Symposium: Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self

In this paper I discuss Taylor's criticism of contemporary moral philosophy and the role which this plays in his wider account of the development of Western moral consciousness, an account which I compare with Hans Blumenberg's The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. While I endorse Taylor's rejection of "naturalism", I deny that this entails the rejection of non-realism and I maintain that, indeed, the non-realist conception of a social foundation for morality represents the most cogent response to the contemporary dilemmas Taylor identifies.