Charles Taylor by Ruth Abbey (review)

HUMANITIES 359 Ruth Abbey. Charles Taylor Princeton University Press. vi, 250. US $16.95 Ruth Abbey=s Charles Taylor, published in the Philosophy Now Series, is a reliable, sympathetic, and accessible introduction to the work of Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. It is an eminently readable book which confronts the intricacies and challenges of Taylor=s work with confidence and clarity. While Taylor has been famously concerned with analysing the condition of >modernity,= his approach is reminiscent, at least in scale, of the projects associated with philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, or Nietzsche. His philosophical interests are broad, ranging over ethics, metaphysics, epistemology , political philosophy, and philosophy of language. In addition, his view is comprehensive, or at least integrated, in that he takes his commitments and conclusions in one area to have ramifications in the others. The resulting density is made all the more challenging because, as Abbey notes: [N]otwithstanding the many connections and coherences that unite his arguments across a range of topics, Taylor is not system builder. On the contrary, his characteristic impulse is to complicate, rather than simplify and streamline problems. For example, he repeatedly reminds us of plurality. He draws attention to the plurality of goods that appear in individuals= lives, to the multiple strands that have forged the modern identity, to the different traditions that shape democratic politics. He refuses the temptation to reduce complexity to single principles or to offer pre-packaged theoretical solutions to practical problems that must be worked out by the participants themselves. In so far as this assessment is accurate, it points to two problems, one for Taylor himself, the other for his sympathetic expositor. In systematically working to complicate rather than simplify issues and topics, Taylor is flying in the face of contemporary trends in AngloAmerican philosophy. He is an unabashed generalist in an era and area increasingly dominated by specialists. And further, his firm opposition to the application of the methodology of the natural sciences to philosophy developed at a time when the palpable achievements of science made this model of research seem practically irresistible. It is a testament to Taylor=s acumen and scholarship that he has been making his case to good effect for nearly four decades. The challenge for Abbey is to convey a clear and intelligible sense of the commitment to complexity and diversity without lapsing into oversimplifications that rob Taylor=s work of its sophistication and force. This challenge can only partly be met: a 212-page text cannot capture the essence 360 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 of a life=s work that generates a 10-page bibliography of published books, articles, and reviews. Inevitably, some complexity and density has to be traded in for clarity. In providing an overview of Taylor=s work, Abbey has made a judicious decision to focus on five central themes: morality, conceptions of the self, politics, knowledge and epistemology, and the idea of secularity. Taylor=s views on language and its centrality to human existence are not accorded separate treatment; instead they are noted and discussed as core ingredients of each of the categories. The selection provides a compact but thorough survey of Taylor=s project, and one is tempted to infer from the acknowledgments that it has his imprimatur. In each of the five chapters, Abbey introduces a number of important subthemes. To take one representative example, in the chapter on politics Abbey gives a snapshot of Taylor=s views on communitarianism (noting the contrast he makes between ontology and advocacy issues), atomism, negative freedom, liberalism, republicanism, hypergoods, shared goods, the politics of recognition, state neutrality, public space, and civil society. This is a lot of ground to cover. The points come with blistering speed, and while they are unfailingly faithful to Taylor=s text and general orientation, the arguments are occasionally somewhat truncated. Furthermore, there is hardly any opportunity to consider objections or refinements that might arise quite naturally in a reader=s mind. Clearly a decision has been made to leave that kind of detail to a different level of critical engagement. In the final analysis, Charles Taylor achieves its stated purpose of providing a clear introduction to Taylor=s core philosophical commitments. It...