In seminal works ranging from Sources of the Self to A Secular Age, Charles Taylor has shown how we create possible ways of being, both as individuals and as a society.
In illuminating the Full Capacity of "the Language animal," Taylor sheds light on the very question of what it is to be a Human being..
Human Language recognizes no boundary between mind and body.
Language is intellectual, but it is also enacted in artistic portrayals, gestures, tones of voice, metaphors, and the shifts of emphasis and attitude that accompany speech.
Taylor expands the thinking of the German Romantics Hamann, Herder, and Humboldt into a theory of Linguistic holism.
We first learn Language from others, and, inducted into the shared practice of speech, our individual selves emerge out of the conversation.
The Human Linguistic Capacity is not something we innately possess.
Language does not merely describe; it constitutes meaning and fundamentally shapes Human experience.
In The Language Animal, Taylor explains that this view neglects the crucial role Language plays in shaping the very thought it purports to express.
Those in the rational empiricist tradition--Hobbes, Locke, Condillac, and their heirs--assert that Language is a tool that Human beings developed to encode and communicate information.
For centuries, philosophers have been divided on the nature of language.
In his new book setting forth decades of thought, he demonstrates that Language is at the center of this generative process.
In seminal works ranging from Sources of the Self to A Secular Age, Charles Taylor has shown how we create possible ways of being, both as individuals and as a society
