SSRC Salutes Charles Taylor
William E. Connolly
Krieger-Eisenhower professor of political science, Johns Hopkins University
Do you remember when you first started reading Taylor? What was it
that drew you in and got you excited?
I started reading him in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I appreciated him then
as a critic of both empiricism and rationalism in their most hubristic modes.
An essay he wrote called "Neutrality in Political Science" blew up the "fact-value
dichotomy" which then prevailed. Another essay introduced a linguistically
complex mode of hermeneutics or
interpretation to an audience of young scholars looking for an alternative to
the stale traditions then offered to them.
Which is your favorite work of his and why?
I have several favorites, but Sources
of the Self is probably at the top of the list. In it Taylor
delineates the idea of a moral "source," which exceeds established
linguistically mediated ideas and inspirations, which must be altered as it
becomes infused in this way or that into an intersubjective network, and which
alters that network to some degree as it is folded in. This pregnant idea put
tremendous pressure on the neo-Kantianism and proceduralism of
the day. It spoke to the God that inspires Taylor, but it could also be drawn
upon by nontheists whose philosophy of immanence focuses on that fugitive, pregnant juncture between that which already exists
and that which is flowing into being in a world of becoming.
Has reading Taylor changed the way you view your own
work?
In several ways. He introduced me to the importance of Wittgenstein and Heidegger. He helped me to see the
importance of language and the limits of designative theories of language.
Most importantly, he has set a model of how to proceed in one's own work when
exploring the loose but real relations between the ontological,
epistemological,
ethical and political registers of reflection. Taylor is not only unusually
proficient at each of these levels, but he also constantly explores how his
reflections at one level can inform those at others.
What do you think has been Taylor's most important contribution as a
public intellectual?
Taylor is a model of what a public intellectual should be. His reworking of the
communitarian
tradition to maintain its depth while making room within it for what might
be called a deep pluralism is to me his most important contribution as a public intellectual. Another
would be the agonistic
respect he displays to traditions that he subjects to critical
reflection.
What about his contribution to the understanding of secularism in
the modern age?
I have not read his forthcoming book on the
topic. But from recent things I have read, I imagine he will appreciate the
contribution secularism has made to modern life, even as he corrects its
untenable divisions between public and private life, its own tendencies to
closure, and its hesitancy to appreciate the role that faith plays in
nontheistic as well as theistic traditions.
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