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"A pleasingly crunchy essay." The Guardian "Charles Taylor presents a fundamental challenge to neo-liberal apologists for the new world order - but not only to them. Anyone who wishes, as I do, to defend trans-cultural political ideals, notions of development, or the like, will have to face his formidable array of hermeneutically inspired reflections on Western modernity's defining cultural formations. His particular take on the 'social imaginary' makes the strongest case there is for the idea of 'multiple modernities.'" Thomas McCarthy, Northwestern University Charles Taylor's new book continues his project of erudite investigations into the origins of the modern sense of self... The author's breadth of learning and humanistic disposition constitute a rare fusion of qualities in the current climate of intellectual warfare..." Montreal Book Review, "As always with Taylor, the writing is marked by erudition, elegance, and generosity of spirit. The book, while hardly mentioning Islam or other traditions, may be seen as a quietly understated thesis congruent with Samuel Huntington's more pointed reflections on 'the clash of civilizations.' " First Things
Product Description
One of the most influential philosophers in the English-speaking world, Charles Taylor is internationally renowned for his contributions to political and moral theory, particularly to debates about identity formation, multiculturalism, secularism, and modernity. In "Modern Social Imaginaries", Taylor continues his recent reflections on the theme of multiple modernities. To account for the differences among modernities, Taylor sets out his idea of the social imaginary, a broad understanding of the way a given people imagine their collective social life.Re-telling the history of Western modernity, Taylor traces the development of a distinct social imaginary. Animated by the idea of a moral order based on the mutual benefit of equal participants, the Western social imaginary is characterized by three key cultural forms - the economy, the public sphere, and self-governance. Taylor's account of these cultural formations provides a fresh perspective on how to read the specifics of Western modernity: how we came to imagine society primarily as an economy for exchanging goods and services to promote mutual prosperity, how we began to imagine the public sphere as a metaphorical place for deliberation and discussion among strangers on issues of mutual concern, and how we invented the idea of a self-governing people capable of secular "founding" acts without recourse to transcendent principles.Accessible in length and style, "Modern Social Imaginaries" offers a clear and concise framework for understanding the structure of modern life in the West and the different forms modernity has taken around the world.
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Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Concise, easy to understand and, most of all, insightful,
By
This review is from: Modern Social Imaginaries (Paperback)
This book seems an extension of Charles Taylor's Tanner Lecture delivered a decade ago on public sphere as a moral value imbedded in Western modernity. Now, he develops an interpretation on three modern imaginary (but real) spheres of market economy, public sphere, and self-governing people, regarding them as different instances in the construction of primary modern morality, 'mutual benefits.' I think this is an important step that seamlessly connects two different philosophy giants-Habermas and Foucault- as well as an original explication of Western modernity. Highly recommended those who interested in themes such as modernity in general, modern construction of market, and public sphere and public opinion.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Riche portrait des "imaginaires sociaux" de nos sociétés modernes,
By Jean-Pierre Boisvert (Montréal, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Modern Social Imaginaries (Paperback)
Voici un livre sur les "imaginaires sociaux" de notre modernité, la modernité des pays occidentaux - pays d'Europe, d'Amérique du Nord, Australie, etc.C. Taylor est revenu à plusieurs reprises sur une manière courante de décrire l'émergence de la modernité: la conception "par soustraction" de la modernité. Les gens qui adhèrent à cette conception se représentent l'émergence de la modernité comme le déploiement d'une capacité théorique de compréhension du monde naturel. Il existe différentes versions de cette conception: une conception rationaliste, qui met l'accent sur les conquêtes scientifiques; une conception matérialiste, qui insiste plutôt sur les bouleversements sociaux produits par des facteurs "morphologiques" - facteurs économiques, démographiques, géographiques. Ces différentes versions partagent toutes l'image d'une modernité avec le déclin des anciennes traditions. Une modernité définie comme ce qui reste une fois ces traditions disparues - c'est-à-dire définies d'une manière aculturelle. Taylor juge cette conception insatisfaisante à plusieurs points de vue. La