Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity'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. |
Contents
Inescapable Frameworks | 3 |
The Self in Moral Space | 25 |
Ethics of Inarticulacy 53 | 53 |
Moral Sources | 91 |
PART II | 105 |
Inwardness | 109 |
Moral Topography III | 111 |
Platos SelfMastery | 115 |
God Loveth Adverbs | 211 |
Rationalized Christianity | 234 |
Moral Sentiments | 248 |
The Providential Order | 266 |
The Culture of Modernity | 285 |
Fractured Horizons | 305 |
Radical Enlightenment | 321 |
Nature as Source | 355 |
In Interiore Homine | 127 |
Descartess Disengaged Reason | 143 |
Lockes Punctual Self | 159 |
Exploring lHumaine Condition | 177 |
Inner Nature | 185 |
A Digression on Historical Explanation | 199 |
PART III | 209 |
The Expressivist Turn | 368 |
Our Victorian Contemporaries | 393 |
Visions of the PostRomantic Age | 419 |
Epiphanies of Modernism | 456 |
The Conflicts of Modernity | 495 |
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Common terms and phrases
affirmation of ordinary Aristotle articulation aspiration Augustine Augustinian Baudelaire belief benevolence called Cambridge Cambridge Platonists central chap Christian conception course crucial culture defined Deism Deist demands Descartes dignity discussion disengaged reason doctrine dominant eighteenth century Enlightenment epiphany ethic expression expressivism expressivist feel formulation freedom fulfilment God's higher human Hutcheson hypergoods Ibid idea ideal important inner instrumental involves issue Kant kind language lives Locke M. H. Abrams meaning Michel Foucault modern identity moral sources motivation naturalist nature Nietzsche notion object ontic ontological ourselves outlook passions Paul Celan person philosophy Plato poetry principle Puritan qualitative distinctions question quoted radical rational reality relation religion Romantic Romanticism Rousseau seems seen sense sentiments Shaftesbury significance society soul spiritual stance Stoic subjectivism T. E. Hulme theory things thought tradition turn understanding University Press utilitarian virtue vision whole