{"title":"Books by Charles Taylor","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780367705213","title":"The Explanation of Behaviour","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vitally important work of philosophical anthropology and a devastating criticism of the theory of behaviourism. Includes a new Preface by the author and a new Foreword by Alva Noë, setting the book in philosophical and historical context.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56287989924213,"sku":"9780367705213","price":21.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780367705213_fc3cf6d6-7259-4053-97c4-455ff96a61cf.jpg?v=1786013994"},{"product_id":"9780674296084","title":"Cosmic Connections – Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment","description":"A major new work by Charles Taylor: the long-awaited follow-up to The Language Animal, exploring the Romantic poetics central to his theory of language.   The Language Animal, Charles Taylor's 2016 account of human linguistic capacity, was a revelation, toppling scholarly conventions and illuminating our most fundamental selves. But, as Taylor noted in that work, there was much more to be said. Cosmic Connections continues Taylor's exploration of Romantic and post-Romantic responses to disenchantment and innovations in language.   Reacting to the fall of cosmic orders that were at once metaphysical and moral, the Romantics used the symbols and music of poetry to recover contact with reality beyond fragmented existence. They sought to overcome disenchantment and groped toward a new meaning of life. Their accomplishments have been extended by post-Romantic generations into the present day. Taylor's magisterial work takes us from Hoelderlin, Novalis, Keats, and Shelley to Hopkins, Rilke, Baudelaire, and Mallarme, and on to Eliot, Milosz, and beyond.   In seeking deeper understanding and a different orientation to life, the language of poetry is not merely a pleasurable presentation of doctrines already elaborated elsewhere. Rather, Taylor insists, poetry persuades us through the experience of connection. The resulting conviction is very different from that gained through the force of argument. By its very nature, poetry's reasoning will often be incomplete, tentative, and enigmatic. But at the same time, its insight is too moving-too obviously true-to be ignored.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":56292944904565,"sku":"9780674296084","price":31.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57697058554229,"sku":"9780674303591","price":24.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780674303591_5ba14af1-574c-4f46-b67f-a04c00f966a0.jpg?v=1793083636"},{"product_id":"9780674986916","title":"A Secular Age","description":"A New York Times Notable Book of the YearA Times Literary Supplement Book of the YearA Globe and Mail Best Book of the YearA Publishers Weekly Best Book of the YearA Tablet Best Book of the YearWinner of a Christianity Today Book Award“One finds big nuggets of insight, useful to almost anybody with an interest in the progress of human society.” —The EconomistWhat does it mean to say that we live in a secular age? Almost everyone would agree that we—in the West, at least—largely do. And clearly the place of religion in our societies has changed profoundly in the last few centuries. In what will be a defining book for our time, Charles Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean—of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is only one human possibility among others.   Taylor, long one of our most insightful thinkers on such questions, offers a historical perspective. He examines the development in “Western Christendom” of those aspects of modernity which we call secular. What he describes is in fact not a single, continuous transformation, but a series of new departures, in which earlier forms of religious life have been dissolved or destabilized and new ones have been created. As we see here, today’s secular world is characterized not by an absence of religion—although in some societies religious belief and practice have markedly declined—but rather by the continuing multiplication of new options, religious, spiritual, and anti-religious, which individuals and groups seize on in order to make sense of their lives and give shape to their spiritual aspirations.   What this means for the world—including the new forms of collective religious life it encourages, with their tendency to a mass mobilization that breeds violence—is what Charles Taylor grapples with, in a book as timely as it is timeless.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":56293056282997,"sku":"9780674986916","price":73.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":57688243569013,"sku":"9780674026766","price":51.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780674986916.jpg?v=1792686193"},{"product_id":"9780674237582","title":"Degenerations of Democracy","description":"Three leading thinkers analyze the erosion of democracy’s social foundations and call for a movement to reduce inequality, strengthen inclusive solidarity, empower citizens, and reclaim pursuit of the public good.   Democracy is in trouble. Populism is a common scapegoat but not the root cause. More basic are social and economic transformations eroding the foundations of democracy, ruling elites trying to lock in their own privilege, and cultural perversions like making individualistic freedom the enemy of democracy’s other crucial ideals of equality and solidarity. In Degenerations of Democracy three of our most prominent intellectuals investigate democracy gone awry, locate our points of fracture, and suggest paths to democratic renewal.   In Charles Taylor’s phrase, democracy is a process, not an end state. Taylor documents creeping disempowerment of citizens, failures of inclusion, and widespread efforts to suppress democratic participation, and he calls for renewing community. Craig Calhoun explores the impact of disruption, inequality, and transformation in democracy’s social foundations. He reminds us that democracies depend on republican constitutions as well as popular will, and that solidarity and voice must be achieved at large scales as well as locally.   Taylor and Calhoun together examine how ideals like meritocracy and authenticity have become problems for equality and solidarity, the need for stronger articulation of the idea of public good, and the challenges of thinking big without always thinking centralization.   Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar points out that even well-designed institutions will not integrate everyone, and inequality and precarity make matters worse. He calls for democracies to be prepared for violence and disorder at their margins—and to treat them with justice, not oppression.   The authors call for bold action building on projects like Black Lives Matter and the Green New Deal. Policy is not enough to save democracy; it will take movements.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56293681824117,"sku":"9780674237582","price":26.