This Philosopher Has Reimagined Identity and Morality for a Secular Age

[rug]

Charles Taylor, winner of the first $1 million Berggruen Prize for philosophy, has helped reshape debates on what it is to be human.



NEVILLE ELDER VIA GETTY IMAGES

10/13/2016 10:03 am ET
Craig Calhoun
President, Berggruen Institute

One of the world’s most respected philosophers has just won the $1 million Berggruen Prize. Is this news you can use?

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. The prize has been given to Charles Taylor, an exceptional thinker whose work can be of value both personally and in public life. In his native Canada, Taylor was a founder of the New Democratic Party, shaped debates and policy on immigration and ethnic politics, and played an important role in keeping Quebec part of Canada but with special status recognizing its distinctive culture. Taylor is of global influence as a Catholic thinker, a leader on the social democratic left and a spokesperson for combining rather than opposing liberalism and defense of community. His publications will reward readers with very different interests from personal identity to the challenges of modern democracy to religion in a secular age.

This guide is far from comprehensive. It points to some good places to start engaging with one of our era’s greatest thinkers. Perhaps most notably, in connection to the Berggruen Prize, Taylor has helped reshape debates on what it is to be human and how culture and politics matter in human existence.

The Self

A lot of criticisms are leveled at modern Western individualism. Taylor acknowledges that it can seem narrow, shallow and too focused on instrumental self-interest. Still, he refuses simple negativity. The modern idea of self brought new richness and freedoms to human life. It not only built on foundations like St. Augustine’s articulation of a sense of interior space and the importance of memory. It also added distinctive dimensions that opened it to embrace equality in ways ancient thought had not. That we struggle for meaning and purpose in our lives is an indication of the potential opened for us.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/charles-taylor-philosopher_us_57fd00dde4b068ecb5e1c971

http://governance.berggruen.org/councils/berggruen-prize

[Jim__]

1. We desperately need people who think about what it means to be a person.

In US society today, we are, to a large extent, what we do for a living. Technology is on the verge of pushing us over a threshold - fully automated processes from resource extraction to product manufacture to home delivery. There will not be enough jobs to go around. We need a new understanding of what it means to be human and how should we share resources when a relatively few people are needed for their production.

They picked a good person to receive the prize.

[rug]

2. That's true. For the last two hundred years or so we've been defined by our function.