Dans cet article, j’aborde la question de la notion d’ontologie chez Charles Taylor. Je constate, dans un premier temps, l’abandon par Taylor du point de vue anthropocentrique, ainsi que l’adoption d’une perspective non-anthropocentrique. Je remets ensuite en question l’interprétation de Stephen White, en insistant sur le fait qu’elle ne parvient pas à mettre en valeur l’inspiration métaphysique de la pensée de Taylor. J’estime, en conclusion, que Taylor s’appuie fondamentalement sur un mode d’argumentation métaphysique qui est sous-estimé lorsqu’on le présente comme (...) un «ontologiste “faible”». (shrink)

Abstract Juxtaposing Pierre Trudeau and Charles Taylor allows for assessing not simply an epoch in Canadian political life but more fundamentally two contrasting visions of modern government and society. The key is not in the usual contrasts: liberalism versus communitarianism or individual rights versus collective rights; but in the opposition between Trudeau?s centralized and Taylor?s decentralized vision of federalism. What emerges from analyzing that familiar difference is significant and ironic. While Taylor?s view seems more cognizant of government?s formative activity and (...) of culture in politics, it is Trudeau?s view that better upholds: (1) the role of government as both an instrument of common purposes and a protector of individual rights; (2) the significance of culture as both a carrier of democratic values and an array of distinctive ways of life. (shrink)

The use of Ritalin and other stimulant drug treatments for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) raises distinctive moral dilemmas for parents; these moral dilemmas have not been adequately addressed in the bioethics literature. This paper draws upon data from a qualitative empirical study to investigate parents' use of the moral ideal of authenticity as part of their narrative justifications for dosing decisions and actions. I show that therapeutic decisions and actions are embedded in valued cultural ideals about masculinity, self-actualization and success, (...) as well as in moral conceptions of authenticity and personal freedom. I argue that this investigation of parents' moral justifications and dosing dilemmas raises questions about the validity of authenticity as a transcendent moral principle. Moreover, this study demonstrates that in order to be relevant, bioethical analysis of neurocognitive enhancement must engage with ground-up studies of moral principles and decision-making in context. (shrink)

Public conversation about biological contributors to mental disorder often centers on whether the problem is “biological or not.” In this paper, we propose moving beyond this bifurcation to a very different question:how exactlyare these problems understood to be biological? Specifically, we consider four issues around which different interpretations of the body’s relationship to mental disorder exist:1. The body’s relationship to day-to-day action; 2. The extent to which the body is changeable; 3. The body’s relationship to context; 4. The degree to (...) which states of the body directly cause mental disorder.Drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty and other phenomenologists, we examine different responses to these questions and associated implications for how mental health treatment and recovery come to be experienced. Finally, we consider broader questions these patterns raise, including why certain portrayals of the brain dominate public attention and how to foster more deliberation in this regard. (shrink)

This article examines the 2008 report of the Quebec Government’s Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences which was co-authored by Charles Taylor. Summarizing its main themes, it identifies points of intersection with Taylor’s political thought. Issues of citizen equality, including gender equality, secularism, integration and interculturalism, receive special attention.

This paper contrasts three non-skeptical ways of explaining and reconciling political struggles: monologue, instrumental dialogue, and a comparative dialogical approach promoted by Charles Taylor and James Tully. It surveys the work of Taylor and Tully to show three particular family resemblances: their emphasis on practice, irreducible diversity, and periodic reconciliation. These resemblances are evident in the way they employ dialogical approaches to explain struggles over recognition and distribution. They describe these as dialogical actions, and suggest that a form of dialogical (...) comparison might reconcile their various contested demands. (shrink)

In A Secular Age, Taylor introduces the idea of porous subjectivity by way of elucidating the mode of being typical of the enchanted pre-modern world, and juxtaposes it to the buffered self typical of the disenchanted modern world. The framing of the problem in this way, with the argument so clearly oriented as an attack on the latter position, risks a polarization that defaults to the former as the preferred option. These, though, are not our only choices. There is much (...) to recommend Taylor’s notion of porous subjectivity as distinct from the buffered self of atomistic individualism. But Taylor associates the emergence of the disenchanted world with disengaged reason, and the existence of an enchanted world with a deeper mode of engagement in the world. If we instead focus upon modes of engagement with the world separate from the question of enchantment, we can perhaps further our understanding of human subjectivity and relations with others. (shrink)

In my paper, I set The Language Animal against a broader picture of Taylor’s intellectual trajectory. Sources of the Self (1989) left three major questions open in its wake: (a) the viability of religious moral sources in a ‘secular’ age; (b) the compatibility between a robust moral realism and a genealogical account of modern identity; (c) the meaning and destiny of the so-called ‘linguistic turn’. This is the framing topic of his last book. Although Taylor’s variety of hermeneutics is unquestionably (...) a product of the linguistic turn, he has operated with a broad notion of the linguistic capacity from the start. Language is, for him, a shared activity and the acknowledgment of its animal embeddedness functions in his work as an antidote against any too idealized a view of the kind of creatures that humans are. In his earlier writings, however, a structural tension lurked below the surface between a Gadamerian notion of Sprache and a more phenomenological, Merleau-Pontyan, embodied outlook that was less modeled on articulate speech. My claim is that his new book marks a shift from a more speech-oriented to a more body-oriented understanding of language. (shrink)

