the outset. Further, Taylor claims that thinkers who do so fequently are inconsistent and unaware of their own motivations. There goal is to cut off certain claims to transcendence or elitism as goals of life in favor of exhalting values such as ordinary life -- meaningful work, sexuality and sensuality, family, benevolence towards others, and broad equality. But, Taylor argues, their metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical commitments are insufficient to support the views of the good that these thinkers themselves tacitly hold.

Following this long opening part, Taylor seemingly changes track. He discusses various historical concepts of the self that, Taylor claims, illustrate the many strands and tensions that inform the ways people today try to understand themselves. Thus, in part 2, Taylor begins with the ancients, proceeds through Augustine, and winds up with Descartes and Locke in showing how a disengaged, inward concept of the self developed at the outset of the modern scientific age. In part 3, Taylor discusses how "ordinary life" as I summarized it above, became the source of meaning for life; and he equates this with the shift from traditional theism to deism and ultimately to secularity. Taylor then describes the development of romanticism and nature as a response to instrumentalism and disengagement. Romanticism tended to lead to "expressivism" -- the value of individual creativity and subjectivity with the threat to "objective" understanding of good and value. The final part of the book, which covers a great deal with a broad brush begins with the Victorians and proceeds to show how modern thinkers, writers and artists reacted against both instrumentalism and expressivism.

Taylor's analysis is dense, careful and difficult. The degree of learning is extraordinary, but it frequently gets in the way of understandability. It helped me to think of the book as something of a combination of Hegel and Heidegger. Very simply, the approach is Hegelian because Taylor tries to show how various concepts of the self developed historically, with each pointing out and attempting to address some perceived deficiency in an earlier approach. The approach is also Hegelian because Taylor is reluctant to reject any approach out of hand. The varying approaches he describes are not so much wrong as partial and incomplete. Taylor's goal is to take what he finds valuable in each of them and work to a synthesis rather than in advocating for one or the other approach. This seems to me to owe much to Hegel. The Heideggerian component of the book consists, I think, in Taylor's discomfort with a move towards objectification -- or separating the "self" from "nature". This truncation is, for Taylor, the result of a too narrow focus on epistemology. Taylor would begin instead with what Heidegger would call being-in-the-world and take life experience, before reduction to a scientific approach, as the source for understanding the self. This approach, Taylor suggests, would allow for the sense of the dignity of human life, and the plurality of goods that constitute a good life. Behind the carefully restrained and analytical prose, Taylor offers a strong critique of over-intellectualization. Among the many other writers that Taylor discusses, he seems also to have a great affinity for Dostoevsky and Nietzsche.

This is a long, difficult, provocative,and sometimes diffuse work. Readers who have struggled with questions of meaning and value and who have a strong background in philosophy and literature will find this study, and Taylor's "The Secular Age" challenging and rewarding.

Robin Friedman

107 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Luciano

Outstanding

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 22, 2023

Verified Purchase

I have never read a contemporary book of philosophy with so much attention. Every page Taylor writes is filled with remarks that either enlighten aspects of our moral life or ask very serious questions about it. He claims that contemporary philosophical trends lead us to ignore many of those aspects, and he convinced me that he is right. (As a keen walker, then, I am also fascinated by the parallel that he repeatedly draws between understanding our moral instincts and finding an orientation in a new, unexplored landscape.) I wish I had read this book when it was first published

Shawn Stickney

Quite a lot to ponder.

Reviewed in Canada on October 6, 2021

Verified Purchase

Very in depth study of the moral ontology which underlies many of our convictions about morality. Taylor weaves through a history of philosophy which stretches from Plato up to modern theories of rights and individualism arguing against the worldview, sometimes associated with science, that we can view the world in a thoroughly detached and neutral manner. Taylor has been an important philosopher in discussions surrounding secularism, practical reason, critical theory, human rights, recognition, and finding meaning in the modern age.

Heidi

Good

Reviewed in Canada on July 19, 2019

Verified Purchase

Its alright

Amazon Customer

Four Stars

Reviewed in Canada on October 7, 2017

Verified Purchase

Fine