Philosophical Papers: Volume 1, Human Agency and Language

Philosophical Papers: Volume 1, Human Agency and Language

Author: Charles Taylor

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1985-03-28

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1316101649

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Charles Taylor has been one of the most original and influential figures in contemporary philosophy: his 'philosophical anthropology' spans an unusually wide range of theoretical interests and draws creatively on both Anglo-American and Continental traditions in philosophy. A selection of his published papers is presented here in two volumes, structured to indicate the direction and essential unity of the work. He starts from a polemical concern with behaviourism and other reductionist theories (particularly in psychology and the philosophy of language) which aim to model the study of man on the natural sciences. This leads to a general critique of naturalism, its historical development and its importance for modern culture and consciousness; and that in turn points, forward to a positive account of human agency and the self, the constitutive role of language and value, and the scope of practical reason. The volumes jointly present some two decades of work on these fundamental themes, and convey strongly the tenacity, verve and versatility of the author in grappling with them. They will interest a very wide range of philosophers and students of the human sciences.


Dilemmas and Connections

Dilemmas and Connections

Author: Charles Taylor

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011-02-07

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 9780674055322

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In these essays Charles Taylor turns to those things not fully imagined or avenues not wholly explored in his epochal A Secular Age.


Sources of the Self

Sources of the Self

Author: Charles Taylor

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1992-03-12

Total Pages: 628

ISBN-13: 9780521429498

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


The Language Animal

The Language Animal

Author: Charles Taylor

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-03-14

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0674970276

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“We have been given a powerful and often uplifting vision of what it is to be truly human.” —John Cottingham, The Tablet In seminal works ranging from Sources of the Self to A Secular Age, Charles Taylor has shown how we create possible ways of being, both as individuals and as a society. In his new book setting forth decades of thought, he demonstrates that language is at the center of this generative process. For centuries, philosophers have been divided on the nature of language. Those in the rational empiricist tradition—Hobbes, Locke, Condillac, and their heirs—assert that language is a tool that human beings developed to encode and communicate information. In The Language Animal, Taylor explains that this view neglects the crucial role language plays in shaping the very thought it purports to express. Language does not merely describe; it constitutes meaning and fundamentally shapes human experience. The human linguistic capacity is not something we innately possess. We first learn language from others, and, inducted into the shared practice of speech, our individual selves emerge out of the conversation. Taylor expands the thinking of the German Romantics Hamann, Herder, and Humboldt into a theory of linguistic holism. Language is intellectual, but it is also enacted in artistic portrayals, gestures, tones of voice, metaphors, and the shifts of emphasis and attitude that accompany speech. Human language recognizes no boundary between mind and body. In illuminating the full capacity of “the language animal,” Taylor sheds light on the very question of what it is to be a human being.


Selected Writings on Aesthetics

Selected Writings on Aesthetics

Author: Johann Gottfried Herder

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-01-10

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 1400827167

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A seminal figure in the philosophy of history, culture, and language, Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) also produced some of the most important and original works in the history of aesthetic theory. A student of Kant, he spent much of his life striving to reconcile the opposing poles of Enlightenment thought represented by his early mentors. His ideas influenced Hegel, Schleiermacher, Nietzsche, Dilthey, J. S. Mill, and Goethe. This book presents most of Herder's important writings on aesthetics, including the main sections of one of his major untranslated works, Kritische Wälder (Critical Forests). These notes, essays, and treatises, the majority of which appear here in English for the first time, show this idiosyncratic thinker both deeply rooted in the controversies of his day and pointing the way to future developments in aesthetics. Chosen to reflect the extent and diversity of Herder's concerns, the texts cover such topics as the psychology and physiology of aesthetic perception, the classification of the arts, taste, Shakespeare, the classical tradition, and the relationship between art and morality. Few thinkers have reflected so sensitively and productively on the cultural, historical, anthropological, ethical, and theological dimensions of art and the creative process. With this book, the importance of aesthetics to the evolution and texture of Herder's own thought, as well as his profound contribution to that discipline, comes fully into view.


Self to Self

Self to Self

Author: J. David Velleman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-01-26

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 9780521854290

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This collection of essays by philosopher J. David Velleman on personal identity, autonomy, and moral emotions is united by an overarching thesis that there is no single entity denoted by 'the self', as well as themes from Kantian ethics and Velleman's work in the philosophy of action.


Charles Taylor, Michael Polanyi and the Critique of Modernity

Charles Taylor, Michael Polanyi and the Critique of Modernity

Author: Charles W. Lowney II

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-12-15

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 331963898X

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This book provides a timely, compelling, multidisciplinary critique of the largely tacit set of assumptions funding Modernity in the West. A partnership between Michael Polanyi and Charles Taylor's thought promises to cast the errors of the past in a new light, to graciously show how these errors can be amended, and to provide a specific cartography of how we can responsibly and meaningfully explore new possibilities for ethics, political society, and religion in a post-modern modernity.


The Value of Life

The Value of Life

Author: John Harris

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2006-12-05

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1134954212

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First published in 1985. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.