Charles Margrave Taylor was born inMontreal,Quebec, on November 5, 1931, to aRoman Catholic Francophone mother and aProtestant Anglophone father by whom he was raised bilingually.[17][18] His father, Walter Margrave Taylor, was a steel magnate originally fromToronto while his mother, Simone Marguerite Beaubien, was a dressmaker.[19] His sister wasGretta Chambers.[20]
Taylor was elected a foreign honorary member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986.[32] In 1991, Taylor was appointed to the Conseil de la langue française in the province of Quebec, at which point he critiqued Quebec's commercial sign laws. In 1995, he was made a Companion of theOrder of Canada. In 2000, he was made a Grand Officer of theNational Order of Quebec.
In 2007 he andGérard Bouchard were appointed to head a one-year commission of inquiry into what would constitutereasonable accommodation for minority cultures in his home province of Quebec.[33]
In 1997 he was awarded theHegel Prize.[34] In 2003, he was awarded theSocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council's Gold Medal for Achievement in Research, which had been the council's highest honour.[35][36] He was awarded the 2007Templeton Prize for progress towards research or discoveries about spiritual realities, which included a cash award of US$1.5 million. In June 2008, he was awarded theKyoto Prize in the arts and philosophy category. The Kyoto Prize is sometimes referred to as the Japanese Nobel.[37] In 2015, he was awarded theJohn W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity, a prize he shared with philosopherJürgen Habermas.[38] In 2016, he was awarded the inaugural $1-millionBerggruen Prize for being "a thinker whose ideas are of broad significance for shaping human self-understanding and the advancement of humanity".[39]
Despite his extensive and diverse philosophical oeuvre,[40] Taylor famously calls himself a "monomaniac,"[41] concerned with only one fundamental aspiration: to develop a convincingphilosophical anthropology.
In his essay "To Follow a Rule," Taylor explores why people can fail to follow rules, and what kind ofknowledge it is that allows a person to successfully follow a rule, such as the arrow on a sign. The intellectualist tradition presupposes that to follow directions, we must know a set ofpropositions andpremises about how to follow directions.[43]
Taylor argues that Wittgenstein's solution is that all interpretation of rules draws upon a tacit background. This background is not more rules or premises, but what Wittgenstein calls "forms of life." More specifically, Wittgenstein says in thePhilosophical Investigations that "Obeying a rule is a practice." Taylor situates the interpretation of rules within the practices that are incorporated into our bodies in the form of habits, dispositions and tendencies.[43]
Following Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty,Hans-Georg Gadamer,Michael Polanyi, and Wittgenstein, Taylor argues that it is mistaken to presuppose that our understanding of the world is primarily mediated by representations. It is only against an unarticulated background that representations can make sense to us. On occasion we do follow rules by explicitly representing them to ourselves, but Taylor reminds us that rules do not contain the principles of their own application: application requires that we draw on an unarticulated understanding or "sense of things" — the background.[43]
Taylor defines naturalism as a family of various, often quite diverse theories that all hold "the ambition to model the study of man on the natural sciences."[44] Philosophically, naturalism was largely popularized and defended by the unity of science movement that was advanced bylogical positivist philosophy. In many ways, Taylor's early philosophy springs from a critical reaction against the logical positivism and naturalism that was ascendant in Oxford while he was a student.
Initially, much of Taylor's philosophical work consisted of careful conceptual critiques of various naturalist research programs. This began with his 1964 dissertationThe Explanation of Behaviour, which was a detailed and systematic criticism of thebehaviourist psychology ofB. F. Skinner[45] that was highly influential at mid-century.