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780674237582_4987e46e-0901-467c-8d76-79529c5e19ff.jpg?v=1786015124"},{"product_id":"9780674660205","title":"The Language Animal – The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity","description":"“We have been given a powerful and often uplifting vision of what it is to be truly human.” —John Cottingham, The TabletIn seminal works ranging from Sources of the Self to A Secular Age, Charles Taylor has shown how we create possible ways of being, individually and as a society. The Language Animal examines the foundation of this generative process.   For centuries, philosophers have been divided on the nature of language. Rational empiricists—Hobbes, Locke, Condillac, and their heirs—assert that language is a tool to encode and communicate information. Yet this view neglects language’s crucial role in shaping the thought it expresses. Taylor argues that language does not merely describe; it constitutes meaning. Nor is linguistic capacity innately possessed. We learn language from others, and our individual selves emerge from 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, metaphors, tones of voice, and the shifts of emphasis and attitude that accompany speech. 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 human.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57697066615157,"sku":"9780674303584","price":23.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":56294248087925,"sku":"9780674660205","price":29.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780674303584_6e15c548-3892-4268-8c21-aeddf7208d08.jpg?v=1793083681"},{"product_id":"9780674987692","title":"The Ethics of Authenticity","description":"“Charles Taylor is a philosopher of broad reach and many talents, but his most striking talent is a gift for interpreting different traditions, cultures and philosophies to one another…[This book is] full of good things.” —New York Times Book ReviewEverywhere we hear talk of decline, of a world that was better once, maybe fifty years ago, maybe centuries ago, but certainly before modernity drew us along its dubious path. While some lament the slide of Western culture into relativism and nihilism and others celebrate the trend as a liberating sort of progress, Charles Taylor calls on us to face the moral and political crises of our time, and to make the most of modernity’s challenges.   “The great merit of Taylor’s brief, non-technical, powerful book…is the vigor with which he restates the point which Hegel (and later Dewey) urged against Rousseau and Kant: that we are only individuals in so far as we are social…Being authentic, being faithful to ourselves, is being faithful to something which was produced in collaboration with a lot of other people…The core of Taylor’s argument is a vigorous and entirely successful criticism of two intertwined bad ideas: that you are wonderful just because you are you, and that ‘respect for difference’ requires you to respect every human being, and every human culture—no matter how vicious or stupid.”—Richard Rorty, London Review of Books","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56294348521845,"sku":"9780674987692","price":17.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780674987692_5b560467-ee9f-4490-b488-10810695a2df.jpg?v=1786014977"},{"product_id":"modern-social-imaginaries","title":"Modern Social Imaginaries","description":"\u003cp\u003eOne of the most influential philosophers in the English-speaking world, Charles Taylor is internationally renowned for his contributions to political and moral theory, particularly to debates about identity formation, multiculturalism, secularism, and modernity. In \u003ci\u003eModern Social Imaginaries,\u003c\/i\u003e Taylor continues his recent reflections on the theme of multiple modernities. To account for the differences among modernities, Taylor sets out his idea of the social imaginary, a broad understanding of the way a given people imagine their collective social life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRetelling the history of Western modernity, Taylor traces the development of a distinct social imaginary. Animated by the idea of a moral order based on the mutual benefit of equal participants, the Western social imaginary is characterized by three key cultural forms-the economy, the public sphere, and self-governance. Taylor’s account of these cultural formations provides a fresh perspective on how to read the specifics of Western modernity: how we came to imagine society primarily as an economy for exchanging goods and services to promote mutual prosperity, how we began to imagine the public sphere as a metaphorical place for deliberation and discussion among strangers on issues of mutual concern, and how we invented the idea of a self-governing people capable of secular “founding” acts without recourse to transcendent principles. Accessible in length and style, \u003ci\u003eModern Social Imaginaries\u003c\/i\u003e offers a clear and concise framework for understanding the structure of modern life in the West and the different forms modernity has taken around the world.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57481402450293,"sku":"9780822332930","price":20.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780822332930.jpg?v=1786089660"},{"product_id":"avenues-of-faith","title":"Avenues of Faith","description":"Death opens the gates to resurrection. The pathways to faith are diverse, but all carry components of death and renewal. In \u003ci\u003eAvenues of Faith: Conversations with Jonathan Guilbault\u003c\/i\u003e, Charles Taylor takes readers through a handful of books that played a crucial role in shaping his posture as a believer, a process that involved leaving the old behind and embracing the new.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a dynamic interview-style structure, Taylor answers questions from Jonathan Guilbault about how each book has informed his thought. The five sections of \u003ci\u003eAvenues of Faith\u003c\/i\u003e briefly introduce authors and their principal works before delving into the associated discussion. Taylor and Guilbault engage Maurice Merleau-Ponty's \u003ci\u003ePhenomenology of Perception\u003c\/i\u003e, Friedrich H?Âlderlin's \u003ci\u003ePoems\u003c\/i\u003e, Charles Baudelaire's \u003ci\u003eThe Flowers of Evil\u003c\/i\u003e, Fyodor Dostoevsky's \u003ci\u003eThe Brothers Karamazov\u003c\/i\u003e, and Brother ?ëmile's \u003ci\u003eFaithful to the Future: Listening to Yves Congar\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy exploring themes such as faith, the church, freedom, language, philosophy, and more, this book engages both literary enthusiasts and spiritual seekers. Scholars of Taylor will recognize the philosopher's continuation of his reflections on modernity as he expresses his faith. \u003ci\u003eAvenues of Faith\u003c\/i\u003e gives readers unprecedented access to a world-renowned philosopher's reflections on the literary masterpieces that have shaped his life and scholarship and that continue to stand the test of time.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57504911458677,"sku":"9781481312509","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781481312509.jpg?v=1786953829"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-charles-taylor.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}