Charles Taylor's Constitutive Theory Of Language

The nature of language has concerned Charles Taylor over the years. There is a tendency to define human beings as language animals. And Language was the crucial instrument of knowledge. But since the Renaissance, there is the expressivist understanding of language and art in the Romantic period, which sharply criticizes the Lockean view and proposes a quite different notion of creativity. Taylor abstracts from the various theories of the Herder, Homboldt and Heidgger three important aspects of language activity. They constitute his constitutive theory of language. He stresses the constitutive nature of language and he believes that language makes possible the disclosure of the human world. Human articulate the implicit understanding which comprises the background of the social norms, customs and institutions. At the same time it is only through the articulation in language that human norms and purpose can be changed.