meilleure manière de montrer pourquoi elle est insatisfaisante, dit-il, consiste à décrire le processus historique qui a vu émerger notre modernité. "Modern Social Imaginaries" constitue d'abord et avant tout un essai dans ce sens. L'émergence de la modernité, y montre-t-il, est inséparables de l'apparition de différents "imaginaires sociaux", c'est-à-dire de différentes conceptions (à la fois factuelles et normatives) de la vie et du monde. Nous savons ce que sont les "théories" de la modernité: ce sont les théories de Locke, Rousseau, Kant, et de tant d'autres auteurs. Les imaginaires sociaux de la modernité se distinguent de différentes manières de ces théories. (1) Si les théories sont souvent le fait d'individus isolés, l'imaginaire social est partagé par la société entière, ou, du moins, par des couches importantes de la société. (2) Si les théories prennent une forme... théorique, les imaginaires sociaux s'expriment dans une multitude de formes - des romans, des récits de vies "exemplaires", voire de simples pratiques. (3) Les imaginaires sociaux constituent la compréhension partagée (très souvent d'une manière implicite) d'une société - une compréhension qui est constitutive de leurs pratiques communes. C'est ce qu'ils doivent "imaginer" ensemble pour que leurs pratiques aient le sens qu'elles ont. Différents imaginaires sociaux de la modernité (plus ou moins indépendants les uns des autres) sont ainsi abordés par Taylor: la conception de la sphère publique comme sphère d'interaction entre individus, la conception de la sphère privée comme lieu d'épanouissement personnel, la conception de l'économie comme espace permettant aux individus d'atteindre un bonheur privé, etc. Ces conceptions partagent différents traits. Par exemple, elles décrivent un monde dénué de transcendance - plus précisément, un monde dans lequel la transcendance a été "déplacée" dans les individus. Une transcendance "immanentiste", pourrait-on dire! Là où des sociétés "archaïques" définissent les individus par la place qu'ils prennent dans un ordre plus vaste, les sociétés occidentales modernes définissent cet ordre à partir des individus qui y participent. À travers la description de l'émergence de ces imaginaires, Taylor développe (implicitement) un riche dialogue avec d'autres conceptions de la modernité: celles de Habermas, de M. Gauchet, de L. Dumont, et sans doute de bien d'autres auteurs. Par exemple, il reprend et discute certaines des principales idées de L. Dumont sur la modernité occidentale: (1) l'idée qu'elle peut être décrite comme le développement d'une valorisation de l'individu, et l'application de cette valorisation à un nombre croissante de situations ; (2) l'idée que cette même modernité peut être décrite à partir des tensions inhérentes à cet individualisme - par exemple, les tensions entre l'autonomie (l'individu doit agir de lui-même) et l'authenticité (l'individu doit exprimer sa nature propre). (Le lecteur qui (contrairement à moi) connaît Gauchet, Polanyi ou Habermas verra peut-être aussi dans "Modern Social Imaginaries" un dialogue avec ces auteurs, puisque plusieurs des thématiques qu'ils discutent (la sphère publique, les religions axiales, etc.) y sont abordées.) J'aurais encore beaucoup de choses à dire sur cet excellent livre, tant il est riche! Taylor fait porter son récit sur une multitude de points complexes. Il le fait avec aisance, sans jamais sacrifier leur complexité.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.8 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews) 36 of 37 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lucid Brilliance,
By benjamin - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Modern Social Imaginaries (Paperback)
Charles Taylor is one of the Western world's foremost intellectuals and theorists of what is broadly called "modernity" which begins somewhere around the 16th century and continues today, even as it is challenged by so-called "post-modernists". The current work puts the concept of modernity into a theoretical framework which Taylor terms the "social imaginary" (hence the title of the book).The "social imaginary", broadly speaking, consists of images, stories and legends, is shared by large groups of people, and serves to make possible "common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy" (23). The particularities of the *modern* social imaginary is that "Modernity is secular ... in the fact that religion occupies a different place, compatible with the sense that all action takes place in profane time" (194). The modern social imaginary consists of the objectivity of the economic sphere, the public sphere (which is beyond the control of any particular political or religion interest group) vs. the private sphere (which is the sphere of the family and of religion), and the sovereignty of "the people". What emerges, then, is a series of fairly thick discussions of political philosophy, economic theory and, yes, theology. Taylor ties modernity to Protestantism for in setting itself against the medieval/catholic worldview of sacred time (feast and fast days with their attendant