From there, Taylor also spread his critique to other disciplines. The essay "Interpretation and the Sciences of Man" was published in 1972 as a critique of the political science of the behavioural revolution advanced by giants of the field likeDavid Easton,Robert Dahl,Gabriel Almond, andSydney Verba.[46] In an essay entitled "The Significance of Significance: The Case forCognitive Psychology", Taylor criticized the naturalism he saw distorting the major research program that had replaced B. F. Skinner's behaviourism.[47]
But Taylor also detected naturalism in fields where it was not immediately apparent. For example, in 1978's "Language and Human Nature" he found naturalist distortions in various modern "designative" theories of language,[48] while inSources of the Self (1989) he found both naturalist error and the deep moral, motivational sources for this outlook[clarification needed] in various individualist andutilitarian conceptions of selfhood.[citation needed]
Concurrent to Taylor's critique of naturalism was his development of an alternative. Indeed, Taylor's mature philosophy begins when as a doctoral student at Oxford he turned away, disappointed, fromanalytic philosophy in search of other philosophical resources which he found in French and German modernhermeneutics andphenomenology.[49]
The hermeneutic tradition develops a view of human understanding and cognition as centred on the decipherment of meanings (as opposed to, say, foundational theories of brute verification or an apodictic rationalism). Taylor's own philosophical outlook can broadly and fairly be characterized as hermeneutic and has been calledengaged hermeneutics.[14] This is clear in his championing of the works of major figures within the hermeneutic tradition such asWilhelm Dilthey, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Gadamer.[50] It is also evident in his own original contributions to hermeneutic and interpretive theory.[50]
Taylor (as well asAlasdair MacIntyre,Michael Walzer, andMichael Sandel) is associated with acommunitarian critique ofliberal theory's understanding of the "self". Communitarians emphasize the importance of social institutions in the development of individual meaning and identity.
In his 1991Massey LectureThe Malaise of Modernity, Taylor argued that political theorists—fromJohn Locke andThomas Hobbes toJohn Rawls andRonald Dworkin—have neglected the way in which individuals arise within the context supplied by societies. A more realistic understanding of the "self" recognizes the social background against which life choices gain importance and meaning.
Taylor's later work has turned to thephilosophy of religion, as evident in several pieces, including the lecture "A Catholic Modernity" and the short monograph "Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited".[51]
Taylor's most significant contribution in this field to date is his bookA Secular Age which argues against thesecularization thesis ofMax Weber, Steve Bruce, and others.[52] In rough form, the secularization thesis holds that as modernity (a bundle of phenomena including science, technology, and rational forms of authority) progresses, religion gradually diminishes in influence. Taylor begins from the fact that the modern world has not seen the disappearance of religion but rather its diversification and in many places its growth.[53] He then develops a complex alternative notion of what secularization actually means given that the secularization thesis has not been borne out. In the process, Taylor also greatly deepens his account of moral, political, and spiritual modernity that he had begun inSources of the Self.
Taylor served as a vice president of the federal NDP (beginningc. 1965)[28] and was president of its Quebec section.[55]
In 2010, Taylor saidmulticulturalism was a work in progress that faced challenges. He identified tacklingIslamophobia in Canada as the next challenge.[56]
In his 2020 bookReconstructing Democracy he, together withPatrizia Nanz and Madeleine Beaubien Taylor, uses local examples to describe how democracies in transformation might be revitalized by involving citizenship.[57]
The Ethics of Authenticity. Harvard University Press. 1991.
Multiculturalism and "The Politics of Recognition". Edited byGutmann, Amy. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1992.[c]
Rapprocher les solitudes: écrits sur le fédéralisme et le nationalisme au Canada [Reconciling the Solitudes: Writings on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism] (in French). Edited byLaforest, Guy. Sainte-Foy, Quebec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval. 1992.
English translation:Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism. Edited byLaforest, Guy. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. 1993.
Road to Democracy: Human Rights and Human Development in Thailand. WithMuntarbhorn, Vitit. Montreal: International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development. 1994.
Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1995.
Identitet, Frihet och Gemenskap: Politisk-Filosofiska Texter (in Swedish). Edited by Grimen, Harald. Gothenburg, Sweden: Daidalos. 1995.
De politieke Cultuur van de Moderniteit (in Dutch). The Hague, Netherlands: Kok Agora. 1996.
La liberté des modernes (in French). Translated by de Lara, Philippe. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. 1997.
A Catholic Modernity? Edited byHeft, James L. New York: Oxford University Press. 1999.
Prizivanje gradjanskog drustva [Invoking Civil Society] (in Serbo-Croatian). Edited by Savic, Obrad.