Charles Taylor is quite rightly ranked as one of the leading philosophers writing in the world today. As such, his recent endorsement of Catholicism as his preferred vision for the good life warrants careful attention. To this end, I examine the core aspects of his Catholicism that centre on four main themes: Catholicism as difference, the need for transcendence, the necessity for acts of 'unconditional love', and his support for Matteo Ricci's Jesuit mission of the 16th century as a model (...) to be followed for Catholics today. I argue that Taylor has severe weaknesses in all these themes, which cast great doubts on the viability of his Catholic vision for offering an orientation towards the good. (shrink)

This paper aims to come to grips with the rich philosophy of Charles Taylor by focusing on his concept of ‘strong evaluation’. I argue that a close examination of this term brings out more clearly the continuing tensions in his writings as a whole. I trace back the origin of strong evaluation in Taylor’s earliest writings, and continue by laying out the different philosophical themes that revolve around it. Next, the focus is on the separate arguments in which strong evaluation (...) is central, uncovering several methodological conflicts in Taylor’s strategies. Arguing against most of his commentators, I suggest that a distinction should be drawn between the philosophical anthropological, moral, and ontological implications of strong evaluation. As a result, the contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it clarifies the issue of strong evaluation by distinguishing the different arguments in which Taylor employs the concept. Second, it makes the case for multiple tensions within Taylor’s methods. Third, as a consequence, this analysis not only enables us to evaluate the potential and limits of his subject-centered philosophy but also separates his objectivist claims from his theories of human subjectivity, opening up the question of the metaphysical status of his ontological view. (shrink)

Given Taylor’s status as one of the most important thinkers in contemporary moral and political philosophy, it is somewhat surprising that so little attention has been paid to the implications of h...

Kei Yoshida’s recent book Philosophy of the Social Sciences: An Introduction is the first introductory textbook on the philosophy of the social sciences written in Japanese. It concisely expounds on a wide range of topics in the discipline, while its explication of those topics is not impartial or neutral as the author himself says. This paper gives a critical review of the book. The first half of it briefly overviews and assesses the book as a whole. The latter half of (...) the paper reconstructs the gist of the author’s exposition of the naturalism/interpretivism debate and criticizes it. (shrink)

People discussing science and religion usually frame their conversations in terms of essentialist assumptions about science, assumptions requiring the existence (but not the specification) of criteria according to which science can be distinguished from other forms of inquiry. However, criteria functioning at a level of generality appropriate to such discussions may not exist at all. Essentialist assumptions may be avoided if science is understood within a broader context of human practices. In a philosophy of practices, to label a practice as (...) “scientific” is to make a practically motivated provision for a way of speaking. Charles Taylor and Joseph Rouse have produced complementary philosophies of practice that promote this kind of understanding. In this essay I review the work of Taylor and Rouse, identify apparent residues of essentialism that each seems to harbor, and offer a resolution to some of their disagreements. I also criticize a form of essentialism commonly employed in Christian circles and outline an anti-essentialist view of science that may be helpful in science-and-religion discussions. (shrink)

InThe Language Animal, Charles Taylor’s struggle to provide a theoretical framework for his narration of the self finally becomes obvious. About 30 years after he wrote his great and fascinatingSources of the Self, Taylor closes the gap between the self as a radical being-in-the-world and its analytical premises. Even if the main topic of Taylor’s new book may seem to be only a comparison of what he calls ‘HHH-theory’ and ‘HLC-theory,’ there are two other authors, the combination of whose ideas (...) clarifies not only his approach to language but also to his concept of ‘reality’ as such: Gottlob Frege and Ludwig Wittgenstein.DansThe Language Animal, les efforts que doit déployer Charles Taylor pour fournir un point de vue théorique permettant de fonder son récit du soi deviennent finalement apparents. Quelque trente ans après son grand et fascinantLes sources du moi, il comble l’écart qui subsistait entre le soi en tant qu’être au monde radical et ses prémisses analytiques. Même si le principal sujet du nouveau livre de Taylor semble se résumer à une comparaison entre ce qu’il appelle la théorie HHH et la théorie HLC, on y retrouve deux auteurs dont les idées, combinées, permettent de clarifier son approche du langage et du concept de «réalité» : Gottlob Frege et Ludwig Wittgenstein. (shrink)

A survey of 172 undergraduates, carried out during the fall 2002 and spring 2003 semesters at a large research university in the Midwestern United States, found, as expected, a statistically significant positive relationship between the importance students attributed to attendance and the rates at which they subsequently attended class. Data are analysed by students’ gender and levels in school; and attendance rates of students who did not complete the optional survey question on attitudes are compared with attendance rates of students (...) who answered the question. Although attitudes are but one of many complex factors that influence behaviours, university instructors can nurture and encourage positive attitudes towards the importance of class attendance as a means for minimizing the detrimental effects of student absences. (shrink)