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Sources of the Self

Summary

Charles Taylor's landmark work tracing the making of modern identity from antiquity through Romanticism, arguing that modernity's moral sources are richer and more demanding than secular philosophy acknowledges.

Core Contribution

Genealogy of modern selfhood demonstrating that the modern identity is built on moral frameworks — inwardness, ordinary life, expressive individualism — often denied or suppressed by Enlightenment rationalism.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • genealogy of modern identity
  • moral sources
  • inwardness
  • Romantic expressivism

Historical Influences

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Maurice Merleau-Ponty Hans-Georg Gadamer

Intellectual Lineage

Charles Taylor Hegel phenomenology Augustinian tradition

Allied Works

A Secular Age by Charles TaylorThe Malaise of Modernity by Charles TaylorAfter Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre

Contemporaries & Peers

After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyreHabits of the Heart by Robert Bellah

Minds Influenced

Alasdair MacIntyre contemporary communitarianismChristian social theory

Intellectual Posterity

Communitarianism philosophy of religion social theory

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