Charles Taylor

by Ruth Abbey

Charles Taylor (b. 1931) is one of the most influential and prolific philosophers in the English-speaking world. His unusually broad interests range from artificial intelligence to theories of meaning, from German idealism to contemporary multiculturalism. Ruth Abbey, in the first systematic single-authored study of this extraordinary thinker, offers a stimulating overview of his contribution to some of philosophy's enduring debates.


The core chapters take up Taylor's approaches to moral theory, selfhood, political theory, and epistemology. Alone, these chapters constitute a solid introduction to Charles Taylor. However, the author also offers a great deal to those interested in pursuing the links across his positions, defining Taylor in terms of both his political engagement and his particular form of anti-foundationalism. In addition, she engages with some of the secondary literature to correct common misreadings of Taylor's writings. Abbey concludes by outlining Taylor's most recent reflections on what it means to live in a secular age and pointing to likely future directions of his work.


This book makes accessible one of the most read and discussed philosophers of our day. It will serve as an ideal companion to Taylor's own writings for students of philosophy and political theory. And it will be welcomed as well by the nonspecialist seeking an authoritative guide to Taylor's large, disparate body of work.

-- "Choice"

Genres: Biography

256 pages, Paperback

Reviews

[Quentin Kemna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed reading this. While I wouldn't call it a deep dive, it certainly gives a solid overview of the important aspects of Charles Taylor's philosophy, and offers a glimpse into the wide breadth of his work. Probably a good place to start for anybody who wants to explore what Taylor's philosophy is about. Abbey explores four main areas of his work, morality, self-hood, political philosophy, and epistemology. There is also a shorter, concluding chapter regarding his views on secularism. These four main themes are overlapped with Taylors general perspective on philosophy, including his communitarian roots, his critique of representational epistemology, and his critique of the disengaged nature of the natural sciences and its dissemination into the cultural and social zeitgeist. His insistence on exposing the undercurrents behind systems of thought such as liberalism and the natural sciences was also prevalent throughout. Personally, I greatly appreciated this emphasis. Abbey refers to these undercurrents as "tacit background" understandings, and Taylor uses this concept to (in my opinion) successfully levy critiques of some core tenets of liberalism and the rationalism of the natural sciences. For example, Abbey explains that Liberalism posits itself (and thus the state) as a neutral arbitrar of rules and process, removed from a "notion of the good" for its populace. Abbey explains how Taylor examines this misconception, by showcasing how Liberalism operates from its own internal notion of the good to dispel and invalidate others, from a seemingly neutral perspective. Liberalisms emphasis on neutrality then becomes hollow, and also logically unsound as a mechanism for its own defense. This is an important critique and a good place for those looking for ways to offer an alternative of Liberalism to start thinking from. In similar fashion, Abbey explores Taylors critique of the "negative" and "positive" conceptions of freedom from his communitarian perspective, illustrating how ideas of "negative" liberty often ignore the dialogical aspects of the self and the way that we rely on community by very nature of existence to hold any conceptions of liberty at all. This doesn't completely dispel the importance of negative liberty (freedom from the government, from the other), but it does invalidate it and illustrate how this concept is fundamentally misunderstood by many defenders of "freedom" and liberalism in general. Furthermore, I enjoyed Taylors viewpoint on self-hood, which reminded me (though less radically spelled out) of Jean Luc Nancy's being-with, while of course both philosophers were heavily inspired by Heidegger's notion of the das man. The "self" of course being extended out to the community, in order to posit its own individuality, must rely on the community to create itself. It's clear that much of Taylor's philosophy stems from this point, including his communitarianism. On morality, of particular interest to me was the concept of "strong evaluation", the idea that we evaluate our differing moral virtues against each other, and we don't hold each moral virtue to be equally important or valuable. Taylor uses this idea to build out his unique version of what Abbey terms "falisable" moral realism, which falls somewhere between complete moral relativism and complete moral realism. This is a compelling viewpoint for anyone interested in building out some level of objective morality, for our ability to evaluate our own moral beliefs differently indicates that we have some prior conception of the good that we are ascribing to. Taylor does not go as far as to say that a universal concept of the good may be possible, but does use the concept of strong evaluation to argue that we may each individually house our own conception of the good that we can then use to find some common moral ground with others. This is similar to another concept explored in this book, the "Fusion of horizons" which is explained in the chapter on epistemology. Taken from Gadamer, this is simply an attempt by Taylor to illustrate with complexity why the natural science's viewpoint on epistemology cannot be transcribed to the evaluation of the social sciences, as natural science aims to find an ultimate truth, let's say the "fixed horizon" in order to advance knowledge, while the social sciences must undergo a "fusion of horizons", that is a bringing together (though not a complete synthesis) of different perspectives and cultural understandings in order to get closer to a better conception of what the experience of being human is. Taylor emphasizes that the search for an ultimate truth in epistemology is a misconceived notion, and that we must understand the growth of knowledge in the social sciences to be about better articulating the experience of the human, rather than advancing to some ultimate truth. Baked into Taylors thought process here (and also throughout the many concepts posited throughout the book) is his insistence on the bodily experience and engagement of the human being. He criticizes the representationalist and foundationalist viewpoints of the natural sciences epistemology through the bodily lens, explaining how these perspectives don't allow for the direct experience of being a human in a body. He draws on Merleau Ponty (to my own great personal glee) to illustrate these points, mainly by explaining how by starting with the experience of being a body, we prioritize the actual experience of the human, rather than the disengaged, "objective' standpoint of the natural sciences, which attempts to create a non-anthropocentric epistemology. These topics and more are covered in this book, and Charles Taylor thought and philosophy is greatly impressive and influential. While I have my own critiques of some of his theoretical leanings, (some due to his Christian foundation, which certainly influences his work, and some due to his reluctance to truly delve into the post-modern space), I believe that this book is well-researched, well argued, and offers an excellent and slightly deeper than an introduction foray into Charles Taylor's work and thought. Perhaps some more direct engagement with Taylors work would have been well taken, as there is certainly a lot of leaning on Abbey's interpretation being done here, although this is just a natural byproduct of reading secondary literature. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Charles Taylor, or anyone interested in some important critiques of liberalism, as well as anyone interested in contemporary ideas of the self and morality.