saints, liturgical seasons) and the broadly accepted idea that the world was enchanted - miracles, angels, demons and saints were all a part of the medieval worldview - time itself became a profane realm such that it would eventually become eclipsed by nationalism with its own local feast days and national saints (patriots, so to speak). The disenchantment of the world, then, is the foundation of the modern social imaginary and all modernities are rooted in this disenchantment. This disenchantment, however, is by no means the exorcising of the idea of a moral order. What the aforementioned disenchantment serves to do is to root the belief in a moral order in something other than a transcendent realm: nature. Nature, reason and science all serve to metaphysically ground a particular understanding of people - that they are fundamentally reasonable/rational - and, from this, that society must necessarily progress along natural, reasonable lines. This understanding of people makes people sovereign, so to speak, and eventually serves to ground what Taylor sees as the ultimate myth of modernity: the American myth of "We the people..." founding their own political *order*. This is a brilliant work and, despite its highly theoretical orientation, should be picked up by all who are interested in discussions of moderity, religion, the public sphere, democracy, and the moral order. As an extended discussion of a central section of his Gifford Lectures of 1999, "Living in a Secular Age", it also serves as a tantalizing prelude to Taylor's next book. 19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent dissection of the ideology of modernity,
By M. A. Krul - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Modern Social Imaginaries (Paperback)
This book is Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor (not to be confused with the Liberian ex-dictator of the same name!) at his most concise and accessible. Here he uses his typical "history of ideas" approach to explaining the content of the modern way of seeing the world, one that so profoundly affects the West and its policies yet is so hard to describe.Taylor's general philosophical project is to attack the idea of Western liberalism as being a "neutral" or "non-ideological" view of the world, and to downplay its role in the formation of modern man. Instead, he proposes a more communitarian view of liberalism, where liberalism is one comprehensive moral doctrine between others, but happens (for historical reasons) to be one that has been very succesful in shaping the mindset of Western man, rather more so than it has been succesful politically. Taylor also rejects many of the ideas of liberalism itself, in particular the "rights-based" thinking and its concept of the individual's relation to his culture. The former is most clearly seen in his book "Sources of the Self", whereas the latter is most clearly expressed in this work. The modern social imaginary, i.e. the ways in which modern man is capable of seeing the world (which is not the same as the way he sees the world!) is explored from every possible cultural and philosophical angle. On the whole, his communitarian philosophy tends to be conservative, but rather of the traditionalist conservative kind than of the religiously inspired reactionary kind one sees in the US so much (though Taylor is very catholic). His interests are clearly in defining what makes modernist culture a culture of its own and why it is a historically developed integral whole, not a content-neutral political system as many liberals seem to think it is. Because of this appeal to historicism, Taylor's work is also very useful and interesting for more radical progressives seeking to criticize the liberal's claims to neutrality and autonomy. On the whole, this booklet (less than 200 pages of content) is an exciting and relatively legible summary of Taylor's views on Western society and where it came from. Recommended to everyone except those who have read Taylor's larger works (especially "Sources of the Self" and "Multiculturalism"), for whom it will perhaps not be as new as it was for me. 33 of 37 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Concise, easy to understand and, most of all, insightful,
By Sonho Kim "Book warm" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Modern Social Imaginaries (Paperback)
This book seems an extension of Charles Taylor's Tanner Lecture delivered a decade ago on public sphere as a moral value imbedded in Western modernity. Now, he develops an interpretation on three modern imaginary (but real) spheres of market economy, public sphere, and self-governing people, regarding them as different instances in the construction of primary modern morality, 'mutual benefits.' I think this is an important step that seamlessly connects two different philosophy giants-Habermas and Foucault- as well as an original explication of Western modernity. Highly recommended those who interested in themes such as modernity in general, modern construction of market, and public sphere and public opinion.
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