Charles Taylor, Community Life In Pursuit

The dissertation's title is Charles Taylor's Pursuit of the Community life, it mainly makes a study of the social and political philosophy of Charles Taylor, and it spreads out as follows:The first part introduces the origins of the social and political philosophy of Charles Taylor. At first it begins with Charles Taylor in the contemporary thought context, introduces the attention to the social and political philosophy of Charles Taylor on the basis of the elaboration of the community thought, and induces its three characters after the analysis of its contacts with the contemporary political philosophy: it fixes not system but problems, it doesn't makes normal analysis firstly but make the tracing analysis of the history of ideas, and it has a stronger character of polemics and dialogues. Then it is Charles Taylor in the real political context, pays attention to analysis of Taylor's bilingual family , growing up, political experience and the impact of Quebec's separation to Taylor's thought, and elaborates his basic attitude to the Canada political reality. At last it is Charles Taylor in the theory development, probes into the effect from the sages: Herder's theory of language, Hegel's exposition on the relation between the lord and the slave, and Tocqueville's standpoints of democracy.The second part elaborates Charles Taylor's diagnosis of our times, analyses his depiction of the modernity and its malaise, and the embodiments of the malaise of modernity in the contemporary political realm. At first it analyses his concept of multi-modernity on the basis of the division of the cultural modernity and the acultural modernity, and then reveals the malaise of Taylor's western modernity: the individualism of self-realization, the primacy of instrumental reason, the loss of freedom. Then it analyses Taylor's attitude to the divergence between the liberalism and the communitarianism, and he thinks both obscure the ontological issues and the advocacy issues, and then highlights the situated selves. On this basis, against the divergence between the positive liberty and the negative liberty, Taylor advances the exercise-concept and opportunity -concept about the freedom. To criticize the concept of negative liberty, and reiterates freedom should be a situated positive exercise-concept. At last Taylor mainly criticizes the atomic viewpoint of the liberalism's primacy of right, and it is possible consequence of legitimation crisis and political fragment.The third part probes into the fundamental viewpoint of Charles Taylor's moral philosophy and his elaboration about identity and recognition. Firstly it introduces Taylor's depiction about the man as a self-interpretation and making strong evaluation animal, analyses Taylor's divergence between the constitutive good and the life goods, and centers on the supergood to show that individual good is very important to the making of the individual identity. Then it analyses Taylor's identity and recognition and their relation on the basis of the real multicultural challenge, and after the elaboration that individual identity is from others' recognition in the private realm, mainly expounds the politics of recognition that Taylor advanced in the public sphere, and this is the positive inquisition about the third way between the politics of equal dignity and the politics of difference. At last it analyses Taylor's corresponding viewpoint of politics of recognition and its impact to the political philosophy research, especially Habermas' analysis and evaluation.The fourth part analyses Taylor's effort to reconstruct the meaning of community to resume the plenty of life, and it aims to overcome the possible problems in modern social politics. Firstly it is Taylor's civil society: on the basis of the divergence between the western civil society-state from five aspects, Taylor renovates the civil society through the balance between L-stream and M-stream. Then it depicts Taylor's investigation to the public sphere from what it is and what it does, this begins with Habermas' Structural Transformation of public sphere, and Taylor tells us that the public sphere not only is a social form to restrict the politics, but only should be seemed to be a surrounding of democracy. Then on the basis of Taylor's four characters of modern moral order, it analyses his modern social imagination, and draws the outline of the changing chain of modern social imagination from the market economy, the public sphere and the sovereign people. At last it mainly probes into Taylor's viewpoint about religion in secular time, this is a contemporary scene as triangulated between exclusive humanism, the immanent counter-Enlightment and a capacious theism, in it to look for a comfortable resting place for souls, and to strive for a new source for political identity, are Taylor's value fixation for religious faith in secular times.The last part introduces the main content in brief, and stresses the main attention of Taylor: to find a home for the heart of moderns in a homeless helplessness through tracing back to the development of modernity and advancing the new angle of view to comprehend and improve the political reality.