Sources of the Self

The Making of the Modern Identity

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by Charles Taylor and Dandi Daley Mackall

Harvard University Press

Due/Published February 1992, 601 pages, paper

ISBN 0674824261

In this inquiry into the sources of modern selfhood, Charles Taylor shows that the modern turn inward is not disastrous but is in fact the result of our long efforts to define and reach the good. At the heart of this definition he finds what he calls the affirmation of ordinary life, a value that has decisively if not completely replaced an older conception of reason as connected to a hierarchy based on birth and wealth.