Great Issues in Humanities
Jorg Baumgartner

HSP 131H - CRN 4307
Tuesday 10:10 – 12:00 noon
Thursday 10:10 – 11:00a.m

Sources of the Self
Text:
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989)

Week 1-2
In his book Sources of the Self Charles Taylor explores the various strands of the modern identity, that is, of our modern notion of what it is to be a human agent, a person, or self. In doing so Taylor wants also to provide the starting point for a renewed understanding of modernity. Since in his view selfhood and morality are intertwined themes, Part I of the book, Identity and the Good, provides a preliminary discussion of this connection, thus illuminating the historical parts of the book in which Taylor maps the connections between senses of self and moral visions.

Week 3-6
Taylor distinguishes three major facets of the modern identity. The first is the sense of ourselves as beings with inner depths. This facet is the subject of Part II, Inwardness. After discussing its preconditions in the theories of Plato and the Stoics, Taylor traces the rise and development of modern interiority through Augustine to Descartes and Montaigne, and on to our own age. What distinguishes the followers of Descartes, such as Locke, Hume, Kant and just about anyone in the modern world from the classical writers, is that the modern subject is a self in a way it could not be for the ancients: the turn to oneself is a turn to the self as a self. It is to adopt the first-person standpoint or the stance of radical reflexivity, and it is this stance which is a requirement for the ideals of autonomy, self-responsible freedom and dignity, and of self-exploration. Moreover, the the modern self-defining identity is bound up with a sense of intellectual and technological control over the world by which we make ourselves, in Descartes’ words, “the masters and possessors of nature.”

Week 7-10
The second facet of the modern identity provides the title of Part III: The Affirmation of Ordinary Life. Taylor introduces the term ‘ordinary life’ to designate those aspects of human life concerned with production and reproduction, that is, labour, the making of things needed for life, and our life as sexual beings, including marriage and family. While life in this sense is for Aristotle important only as the necessary background and support to the ‘good life’ of contemplation, we find with the Reformation the modern, Christian-inspired sense that ordinary life is, on the contrary, the very center of the good life. Nor is the good life the life of the hero or of the saint. Taylor traces this second facet from the Reformation through the Enlightenment to its contemporary forms. In its secularized versions it underlies our contemporary understanding of what it is truly to respect human life and integrity.

Week 11-15
The third facet which in Taylor’s view is constitutive of the modern identity is the notion of nature as an inner source, and he deals with it in Parts IV and V, The Voice of Nature and Subtler Languages. He describes this facet from its origin in the late eighteenth century through the transformations of the nineteenth century, and to its manifestations in twentieth-century literature. The chapter Nature as a Source, for instance, brings a discussion of Rousseau who is at the point of origin of a great deal of contemporary culture.

Evaluation:
1. Two short papers (5-7 pages), a presentation, and a term paper (12-14 pages).
2. Participation in class. This means regular attendance and evidence of preparation.