Charles Margrave Taylor,
CC,
GOQ,
FRSC (born
November 5,
1931) is a Canadian
philosopher from
Montreal,
Quebec,
Canada, who has made contributions to
political philosophy,
philosophy of social science, and the
history of philosophy. He is often classified as a
communitarian, but is uncomfortable with the label. Taylor is also a practicing
Catholic. He has often criticised the increased individualisation of modern life which he deems a 'malaise of modernity'.
Career
Charles Taylor began his undergraduate education at
McGill University (B.A. in History in 1952). He continued his studies at the
University of Oxford, first as a
Rhodes Scholar at
Balliol College, (B.A. in
Philosophy, Politics and Economics ) in 1955, and then as a post-graduate, (
D.Phil. in 1961), under the supervision of
Isaiah Berlin and
G.E.M. Anscombe.
He succeeded
John Plamenatz as
Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory in the
University of Oxford and
Fellow of
All Souls College and was for many years Professor of
Political Science and
Philosophy at
McGill University in
Montreal,
Canada, where he is now
professor emeritus. Taylor is now Board of Trustees Professor of Law and Philosophy at
Northwestern University in
Evanston. Many of his students have gone on to be important philosophers and political theorists. Taylor also serves as Contributing Editor for the academic journal
Public Culture, published by
Duke University Press.
In 1991, Taylor was appointed to the
Conseil de la langue française in the province of
Quebec, at which point he devastatingly critiqued Quebec's notorious commercial sign laws. In 1995, he was made a Companion of the
Order of Canada. In 2000, he was made a Grand Officer of the
National Order of Quebec. He was awarded the 2007
Templeton Prize for progress towards research or discoveries about spiritual realities, which includes a cash award of US$1.5 million. In 2007 he and
Gérard Bouchard were appointed to head a one-year Commission of Inquiry into the "reasonable accommodation" in his home province of Quebec, Canada. In June 2008 he was awarded the
Kyoto Prize in the arts and philosophy category. The Kyoto Prize is sometimes referred to as the Japanese Nobel.
Views
In order to understand the stance that Taylor presents in
Sources of the Self one should understand his philosophical background, especially his writings on
Hegel,
Wittgenstein,
Heidegger, and
Merleau-Ponty. Taylor rejects
naturalism, mediational
epistemologies, and what, following
Mikhail Bakhtin, he calls "monological
consciousness" (or the intellectualist's perspective).
Another one of his essays is on Wittgenstein's analysis of rule-following. In the essay "To follow a rule," Taylor explores why it is that people can fail to follow
rules and what kind of
knowledge is it that allows a person to successfully follow a rule, such as directions to a party or the arrow on a sign. In the intellectualist tradition we would presuppose that to follow directions to a party that we must have in
consciousness a set of
propositions and
premises about how to follow directions. But how do we know whether or not the directions are adequate, i.e. what prevents
skepticism of the arrow on a sign or your friends directions to a party? To an intellectualist, before any rule can be followed, all of these issues must already be resolved.
Taylor argues that Wittgenstein's solution is the articulation of a background of understanding. This background is not more rules or premises, but what
Wittgenstein often referred to as "forms of life." More specifically, Wittgenstein says in the
Philosophical Investigations that "Obeying a rule is a practice." Since giving reasons for following a rule must end at some point, Taylor locates this in our embodied understandings of the world, that is in the practical mastery we incorporate into our bodies in the form of habits, dispositions, and tendencies. The parallel would be how we learn to drive a car. Driving a car appears to follow rules, but in fact we never need to refer to rules when speeding down the highway. Rather our attention is elsewhere and we seem to rely on the skills we have embodied to constantly adjust and respond to events that we encounter. Taylor says, "Our understanding itself is embodied. That is, our bodily know-how and the way we act and move can encode components of our understanding of self and world."
Taylor's point is to say that we don't need to posit the human being primarily as the subject of
representations in order to understand rule-following behavior or something like driving down the highway. Following Heidegger,
Merleau-Ponty,
Michael Polanyi, and of course Wittgenstein, Taylor argues that it is mistaken to presuppose that we are inherently cut off from the world and that our understanding of it is essentially mediated by representations. When we act, for example, we act with our bodies, whether linguistically or through grasping with the hand. But little of what is involved in our action, whether the goals of action or the rule specifying movement, is consciously articulated. In fact, he argues, it is only against an unarticulated background that representations can make sense to us at all.
The notion of background helps us approach how it is that we understand in our everyday mode of being. That is, when we walk we have a bodily understanding of where to place the foot, but normally we do not need rules to do this. Rather our ability to walk is a bodily knowledge. Instead, Taylor argues, our ability to follow rules is founded in the relationship between a background of practices and bodily habits. On occasion we do follow rules but Taylor wants us to consider that the rules do not contain the principles of their own applications. As such we need to understand the more complicated relationship between our bodily know-how and the social and historical "forms of life" which explain our actions and of which rules often only supply an after-the-fact explanation and description.
Communitarian critique of Liberalism
Taylor is associated with political theorists like
Michael Walzer and
Michael Sandel, for their
communitarian critique of liberal theory's understanding of the "self." Communitarians emphasize the importance of social and communal arrangements and institutions to the development of individual meaning and identity.
In his 1991
Massey Lecture, "The Malaise of Modernity," Taylor addressed what he saw as the central problems or "malaises" plaguing modern societies. He argued, among other things, that traditional
liberal theory's conceptualization of individual identity is too abstract,
instrumentalist, and one dimensional. For Taylor, early theorists from
John Locke and
Thomas Hobbes to more modern standard bearers of liberal theory like
John Rawls and
Ronald Dworkin, have neglected the individual's ties to community and those people social theorist
George Herbert Mead called significant others. A more realistic understanding of the "self" recognized what Taylor called "horizons of meaning" (drawn from
Gadamer), the important background of social and dialogical relations with others, against which life choices gain importance and meaning. Without this background of meaning, life choices are vulnerable to an equal value, rendering them meaningless.
Politics
Taylor was a candidate for the
social democratic New Democratic Party in
Mount Royal on three occasions in the 1960s, beginning with the
1962 federal election when he came in third place behind
Liberal Alan MacNaughton. He improved his standing in
1963, coming in second. Most famously, he also lost in the
1965 election to newcomer and future
prime minister,
Pierre Trudeau. This campaign garnered national attention since both Taylor and Trudeau were considered
intellectuals and "
star candidates". Taylor's fourth and final attempt to enter the
Canadian House of Commons was in the
1968 federal election, when he came in second as an NDP candidate in the riding of
Dollard. In 2008, he endorsed the NDP candidate in Westmount—Ville-Marie,
Anne Lagacé Dowson.
Interlocutors
