Charles Taylor

Accommodating ethnic diversity is a major challenge for all democratic nations and a topic that has attracted a great deal of attention in the last few decades. Within Quebec, a new approach has emerged that seeks a balance between the needs of minorities and those of the majority. In Interculturalism, sociologist and historian Gérard Bouchard presents his vision of interculturalism as a model for the management of diversity. A pluralist approach which recognizes the existence of a cultural majority whose rights must also be acknowledged, interculturalism constitutes an important alternative to multiculturalism both in Canada and internationally. Written by one of Quebec’s leading public intellectuals and the co-chair of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on reasonable accommodation, Interculturalism is the first clear and comprehensive statement in English of an approach being discussed around the world. A translation of Bouchard’s award-winning French-language work, L’Interculturalisme: Un point de vue québécois, this book features a new foreword by philosopher Charles Taylor and an afterword by the author written specifically for the English-language edition.

Accommodating ethnic diversity is a major challenge for all democratic nations and a topic that has attracted a great deal of attention in the last few decades. Within Quebec, a new approach has emerged that seeks a balance between the needs of minorities and those of the majority. In Interculturalism, sociologist and historian Gérard Bouchard presents his vision of interculturalism as a model for the management of diversity. A pluralist approach which recognizes the existence of a cultural majority whose rights must also be acknowledged, interculturalism constitutes an important alternative to multiculturalism both in Canada and internationally. Written by one of Quebec’s leading public intellectuals and the co-chair of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on reasonable accommodation, Interculturalism is the first clear and comprehensive statement in English of an approach being discussed around the world. A translation of Bouchard’s award-winning French-language work, L’Interculturalisme: Un point de vue québécois, this book features a new foreword by philosopher Charles Taylor and an afterword by the author written specifically for the English-language edition.

“Charles Taylor is one of the finest thinkers we have. And by ‘we’ I mean every striving, puzzled, intellectually alert person on the planet…The wisdom and learning on display is staggering.” —Jonathan Wright, Catholic HeraldThere are, always, more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in one’s philosophy—and in these essays Charles Taylor turns to those things not fully imagined or avenues not wholly explored in his epochal A Secular Age. Here Taylor talks in detail about thinkers who are his allies and interlocutors, such as Iris Murdoch, Alasdair MacIntyre, Robert Brandom, and Paul Celan. He offers major contributions to social theory, expanding on the issues of nationalism, democratic exclusionism, religious mobilizations, and modernity. And he delves even more deeply into themes taken up in A Secular Age: the continuity of religion from the past into the future; the nature of the secular; the folly of hoping to live by “reason alone”; and the perils of moralism. He also speculates on how irrationality emerges from the heart of rationality itself, and why violence breaks out again and again. In A Secular Age, Taylor more evidently foregrounded his Catholic faith, and there are several essays here that further explore that faith. Overall, this is a hopeful book, showing how, while acknowledging the force of religion and the persistence of violence and folly, we nonetheless have the power to move forward once we have given up the brittle pretensions of a narrow rationalism.

Umschlag 19.05.06

Elder Charles Taylor is a fourth generation ordained Primitive Baptist pastor. He has written a powerful Commentary on the book of the Bible which is frequently misunderstood, misused or ignored. He has delineated the elements which often cause confusion or have been used to scare people. He shows that the imagery would have been understood by first century Jews and Christians.

Der Ton macht die Physik - das ist eine gelungene Mischung aus verstandlich dargestellter Wissenschaft und musikalischen Hintergrundinformationen, die die Welt des Musikhorens und -spielens mit allem Drum und Dran erlautert. Charles Taylor hat in vielen Vortragen, die er vor Kindern hielt, so viel Erfahrung gesammelt, dass er den Stoff "kinderleicht" fast spielerisch verpackt, und ist als emeritierter Physikprofessor doch Wissenschaftler genug, um ihn absolut systematisch und auf dem heutigen Stand der Forschung zu diskutieren. Angefangen von den Grundlagen der Physik des Schalls, der Horphysiologie und der Instrumentenkunde arbeitet er sich uber die Entstehung und Verstarkung von musikalischen Tonen zu den einzelnen Instrumentengruppen vor. Diese werden dann der Reihe nach unter die Lupe genommen (Saiten-, Blas- und elektronische Instrumente). Schritt fur Schritt versteht der Leser immer besser, was hinter einem Mozartschen Klavierkonzert, einer Beethovensinfonie oder einem Schubertlied steht, weshalb Tonleitern zwar lastig, aber nichtsdestotrotz sinnvoll - vor allem fur Tasteninstrumente sind, warum das Gehirn das alles in Musikgenuss umsetzt und vieles mehr. Ein Kapitel uber Raumakustik vervollstandigt die detailreiche und oft witzige Darstellung.

Jocelyn Maclure and Charles Taylor provide a clearly reasoned, articulate account of secularism how it may offer the only path to religious and philosophical freedom. Secularism: the definition of this word is as practical and urgent as income inequalities or the paths to sustainable development. In this wide-ranging analysis, Jocelyn Maclure and Charles Taylor provide a clearly reasoned, articulate account of the two main principles of secularism—equal respect, and freedom of conscience—and its two operative modes—separation of Church (or mosque or temple) and State, and State neutrality vis-à-vis religions. But more crucially, they make the powerful argument that in our ever more religiously diverse, politically interconnected world, secularism, properly understood, may offer the only path to religious and philosophical freedom. Secularism and Freedom of Conscience grew out of a very real problem—Quebec’s need for guidelines to balance the equal respect due to all citizens with the right to religious freedom. But the authors go further, rethinking secularism in light of other critical issues of our time. The relationship between religious beliefs and deeply-held secular convictions, the scope of the free exercise of religion, and the place of religion in the public sphere are aspects of the larger challenge Maclure and Taylor address: how to manage moral and religious diversity in a free society. Secularism, they show, is essential to any liberal democracy in which citizens adhere to a plurality of conceptions of what gives meaning and direction to human life. The working model the authors construct in this nuanced account is capacious enough to accommodate difference and freedom of conscience, while holding out hope for a world in which diversity no longer divides us.

The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere represents a rare opportunity to experience a diverse group of preeminent philosophers confronting one pervasive contemporary concern: what role does--or should--religion play in our public lives? Reflecting on her recent work concerning state violence in Israel-Palestine, Judith Butler explores the potential of religious perspectives for renewing cultural and political criticism, while Jurgen Habermas, best known for his seminal conception of the public sphere, thinks through the ambiguous legacy of the concept of "the political" in contemporary theory. Charles Taylor argues for a radical redefinition of secularism, and Cornel West defends civil disobedience and emancipatory theology. Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen detail the immense contribution of these philosophers to contemporary social and political theory, and an afterword by Craig Calhoun places these attempts to reconceive the significance of both religion and the secular in the context of contemporary national and international politics.

The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere represents a rare opportunity to experience a diverse group of preeminent philosophers confronting one pervasive contemporary concern: what role does--or should--religion play in our public lives? Reflecting on her recent work concerning state violence in Israel-Palestine, Judith Butler explores the potential of religious perspectives for renewing cultural and political criticism, while Jurgen Habermas, best known for his seminal conception of the public sphere, thinks through the ambiguous legacy of the concept of "the political" in contemporary theory. Charles Taylor argues for a radical redefinition of secularism, and Cornel West defends civil disobedience and emancipatory theology. Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen detail the immense contribution of these philosophers to contemporary social and political theory, and an afterword by Craig Calhoun places these attempts to reconceive the significance of both religion and the secular in the context of contemporary national and international politics.