Knowledge and the Self: Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self

one hand, it traces the historical sources of the modern understanding of selfhood. On the other hand, and perhaps more important, Sources of the Self aims to contribute to the reconstruction of that same understanding of selfhood. Specifically, it promotes the view that our description of the self should be radically revised so as to take seriously the interdependent claims that values have objective reality and that our moral sensibilities play a central role in determining who we are and what it means to be a self. Though most readers are likely drawn to Sources of the Self by the historical promise implied in its title, Taylor signals the importance of his second objective by prefacing the historical analysis with a one hundred–page defense of the claim that to be adequate any description of the self must acknowledge the extent to which human identity is deeply intertwined with our understanding of the good. Rather than appealing to historical sources to defend this claim, Taylor develops a phenomenological argument that lifts up the extent to which human experience is inevitably colored by our capacity (he might even say need) to engage in qualitative judgments. “My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand” (1989, 27). Viewed from this perspective appetition is at the heart of what we mean by life, and the desire to be rightly related to what we take to be good is among those core cravings that constitute life as human (ibid., 44).