SSRC Salutes Charles Taylor
Daniel Philpott
Associate professor of political science, University of Notre Dame
Do you remember when you first read Taylor -- what were your
impressions?
I discovered and was encouraged by Taylor's writings during the early years of
my graduate study in political science and international relations at Harvard
University in the early 1990s. My undergraduate studies of government and
foreign affairs focused on Kant,
Thucydides, and the ethical dilemmas of war and human
rights. By the time I reached graduate school, I encountered a field that
had moved in a sharply positivist direction, stressing scientific research design,
hypothesis testing -- and neutrality. Taylor's philosophical essays showed me
that political scientists were not neutral after all but rather "secreted"
their value judgments deep into their empirical analyses. If that were true,
then the enterprise of ethics could be just as important as the development of
social science theory, despite the fact that the two remain worlds apart in the
field of international relations. Taylor's essays should be mandatory reading
for every graduate student in the social sciences.
What is your favorite work of Taylor's?
Though it is not easy to select a favorite, I would have to settle on
Sources of the Self. Drawing on a breathtaking array
of works in Western philosophy, Taylor takes on modernity by redescribing
modernity. Not only is the modern self informed by autonomy, choice, and the
rational calculation of ends and means, but also by communal ties, aesthetic
expression, and spiritual longing. Taylor displays in this book one of the
characteristics I like most about him: his ability to criticize modernity
without denying what is best about it. Human rights, freedom, and equality are
great achievements, he argues, but themselves require thick conceptions of the
good in order to be sustained -- conceptions like those offered by religious
traditions, for instance.
How has reading Taylor changed the way you view your own
work?
Along with convincing me that positive and normative analyses belong side by
side, Taylor has also inspired me to write about religion and in a way that
doesn't become a "conversation stopper" -- as another brilliant and prominent
public intellectual, the late Richard Rorty, an avowed atheist, once called it. Taylor has
written about religion both boldly and charitably, commending what it offers to
contemporary morality and politics yet cautioning against its easy alliance
with the nation or the state. In so doing, he beckons and keeps non-believers
in the conversation. Though Taylor, like other public philosophers and
theologians, shares an emphasis on narrative and community, he avoids
counselling withdrawal or a retreat to an internal conversation.
What do you think has been Taylor's most important contribution as a
public intellectual?
Taylor is a true public intellectual according to the definition of Russell Jacoby in The Last Intellectuals -- not just an
author of articles read by wide audiences but also an academic who first made a
major mark on a field and then has spoken out publicly on that basis. He is one
of the few exemplars of "bigthink" -- alongside Alasdair
MacIntyre, Jürgen Habermas, and perhaps one or two others. At the same
time, he has the uncanny ability to make ideas accessible without watering down
their content. To answer the question, his most importance contribution as a
public intellectual has been his invitation to Western audiences to reconsider
the importance of religion, nation, ethnicity and community, yet without
denying the importance of minority rights, tolerance, or the dignity of the
individual.
What would you say is his most important contribution to the
understanding of secularism in the modern age?
Perhaps my favorite of his essays on secularism so far has been his "Modes of Secularism." Here, he argues for an approach to
pluralism that rejects the demand that religious people make their language and
arguments conform to a set of "public reasons," as John
Rawls and others have held. Taylor seeks, rather, a convergence on
individual rights, democracy, and respect for community among a plurality of
religious perspectives, each of which brings its own set of distinctive reasons
to the table. The great promise of Taylor's vision is that it allows religious
communities to contribute their best resources to democratic politics, as they
did in the abolitionist movements and civil rights movements in America, but
always in a context of respect for fundamental liberal freedoms -- thereby
avoiding the fates of Sudan, Bosnia, and Gujarat.
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