[Finnian Colwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

The book provides a comprehensive overview of Charles Taylor's contributions to various fields of philosophy, and how his ideas in each field are interconnected. The first chapter surveys Taylor's epistemology, where he shows how knowledge is grounded in the daily practices of need-fulfillment and other activity, and hence Taylor rejects sceptical questions as failing to situate knowing in terms of being in the world already. It also covers his non-naturalist view of the social sciences and how we cannot predict the outcome of human affairs, given humans are self-interpreting, knowing beings themselves. The second surveys his approach to language, where once again he rejects the atomism of representationalist views of language such as Locke's, instead examining the ways in which language both describes and alters our experience of the world, interacting with other modes of expression such as body language. The third deals with his moral philosophy, where Taylor suggests each of us has "strong evaluations" of which of our desires are worthy or unworthy of being pursued, and equates the good life with the actualisation of those worthy desires, or in the case of some individuals a "hypergood" in comparison to which all other goods are secondary. The fourth covers selfhood, and it is fascinating how Taylor characterises the "modern self" as defined by such ideas as authenticity, "disengaged freedom", inwardness etc. etc., drawing on a range of cultural sources to show how this self has been constructed. The fifth and sixth deal with Taylor's political and religious philosophy, containing a compelling takedown of the liberal "negative freedom" of Isaiah Berlin and some interesting reflections on the incompatibility of the liberal notions of nationalism and recognition of difference granted to minority groups.

The book certainly piqued my interest, and excited me to read Taylor's original texts. Particularly the first two sections were fascinating. The third seemed a bit incoherent, and such questions as how the framework of life vs constitutive good interacts with weak vs strong evaluation remain unanswered. More extensive quotation from the original text would have assured me that the author was being faithful to the philosopher whom she was interpreting. A personal interest of mine, Taylor's views on art and aesthetics, were touched on only peripherally, so could have been explored in more detail - although perhaps that is another book in itself. There was not much space for explanation, just description, and this led me often to think, "okay, but how?" or "okay, but why?" So the book will be useful as a brief summary but can only be coupled with closer reading of Taylor to develop a proper understanding of his ideas.