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The Ambivalence of Charles Taylor’s Philosophy: What makes our Everyday Reality Real?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

MARKUS KILLIUS
MARKUS KILLIUS*
Affiliation:
Friedrich-Schiller-University, Jena
*
*<[email protected]>
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Abstract

In The Language Animal, Charles Taylor’s struggle to provide a theoretical framework for his narration of the self finally becomes obvious. About 30 years after he wrote his great and fascinating Sources of the Self, Taylor closes the gap between the self as a radical being-in-the-world and its analytical premises. Even if the main topic of Taylor’s new book may seem to be only a comparison of what he calls ‘HHH-theory’ and ‘HLC-theory,’ there are two other authors, the combination of whose ideas clarifies not only his approach to language but also to his concept of ‘reality’ as such: Gottlob Frege and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Dans The Language Animal, les efforts que doit déployer Charles Taylor pour fournir un point de vue théorique permettant de fonder son récit du soi deviennent finalement apparents. Quelque trente ans après son grand et fascinant Les sources du moi, il comble l’écart qui subsistait entre le soi en tant qu’être au monde radical et ses prémisses analytiques. Même si le principal sujet du nouveau livre de Taylor semble se résumer à une comparaison entre ce qu’il appelle la théorie HHH et la théorie HLC, on y retrouve deux auteurs dont les idées, combinées, permettent de clarifier son approche du langage et du concept de «réalité» : Gottlob Frege et Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Keywords

Charles TaylorrealismGottlob FregeLudwig Wittgensteinordinary language philosophyanalytic philosophy
Type
Special Issue: Charles Taylor’s The Language Animal
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 56 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 669 - 679
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2017 

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