Wieviel Gemeinschaft braucht die Demokratie? Aufsätze zur politische Philosophie (in German). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 2002.
Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 2002.
Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. 2004.
A Secular Age. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2007.
Laïcité et liberté de conscience (in French). With Maclure, Jocelyn. Montreal: Boréal. 2010.
English translation:Secularism and Freedom of Conscience. With Maclure, Jocelyn. Translated by Todd, Jane Marie. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 2011.
Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2011.
Democracia Republicana / Republican Democracy. Edited by Cristi, Renato; Tranjan, J. Ricardo. Santiago: LOM Ediciones. 2012.
Boundaries of Toleration. Edited withStepan, Alfred C. New York: Columbia University Press. 2014.
Incanto e Disincanto. Secolarità e Laicità in Occidente (in Italian). Edited and translated by Costa, Paolo. Bologna, Italy: EDB. 2014.
La Democrazia e i Suoi Dilemmi (in Italian). Edited and translated by Costa, Paolo. Parma, Italy: Diabasis. 2014.
Les avenues de la foi : Entretiens avec Jonathan Guilbault (in French). Montreal: Novalis. 2015.
English translation:Avenues of Faith: Conversations with Jonathan Guilbault. Translated by Shalter, Yanette. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press. 2020.
Retrieving Realism. WithDreyfus, Hubert. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 2015.
The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2016.
Reconstructing Democracy. How Citizens Are Building from the Ground Up. WithNanz, Patrizia; Beaubien Taylor, Madeleine. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 2020
Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2024.
^"Home". Montreal: Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences. Archived fromthe original on July 1, 2008. RetrievedOctober 27, 2018.
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——— (2016). "Taylor, Charles (1931–)". In Shook, John R. (ed.).The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Philosophers in America: From 1600 to the Present. London: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 958ff.ISBN978-1-4725-7056-7.
——— (2017). "Taylor, Charles (1931– )".Dictionnaire de la Philosophie politique (in French). Encyclopædia Universalis.ISBN978-2-341-00704-7.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences."T"(PDF).Book of Members, 1780–2012. American Academy of Arts and Sciences. pp. 533–552. RetrievedFebruary 15, 2016.
Berlin, Isaiah (1994). "Introduction". InTully, James (ed.).Philosophy in an Age of Pluralism: The Philosophy of Charles Taylor in Question. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–3.ISBN978-0-521-43742-4.
Busacchi, Vinicio (2015).The Recognition Principle: A Philosophical Perspective Between Psychology, Sociology and Politics. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.ISBN978-1-4438-7586-8.
Calhoun, Craig (2012). "Craig Calhoun". In Nickel, Patricia Mooney (ed.).North American Critical Theory After Postmodernism: Contemporary Dialogues. Interviewed by Nickel, Patricia Mooney. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 62–87.ISBN978-0-230-36927-6.
Campbell, Anthony Edward Hugh (2017).Charles Taylor and the Place of the Transcendent in Secular Modern Lives (PhD thesis). Ottawa: Saint Paul University.doi:10.20381/ruor-20462.
Campbell, Catherine Galko (2014).Persons, Identity, and Political Theory: A Defense of Rawlsian Political Identity. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.doi:10.1007/978-94-007-7917-4.ISBN978-94-007-7917-4.
Laforest, Guy (2009). "The Internal Exile of Quebecers in the Canada of theCharter". In Kelly, James B.;Manfredi, Christopher P. (eds.).Contested Constitutionalism: Reflections on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Vancouver: UBC Press. pp. 251–262.ISBN978-0-7748-1676-2.
Mason, Richard (1996). "Taylor, Charles Margrave". In Brown, Stuart; Collinson, Diané; Wilkinson, Robert (eds.).Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Philosophers. London: Routledge. pp. 774–776.ISBN978-0-415-06043-1.
Meijer, Michiel (2017). "Human-Related, Not Human-Controlled: Charles Taylor on Ethics and Ontology".International Philosophical Quarterly.57 (3):267–285.doi:10.5840/ipq20173679.ISSN0019-0365.
Meynell, Robert (2011).Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom: C.B. Macpherson, George Grant and Charles Taylor. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.ISBN978-0-7735-3798-9.
