The extensive, profound and influential oeuvre of Charles Taylor has inspired generations of thinkers. But how can we explore such a body of work? As we try to show in this Special Issue: by understanding him literally and making use of his notion of moral maps – or, differently put, by ‘mapping’ Charles Taylor. As he is far too modest a person to reveal to us his own moral atlas, we have decided to seize the occasion of his 85th birthday to ask several of his renowned colleagues, students and interlocutors to contribute to the reconstruction of such a map. This introduction develops three ‘mountain ridges’ in this cartography – a philosophical anthropology in spatial terms, the indispensable motif of dialogue, and the role of political life –, around which the following 24 illuminating appraisals are grouped.

No abstract

No abstract

What it means to be a 'language animal' is a question Charles Taylor first addressed nearly 40 years ago in Language and Human Nature, 1 taking over the phrase from Georg Steiner. 2 The centrality of language for Taylor's thinking, and the longevity of his interest in the topic, is evident to all readers of his oeuvre. Taylor's attention to the subject appears in a variety of contexts and it is possible to discern four sources for his preoccupation with language. First, there is his contestation of behaviourism in The Explanation of Behaviour, in which he contends that a scientific language and the attempt to explain human behaviour in terms of science cannot address the problem "that our self-understanding essentially incorporates our seeing ourselves against a background of what I have called 'strong evaluation.'" 3 Second, there is his interest in the Romantic period, starting with the contextualization of Hegel's oeuvre in the post-Enlightenment and Romantic eras. He describes the romantic period as, essentially, based on the new view on language 4 developed by Johann

One of the features of an encompassing account of language that Charles Taylor examines in Chapter Five, “The Figuring Dimension of Language,” of The Language Animal is a special kind of metaphor, which is rooted in the embodiment of humans. Their perspective-taking, their intuition of position in space, etc., provide ‘structural templates’ for thinking and leave their traces in their expressions. Taylor compares these metaphors with paradigms. My paper discusses the differences between the two. Taylor’s example ‘Time Is a Resource’ is understood more deeply if seen as a paradigm, i.e., a set of beliefs and practices, instead of as a ‘structural template,’ i.e., rooted in embodiment.