"Surely one of the most important philosophical works of the last quarter of a century."
--Jerome Bruner
"Sources of the Self is in every sense a large book: in length and in the range of what it covers, but above
all in the generosity and breadth of its sympathies and its interest in humanity...Few books on such large subjects
are so engaging."
--Bernard Williams, New York Review of Books
"A magnificent account, full, fair, well read, well written, complicated and high spirited--a credit, one
might say, to the modern self that is capable of plumbing the depths of its own heritage in such a generous way."
--Jeremy Waldron, Times Literary Supplement
"For sociologists, there is no more important philosopher writing in the world today than Charles Taylor."
--Alan Wolfe, Contemporary Sociology
"Undoubtedly one of the most significant works in moral philosophy and the history of ideas to appear in recent
decades."
--Frances S. Adeney, Theology Today
"Taylor has taken on the most delicate and exacting of philosophical questions, the question of who we are
and how we should live...and he has made this an adventure of self-discovery for his reader. To have accomplished
so much is an important philosophical achievement."
--New Republic
Harvard University Press Web Site, April, 2000
Summary
In 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.
The major insight of Sources of the Self is that modern subjectivity, in all its epistemological, aesthetic, and
political ramifications, has its roots in ideas of human good. After first arguing that contemporary philosophers
have ignored how self and good connect, the author defines the modern identity by describing its genesis. His effort
to uncover and map our moral sources leads to novel interpretations of most of the figures and movements in the
modern tradition. Taylor shows that the modern turn inward is not disastrous but is in fact the result of our long
efforts to define and reach the good. At the heart of this definition he finds what he calls the affirmation of
ordinary life, a value which has decisively if not completely replaced an older conception of reason as connected
to a hierarchy based on birth and wealth. In telling the story of a revolution whose proponents have been Augustine,
Montaigne, Luther, and a host of others, Taylor's goal is in part to make sure we do not lose sight of their goal
and endanger all that has been achieved. Sources of the Self provides a decisive defense of the modern order and
a sharp rebuff to its critics.