Muntarbhorn, Vitit; Taylor, Charles (1994).Road to Democracy: Human Rights and Human Development in Thailand. Montreal: International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development.
Palma, Anthony Joseph (2014).Recognition of Diversity: Charles Taylor's Educational Thought (PhD thesis). Toronto: University of Toronto.hdl:1807/65711.
Semko, Jesse Joseph Paul (2004).Isaiah Berlin and Charles Taylor on Johann Gottfried Herder: A Comparative Study (MA thesis). Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: University of Saskatchewan.hdl:10388/etd-09152004-154002.
Smith, Nicholas H. (2002).Charles Taylor: Meaning, Morals and Modernity. New York: John Wiley & Sons.ISBN978-0-7456-6859-8.
——— (2004). "Taylor and the Hermeneutic Tradition". InAbbey, Ruth (ed.).Charles Taylor. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 29–51.ISBN978-0-511-16423-1.
Taylor, Charles (1964).The Explanation of Behaviour. International Library of Philosophy and Scientific Method. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
——— (1983). "The Significance of Significance: The Case for Cognitive Psychology". InMitchell, Sollace;Rosen, Michael (eds.).The Need for Interpretation: Contemporary Conceptions of the Philosopher's Task. New Jersey: Humanities Press. pp. 141–169.ISBN978-0-391-02825-8.
——— (1985a) [1972]. "Interpretation and the Sciences of Man". In Taylor, Charles (ed.).Philosophy and the Human Sciences. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 15–57.
——— (1985b). "Introduction". In Taylor, Charles (ed.).Human Agency and Language. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–12.ISBN978-0-521-31750-4.
——— (1985c) [1978]. "Language and Human Nature". In Taylor, Charles (ed.).Human Agency and Language. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 215–247.ISBN978-0-521-31750-4.
——— (1985d). "Self-Interpreting Animals". In Taylor, Charles (ed.).Human Agency and Language. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 45–76.ISBN978-0-521-31750-4.
——— (2016).The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.ISBN978-0-674-97027-4.
Taylor, Charles;Nanz, Patrizia; Beaubien Taylor, Madeleine (2020).Reconstructing Democracy: How Citizens Are Building from the Ground Up. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.ISBN978-0-674-24462-7.
Barrie, John A. (1996). "Probing Modernity".Quadrant. Vol. 40, no. 5. pp. 82–83.ISSN0033-5002.
Blakely, Jason (2016).Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and the Demise of Naturalism: Reunifying Political Theory and Social Science. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.ISBN978-0-268-10064-3.
Braak, Andre van der.Reimagining Zen in a Secular age: Charles Taylor and Zen Buddhism in the West (Brill Rodopi, 2020)online review
Lehman, Glen (2015).Charles Taylor's Ecological Conversations: Politics, Commonalities and the Natural Environment. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.ISBN978-1-137-52478-2.
McKenzie, Germán (2017).Interpreting Charles Taylor's Social Theory on Religion and Secularization. Sophia Studies in Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures. Vol. 20. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.doi:10.1007/978-3-319-47700-8.ISBN978-3-319-47698-8.ISSN2211-1107.
Meijer, Michiel (2018).Charles Taylor's Doctrine of Strong Evaluation: Ethics and Ontology in a Scientific Age. London: Rowman & Littlefield.ISBN978-1-78660-400-2.
Redhead, Mark (2002).Charles Taylor: Thinking and Living Deep Diversity. Twentieth-Century Political Thinkers. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.ISBN978-0-7425-2126-1.
Svetelj, Tone (2012).Rereading Modernity: Charles Taylor on Its Genesis and Prospects (PhD thesis). Chestnut Hills, Massachusetts: Boston College.hdl:2345/3853.
Temelini, Michael (2014). "Dialogical Approaches to Struggles over Recognition and Distribution".Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.17 (4):423–447.doi:10.1080/13698230.2013.763517.ISSN1743-8772.S2CID144378936.
A Political Ethic of Solidarity onYouTube; Charles Taylor gives a lecture on a future politics self-consciously based on differing views and foundations in Milan
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