Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays

by Charles Taylor

Overview

“Charles Taylor is one of the finest thinkers we have. And by ‘we’ I mean every striving, puzzled, intellectually alert person on the planet…The wisdom and learning on display is staggering.” —Jonathan Wright, Catholic Herald

There are, always, more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in one’s philosophy—and in these essays Charles Taylor turns to those things not fully imagined or avenues not wholly explored in his epochal A Secular Age. Here Taylor talks in detail about thinkers who are his allies and interlocutors, such as Iris Murdoch, Alasdair MacIntyre, Robert Brandom, and Paul Celan. He offers major contributions to social theory, expanding on the issues of nationalism, democratic exclusionism, religious mobilizations, and modernity. And he delves even more deeply into themes taken up in A Secular Age: the continuity of religion from the past into the future; the nature of the secular; the folly of hoping to live by “reason alone”; and the perils of moralism. He also speculates on how irrationality emerges from the heart of rationality itself, and why violence breaks out again and again.

In A Secular Age, Taylor more evidently foregrounded his Catholic faith, and there are several essays here that further explore that faith. Overall, this is a hopeful book, showing how, while acknowledging the force of religion and the persistence of violence and folly, we nonetheless have the power to move forward once we have given up the brittle pretensions of a narrow rationalism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674284364
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	04/07/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Charles Taylor is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at McGill University. Author of The Language Animal, Sources of the Self, The Ethics of Authenticity, and A Secular Age, he has received many honors, including the Templeton Prize, the Berggruen Prize, and membership in the Order of Canada.

Table of Contents

Part I Allies and Interlocutors

1 Iris Murdoch and Moral Philosophy 3

2 Understanding the Other: A Gadamerian View on Conceptual Schemes 24

3 Language Not Mysterious? 39

4 Celan and the Recovery of Language 56

Part II Social Theory

5 Nationalism and Modernity 81

6 Conditions of an Unforced Consensus on Human Rights 105

7 Democratic Exclusion (and Its Remedies?) 124

8 Religious Mobilizations 146

Part III Themes from A Secular Age

9 A Catholic Modernity? 167

10 Notes on the Sources of Violence: Perennial and Modern 188

11 The Future of the Religious Past 214

12 Disenchantment-Reenchantment 287

13 What Does Secularism Mean? 303

14 Die Blosse Vernunft ("Reason Alone") 326

15 Perils of Moralism 347

16 What Was the Axial Revolution? 367

Notes 381

Credits 407

Index 409

What People are Saying About This

Akeel Bilgrami

Charles Taylor's worldwide influence and reputation owe to the depth and imagination of his work. They owe, too, to the fact that he is one of the few philosophers who has consistently made his ideas accessible to different philosophical traditions, as well as to scholars in other disciplines. His range of interests and reference is impressively wide and his writing is accessible and bracingly free of jargon. He is almost temperamentally incapable of writing on any subject without relating it to the most fundamental philosophical questions. He is generous when writing of others, drawing out what is most significant in their work, with never an unfair or unforgiving note. He has a keen and constantly curious cosmopolitan sensibility. Above all, his humanity is vast. Every one of these qualities—and more—are present in abundance in these essays.
— Akeel Bilgrami, Columbia University

Editorial Reviews

Charles Taylor’s worldwide influence and reputation owe to the depth and imagination of his work. They owe, too, to the fact that he is one of the few philosophers who has consistently made his ideas accessible to different philosophical traditions, as well as to scholars in other disciplines. His range of interests and reference is impressively wide and his writing is accessible and bracingly free of jargon. He is almost temperamentally incapable of writing on any subject without relating it to the most fundamental philosophical questions. He is generous when writing of others, drawing out what is most significant in their work, with never an unfair or unforgiving note. He has a keen and constantly curious cosmopolitan sensibility. Above all, his humanity is vast. Every one of these qualities—and more—are present in abundance in these essays.

Akeel Bilgrami

Charles Taylor is one of the finest thinkers we have. And by ‘we’ I mean every striving, puzzled, intellectually alert person on the planet. Even when you dissent from his conclusions you’d be a dullard if you chose to ignore Taylor’s verve or the fabulous intellectual tussles his writings provoke. Mostly, you’ll find yourself agreeing with him and I can think of no better introduction to either pursuit (the cheering or the respectful booing) than this splendid book…The wisdom and learning on display is staggering.

Catholic Herald - Jonathan Wright

Charles Taylor is one of the finest thinkers we have. And by 'we' I mean every striving, puzzled, intellectually alert person on the planet. Even when you dissent from his conclusions you'd be a dullard if you chose to ignore Taylor's verve or the fabulous intellectual tussles his writings provoke. Mostly, you'll find yourself agreeing with him and I can think of no better introduction to either pursuit (the cheering or the respectful booing) than this splendid book... The wisdom and learning on display is staggering.--Jonathan Wright "Catholic Herald" (7/29/2011 12:00:00 AM)

Charles Taylor's worldwide influence and reputation owe to the depth and imagination of his work. They owe, too, to the fact that he is one of the few philosophers who has consistently made his ideas accessible to different philosophical traditions, as well as to scholars in other disciplines. His range of interests and reference is impressively wide and his writing is accessible and bracingly free of jargon. He is almost temperamentally incapable of writing on any subject without relating it to the most fundamental philosophical questions. He is generous when writing of others, drawing out what is most significant in their work, with never an unfair or unforgiving note. He has a keen and constantly curious cosmopolitan sensibility. Above all, his humanity is vast. Every one of these qualities--and more--are present in abundance in these essays.--Akeel Bilgrami, Columbia University

From the Publisher

Charles Taylor is one of the finest thinkers we have. And by "we" I mean every striving, puzzled, intellectually alert person on the planet. Even when you dissent from his conclusions you'd be a dullard if you chose to ignore Taylor's verve or the fabulous intellectual tussles his writings provoke. Mostly, you'll find yourself agreeing with him and I can think of no better introduction to either pursuit (the cheering or the respectful booing) than this splendid book...The wisdom and learning on display is staggering.
— Jonathan Wright

Catholic Herald